Spring Boot is a popular framework that simplifies and accelerate the process of developing a java based application

What You Will build

You will build a Spring Boot web application.

What You Need

• A favorite text editor or IDE
• JDK 1.8 or later
• Gradle 4+ or Maven 3.2+

Setup Project With Spring Initializr

• Navigate to Spring initializr.

• Define the project name example: spring-boot-get-started

• Choose Project Maven and the language Java.

• Choose Your Java version ex: 17

• Click add dependencies and select:

  • Spring Web

• Click Generate.

Unzip the Downloaded Zip and open the Project using your favorite text editor or IDE

Application class

The main class for our application, serve as an entry point for our Spring boot application

@SpringBootApplication
public class SpringBootGetStartedApplication {

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        SpringApplication.run(SpringBootGetStartedApplication.class, args);
    }

}

The class is annotated with @SpringBootApplication which is a combination of several annotation :

• @EnableAutoConfiguration Attempting to auto-configure beans, usually applied to classes based on your classpath and what beans you have defined
• @ComponentScan Sets up component scanning directives for any @Configuration @Component @Service.

SpringApplication.run() method to launch the spring boot application. once you lunch the app it will be running on port 8080, you can set it under the application.properties server.port=8081, This web application relies on annotation-based configuration, which means it's entirely Java-based, eliminating the need to manually configure the web application infrastructure. This approach allows you to focus more on the business logic

Web Application

under the src package create the class GreetingController

@RestController
public class GreetingController {

	@GetMapping("/")
	public String index() {
		return "Greetings from Nonestack!";
	}

}

• The class is annotated with a @RestController, meaning it is ready to be used by Spring MVC to handle web requests.
• Spring Boot use a singleton servlet than it will delegate the request to the corresponded @Controller or @RestController
• @GetMapping maps the path / to the index() method. When call the endpoint http://localhost:8080/, the method returns text. That is because @RestController combines @Controller and @ResponseBody, two annotations that results in web requests returning data rather than a view.

Run the Application

To run the application, run the following command based on your project management

• Maven ./mvnw spring-boot:run
• Gradle ./gradlew bootRun

Test

Add the flowing test dependency to you pom.xml file

<dependency>
  <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
  <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-test</artifactId>
  <scope>test</scope>
</dependency>

If you use Gradle, add the following dependency to your build.gradle file

testImplementation('org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-test')

Write the unit test GreetingControllerTest.java under the src/test/java/com/nonestack/springbootgetstarted folder

@SpringBootTest
@AutoConfigureMockMvc
public class GreetingControllerTest {

  @Autowired
  private MockMvc mvc;

  @Test
  public void getHello() throws Exception {
    mvc.perform(MockMvcRequestBuilders.get("/").accept(MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON))
            .andExpect(status().isOk())
            .andExpect(content().string(equalTo("Greetings from Nonestack!")));
  }
}

MockMvc, from Spring Test, allows you to send HTTP requests and check the results using builder classes. Use @AutoConfigureMockMvc and @SpringBootTest to inject a MockMvc instance. @SpringBootTest creates the full application context, while @WebMvcTest focuses on the web layers. Spring Boot automatically identifies the main application class, but you can override or narrow it down if needed.

Summary

Congratulations 🎉 ! You've created quick Spring Boot Web Application to get started.

Github

The tutorial can be found here on GitHub 👋

Blog

Check new tutorials on nonestack 👋