In this article, we will get idea about Spring Boot framework. Spring Boot is a new project developed by Spring team. It is developed on top of Spring framework. So Basic idea of Spring framework will help you more in this tutorial.

Even if your are complete beginner of Spring Boot, this tutorial is perfect for you as we have designed this tutorial for both beginners and professionals.

This tutorial will help you in understanding the Spring Boot framework  and basic concepts associated with it. So let’s get started :

Introduction to Spring Boot

Spring Boot is a java based open source framework. It was developed by The Spring Team also known as Pivotal team. It is built and developed on top of Spring framework. It is basically developed for creating Microservices. Spring Boot is developed to ease the bootstrapping and development of new Spring Applications. Spring Boot is considered as a Spring framework module with additional features like RAD also known as Rapid Application Development.

With Spring Boot, it is now a very easy process to create stand alone, ready for production spring applications. Spring Boot has very comprehensive infrastructure support thus this framework requires very less spring configurations so microservices can be created with less effort and they are ready to run.

Spring requires a lot of configurations for the application to run successfully but Spring Boot simplifies this process as it has already been provided with defaults of features. According to need, developers can always change the feature’s default value.

Spring Boot application does not requires the XML configurations like Spring framework. Spring Boot is also provided with a lot of default configurations and code so that developers can quick start new Projects with very less time. So Spring Boot decreases lot of efforts for developers.

Spring Boot also comes with inbuilt servers so there is no need to use external servers for development of applications like Tomcat etc.

Spring Boot one more powerful feature is that your web application can be built as one stand-alone jar. This stand alone jar will contain one embedded server as well and this server can be started with the command java -jar.

Spring Boot module also provides CLI / command line interface tools to develop and test the Spring Boot applications from the command prompt or CMD. Though Spring Boot is commonly used to create the web applications but it can also be used to develop the command line applications.

Advantages of Spring Boot

Spring Boot has following main advantages :

1. It helps easy to develop stand alone Spring based applications which can be started by using java jars.
2. It is very easy to understand and easy to develop applications which reduces the development time.
3. You don’t need to write a lot of boilerplate code and xml configurations.
4. It makes very easy to integrate with Spring JDBC, spring Data, Spring security etc.
5. It has embedded HTTP server like Tomcat.
6. It has many plugin tools to test and develop Spring Boot application using Maven and Gradle.

Goals of Spring Boot

The goals of Spring Boot module is :

• To avoid the time-taking complex XML Configurations.
• To develop ready-to-run applications with easy steps.
• To ease and fast and the development time of application.
• To avoid writing the unnecessary boilerplate code.
• To provide the default code and configuration to quick start new application development.
• To reduce the development effort and increase the productivity.

Features of Spring Boot

• Web Development
• Logging
• Security
• Application events and listeners
• SpringApplication class
• Externalized Configuration
• YAML Support
• Properties Files
• Admin features
• Type-safe Configuration

Drawbacks or Limitations of Spring Boot

Though Spring Boot is a module developed on top of Spring framework but it has one limitation :

It is very difficult and time consuming process to migrate the existing Spring applications to Spring Boot but it is possible. However, creating a new project or application with Spring Boot is very easy.

Spring Boot vs Spring MVC

Difference between Spring Boot and Spring MVC :

In my next article, we will learn about basic components of Spring Boot and its working : Key Components of Spring Boot.

Conclusion

That’s all folks! In this article,  we have learnt the Introduction to Spring Boot, Its advantages, Its features, Its goals and Its limitations.