Getting Started with Spring Boot: Creating Your First Project

What is Spring Boot?

Spring Boot is a powerful framework that simplifies the development of production-ready Spring applications. It provides a set of conventions, auto-configurations, and defaults that allow developers to focus on writing business logic rather than boilerplate code. Whether you’re building a RESTful API, a web application, or a microservice, Spring Boot has got your back.

Setting Up a New Project

Step 1: Using Spring Initializer

Spring Initializer is a fantastic web-based tool that generates Spring Boot projects with the right dependencies and configurations. Let’s create our project:

1. Open your browser and visit Spring Initializer.
2. Fill in the project details: Group: Use your preferred package name (e.g., com.example). Artifact: Choose a meaningful name for your project (e.g., my-spring-boot-app). Dependencies: For now, select only “Spring Web.”
3. Click “Generate” to download the project zip file.

Step 2: Unzip and Explore

Unzip the downloaded file, and you’ll find the basic project structure:

my-spring-boot-app
├── src
│   ├── main
│   │   ├── java
│   │   │   └── com
│   │   │       └── example
│   │   │           └── App.java
│   │   └── resources
│   │       └── application.properties
│   └── test
│       └── java
│           └── com
│               └── example
│                   └── AppTest.java
├── pom.xml
        

• The src/main/java directory contains your Java source code.
• The src/main/resources directory holds configuration files, properties, and other resources.
• The src/test/java directory is where you’ll write your unit tests.

Dependencies and Initial Configuration

Spring Boot comes with sensible defaults, but you can customize your project by adding dependencies. Open the pom.xml file and add the following dependency to enable Spring Boot’s auto-configuration:

<dependencies>
    <!-- Other dependencies -->
    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-web</artifactId>
    </dependency>
</dependencies>
        

Running Your Application

Now that your project is set up, navigate to the root directory (my-spring-boot-app) in your terminal and run:

mvn spring-boot:run
        

Congratulations! You’ve created your first Spring Boot project. Visit https://localhost:8080 in your browser to see your application in action.

Remember, Spring Boot takes care of most of the configuration for you, allowing you to focus on building awesome features. Happy coding!