Best Spring Boot Tutorials For Beginners - Quick Guide

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This Spring Boot Tutorial covers everything you need to know about Spring Boot, from the basics to more advanced concepts. Whether you're just starting or an experienced developer, our tutorial is designed to help you understand and use Spring Boot effectively. Spring Boot is a part of the Spring framework that makes it easier and faster to develop applications. We'll guide you through features like project setup, using Maven, Spring Initializr, and more while explaining concepts like annotations, dependency management, and Actuator straightforwardly. By the end of our tutorial, you'll be confident in using Spring Boot for your projects, whether handling databases with JPA or building robust applications with JDBC.

What is Spring Boot?

Spring Boot is a supercharged version of the Spring Framework. As a result, it makes it easy and fast to set up and run all kinds of applications, from simple ones to those that work on the web. Moreover, it is a toolkit that adds a turbo boost to Spring, helping developers create applications. It's like having a magic wand that takes care of enough setup and configuration hassles so you can focus on building cool stuff without getting bogged down in technical details.
 

One of the best things about Spring Boot is that you don't need to mess around with many XML files or configurations. It follows a savvy way of doing "convention over configuration," which means it takes care of most things automatically. Moreover, it saves developers a ton of time and effort. You can use tools like Spring STS IDE or Spring Initializr to make your Spring Boot projects smoother and faster.

Spring Boot Use Cases

Under this spring boot tutorial, we will discuss various concepts, such as uses, benefits, applications, and many more. But first, we will describe the use cases.
 

• Spring Boot uses an advanced approach called dependency injection, which helps organize and manage different parts of your application automatically.
• It's good at handling database transactions smoothly and efficiently.
• It makes it easy to work with other popular Java frameworks like JPA/Hibernate ORM and Struts, saving you time and effort.
• Using Spring Boot can reduce the overall cost and development time of your application, making it a cost-effective choice.

Alongside Spring Boot, there are other helpful projects under Spring Boot tutorials:
 

• Data of Spring: Simplifies accessing data from various types of databases, both relational and NoSQL.
• Batch of Spring: Great for processing large amounts of data in batches.
• Security of Spring: Provides vigorous security features to keep your applications safe.
• Sociality: Supports connecting with social networks like LinkedIn.
• Spring Integration: Facilitates integration with other enterprise applications using lightweight messaging and declarative adapters.

Spring Boot Types

The following section will discuss several types that are important to know for each user. So, we have covered in this spring boot tutorial.
 

• Spring-boot-starter-thymeleaf: This helps build web applications using Thymeleaf views.
• Spring-boot-starter-data-couchbase: It's for working with the Couchbase document-oriented database using Spring Data Couchbase.
• Spring-boot-starter-artemis: Used for JMS messaging with Apache Artemis.
• Spring-boot-starter-web-services: For building Spring Web Services.
• Spring-boot-starter-mail: Supports Java Mail and email sending in Spring Framework.
• Spring-boot-starter-data-redis: For working with Redis key-value data store using Spring Data Redis and the Jedis client.
• Spring-boot-starter-web: Builds web applications, including RESTful ones, using Spring MVC, with Tomcat as the default container.
• Spring-boot-starter-data-gemfire: Works with GemFire distributed data store using Spring Data GemFire.
• Spring-boot-starter-activemq: For JMS messaging with Apache ActiveMQ.
• Spring-boot-starter-data-elasticsearch: Works with Elasticsearch search and analytics engine using Spring Data Elasticsearch.
• Spring-boot-starter-integration: For Spring Integration.
• Spring-boot-starter-test: Used to test Spring Boot applications with libraries like JUnit, Hamcrest, and Mockito.
• Spring-boot-starter-jdbc: For JDBC with the Tomcat JDBC connection pool.
• Spring-boot-starter-mobile: Helps build web applications using Spring Mobile.
• Spring-boot-starter-validation: For Java Bean Validation with Hibernate Validator.
• Spring-boot-starter-hateoas: Builds hypermedia-based RESTful web applications with Spring MVC and Spring HATEOAS.
• Spring-boot-starter-jersey: Builds RESTful web applications using JAX-RS and Jersey, an alternative to spring-boot-starter-web.
• spring-boot-starter-data-neo4j: For the Neo4j graph database using Spring Data Neo4j.
• spring-boot-starter-data-ldap: For Spring Data LDAP.
• spring-boot-starter-websocket: For building WebSocket applications using Spring Framework's WebSocket support.
• spring-boot-starter-aop: For aspect-oriented programming with Spring AOP and AspectJ.
• spring-boot-starter-amqp: For Spring AMQP and Rabbit MQ.

Spring Boot Benefits

When we learn springboot step by step, it is necessary to understand some merits to make a better understanding in your mind.
 

• Spring Boot makes it easy to create standalone Spring applications that you can start just like any other Java program using java -jar.
• Testing web applications is easy because it supports Embedded HTTP servers like Tomcat and Jetty. Moreover, it eliminates the need to deal with WAR files and complex deployment processes.
• It offers "starter" POMs (Project Object Models) that come pre-configured. As a result, it makes Maven setup simpler and less time-consuming.
• You get production-ready features right out of the box, such as metrics, health checks, and externalized configuration. In addition, it aids in saving you from having to reinvent the wheel.
• With Spring Boot, you can avoid XML configurations, reducing clutter and making your code cleaner.
• It provides a handy CLI (Command Line Interface) tool for developing and testing Spring Boot applications more efficiently.
• There's a range of plugins available to extend its functionality and adapt it to your specific needs.
• By minimizing boilerplate code, XML configurations, and excessive annotations, Spring Boot boosts productivity and slashes development time significantly.

Spring Boot Applications

Here, we will discuss some common applications under this spring boot tutorial. 
 

• The SpringApplication class in Spring Boot makes it super easy to start up a Spring application. You just need to call a static run() method from the primary process.
• Spring Boot uses events to manage various tasks, and you can add listeners by creating a factories file in the META-INF folder, typically named META-INF/spring.factories.
• You can enable admin-related features in Spring Boot to access and manage applications remotely using the spring.application.admin.enabled property.
• Spring Boot allows you to externalize configuration using YAML files, which is prominent for working in different environments without changing your code.
• It also supports properties files for configuring settings like server ports and other application properties, helping you keep things organized.
• YAML support in Spring Boot makes it easy to specify hierarchical configurations, and it's considered an alternative to properties files.
• You can ensure type-safe configuration using annotations provided by Spring Boot, which helps validate and govern your application's configuration.
• Spring Boot handles logging using Common logging for internal logging tasks. Moreover, it manages logging dependencies by default.
• Security is built into Spring Boot applications by default, with basic authentication on all HTTP endpoints and a range of endpoints available to develop secure applications.

Conclusion

In summary, Spring Boot tutorials go through various concepts. However, Spring Boot is a great tool that makes building Java applications easier. It helps in setting up and configuring your application simpler, saves time and money during development, and helps you work more efficiently. Its key features, like dependency injection, managing database transactions, and working seamlessly with other devices allow developers to create top-notch applications quickly. The ready-to-use starter packages speed up development by providing pre-made setups for different parts of your application, such as web services and security. Additionally, Spring Boot's support for flexible configuration, testing tools, and advanced features like WebSocket and aspect-oriented programming make it a complete solution for modern software development needs.