Spring Boot is heavily attracting developers toward it because of three main features as follows:
- Auto-configuration – such as checking for the dependencies, the presence of certain classes in the classpath, the existence of a bean, or the activation of some property.
- An opinionated approach to configuration.
- The ability to create stand-alone applications.
Auto-Configuration in Spring Boot
- @Conditional annotation acts as a base for the Spring Boot auto-configuration annotation extensions.
- It automatically registers the beans with @Component, @Configuration, @Bean, and meta-annotations for building custom stereotype annotations, etc.
- The annotation @EnableAutoConfiguration is used to enable the auto-configuration feature.
- The @EnableAutoConfiguration annotation enables the auto-configuration of Spring ApplicationContext by scanning the classpath components and registering the beans.
- This annotation is wrapped inside the @SpringBootApplication annotation along with @ComponentScan and @SpringBootConfiguration annotations.
- When running main() method, this annotation initiates auto-configuration.
Implementation: Bootstrapping of Application
Java
// Java Program to Illustrate Bootstrapping of Application package gfg; // Importing required classesimport org.springframework.boot.SpringApplication;import org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.SpringBootApplication; // Annotation@SpringBootApplication // Classpublic class GfgApplication { // Main driver method public static void main(String[] args) { SpringApplication.run(GfgApplication.class, args); }} |
Note: You should use the ‘@EnableAutoConfiguration’ annotation only one time in your application.
- ‘spring-boot-autoconfigure.jar’ is the file that looks after all the auto-configuration.
- All auto-configuration logic for MVC, data, JMS, and other frameworks is present in a single jar
Working of Auto-Configuration in Spring Boot
A: Dependencies
- Auto-Configuration is the main focus of the Spring Boot development.
- Our Spring application needs a respective set of dependencies to work.
- Spring Boot auto-configures a pre-set of the required dependencies without a need to configure them manually.
- This greatly helps and can be seen when we want to create a stand-alone application.
- When we build our application, Spring Boot looks after our dependencies and configures both the underlying Spring Framework and required jar dependencies (third-party libraries ) on the classpath according to our project built.
- It helps us to avoid errors like mismatches or incompatible versions of different libraries.
- If you want to override these defaults, you can override them after initialization.
Tool: Maven
Example 1: pom.xml
XML
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 https://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd"> <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion> <parent> <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId> <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-parent</artifactId> <version>2.5.6</version> <relativePath/> <!-- lookup parent from repository --> </parent> <groupId>sia</groupId> <artifactId>taco-cloud</artifactId> <version>0.0.1-SNAPSHOT</version> <name>taco-cloud</name> <description>Demo project for Spring Boot</description> <properties> <java.version>11</java.version> <vaadin.version>14.7.5</vaadin.version> </properties> <dependencies> <dependency> <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId> <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-thymeleaf</artifactId> </dependency> <dependency> <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId> <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-web</artifactId> </dependency> <dependency> <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId> <artifactId>spring-boot-devtools</artifactId> <scope>runtime</scope> <optional>true</optional> </dependency> <dependency> <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId> <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-test</artifactId> <scope>test</scope> </dependency> <dependency> <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId> <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-jersey</artifactId> </dependency> <dependency> <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId> <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-web-services</artifactId> </dependency> <dependency> <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId> <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-webflux</artifactId> </dependency> <dependency> <groupId>com.vaadin</groupId> <artifactId>vaadin-spring-boot-starter</artifactId> </dependency> <dependency> <groupId>io.projectreactor</groupId> <artifactId>reactor-test</artifactId> <scope>test</scope> </dependency> <dependency> <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId> <artifactId>spring-boot-starter</artifactId> </dependency> <dependency> <groupId>org.projectlombok</groupId> <artifactId>lombok</artifactId> <optional>true</optional> </dependency> <dependency> <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId> <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-data-jdbc</artifactId> </dependency> <dependency> <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId> <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-jdbc</artifactId> </dependency> <dependency> <groupId>com.h2database</groupId> <artifactId>h2</artifactId> <scope>runtime</scope> </dependency> <dependency> <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId> <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-data-jpa</artifactId> </dependency> <dependency> <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId> <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-security</artifactId> </dependency> <dependency> <groupId>org.springframework.security</groupId> <artifactId>spring-security-test</artifactId> <scope>test</scope> </dependency> <dependency> <groupId>mysql</groupId> <artifactId>mysql-connector-java</artifactId> <scope>runtime</scope> </dependency> <dependency> <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId> <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-hateoas</artifactId> </dependency> <dependency> <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId> <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-data-rest</artifactId> </dependency> </dependencies> <build> <plugins> <plugin> <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId> <artifactId>spring-boot-maven-plugin</artifactId> <configuration> <excludes> <exclude> <groupId>org.projectlombok</groupId> <artifactId>lombok</artifactId> </exclude> </excludes> </configuration> </plugin> </plugins> </build> <dependencyManagement> <dependencies> <dependency> <groupId>com.vaadin</groupId> <artifactId>vaadin-bom</artifactId> <version>${vaadin.version}</version> <type>pom</type> <scope>import</scope> </dependency> </dependencies> </dependencyManagement> <profiles> <profile> <id>production</id> <build> <plugins> <plugin> <groupId>com.vaadin</groupId> <artifactId>vaadin-maven-plugin</artifactId> <version>${vaadin.version}</version> <executions> <execution> <id>frontend</id> <phase>compile</phase> <goals> <goal>prepare-frontend</goal> <goal>build-frontend</goal> </goals> <configuration> <productionMode>true</productionMode> </configuration> </execution> </executions> </plugin> </plugins> </build> </profile> </profiles></project> |
Understanding Auto-Configuration of Dependencies
- When you build a Spring Boot project, the ‘Starter Parent’ dependency gets automatically added in the ‘pom.xml’ file.
- It notifies that the essential ‘sensible’ defaults for the application have been auto-configured and you therefore can take advantage of it.
<parent> <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId> <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-parent</artifactId> <version>...</version> </parent>
- To add the dependency ( library of tech stacks ), you don’t need to mention the version of it because the Spring Boot automatically configures it for you.
- Also, when you update/change the Spring Boot version, all the versions of added dependencies will also get updated/changed.
<dependency> <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId> <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-thymeleaf</artifactId> </dependency>
- It is Spring Boot’s auto-configuration that makes managing dependencies supremely easy for us.
- With the help of enabling ‘debug logging’ in the ‘application.properties’ file, we can know more about auto-configuration.
logging.level.org.springframework: DEBUG
Tool B: Gradle
Example 2: build.gradle
buildscript {
repositories {
jcenter()
}
dependencies {
classpath("org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-gradle-plugin:1.3.8.RELEASE")
}
}
apply plugin: 'java'
apply plugin: 'spring-boot'
repositories {
jcenter()
}
dependencies {
compile("org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-web")
testCompile("org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-test")
}
B: Spring Application
Illustration: Class
- @Bean is a method-level annotation.
- @Bean annotation specifies that a method produces a return value registered as a bean ( data ) with BeanFactory – managed by Spring Container.
- This particular java program uses @Configuration annotation specifying that the class contains one or more @Bean annotations which help to automatically register (initialize) in the Spring Container (Spring Application Context).
- @Configuration is a class-level annotation.
Example
Java
// Java Program Illustrating Configuration of// DataSourceConfiguration of DataSource package gfg; // Importing required classesimport javax.sql.DataSource;import org.springframework.boot.jdbc.DataSourceBuilder;import org.springframework.context.annotation.Bean;import org.springframework.context.annotation.Configuration; // Annotation@Configuration // Classpublic class ConfigDataSource { // Annotation @Bean public static DataSource source() { DataSourceBuilder<?> dSB = DataSourceBuilder.create(); dSB.driverClassName("com.mysql.jdbc.Driver"); // MySQL specific url with database name // MySQL username credential dSB.username("user"); // MySQL password credential dSB.password("password"); // builds and returns a new // configured datasource object return dSB.build(); }} |
Note: Java Spring Boot framework’s auto configuration feature enables you to start developing your Spring-based applications fast and reduces the possibility of human errors.