Creating a Spring Boot Project

Java is an object-oriented language that was developed in 1995 by James Gosling and it is still one of the most popular languages to develop applications. Spring is a framework for Java application development that provides various libraries. One of the downsides of using Spring is the manual configurations and server setup that can be messy and tiresome even before the actual application development begins. Spring boot is a helper that does the configuration automatically as well as setting up the web server to overcome the downside of the Spring framework. Today we will see how to create a Spring boot project and do some basic settings for development.

List of Contents

• Creating a Project
  • Using Spring Initializer
  • With IntelliJ
• Development Environment Set Up
  • Encoding Format Settings
  • JDK Settings
• Project Structures
  • Project Managers
    • Maven
    • Gradle

Creating a Project

Usint Spring Initializer

Go to the initializer site

Spring Initializr

Spring Initializr

Select project, language, name, and dependencies then click Generate

Unzip the downloaded file

Open the file with the editor of your choice

With IntelliJ

Open IntelliJ and click 'New Project'

Select 'Spring Initializr' on the left panel and type in the name, choose 'Java' as the language, choose build type, SDK, a version for Java, and finally package type.

Add dependencies if you need any

Click 'Finish'

Development Environment Set Up

Before we start development we need to check the settings such as the encoding formats.

Encoding Format Settings

Select File -> Settings

Choose Editor -> File Encodings and change the formats on top

And the bottom (UTF-8 is most commonly used)

JDK Settings

JDK (Java Development Kit) is necessary to develop Java applications and it is often automatically set up when creating a project. To change or manually set up, go to File -> Project Structure

In the opened menu, select the kit

Project Structures

A Spring boot project has the below structure

▶ src/main/java

Java source files

▶ src/main/webapp

Web template, web configurations, static files (image, ...), CSS, JS. Note that you can only use this with war packaging type, not jar

▶ src/main/resources

Application configurations and properties

▶ src/main/resources/application.properties

Default configurations for an application to work are set up automatically. Use this file to change the configurations. Go to the spring.io to check out the property names. Below are some of its properties

▶▷ Core

Set logging level (Loggin level options: TRACE, DEBUG, INFO, WARN, ERROR, FATAL, OFF)

logging.level.org.springframework=DEBUG

Create logging file

logging.file.name=<fileName>.log

Sets the logging file path

logging.file.name=<fileName>.log

logging.file.path=<path>

▶▷ Web

Changes the port (Default: 8080)

server.port=8000

Adds a context path (the path that comes after the port)

server.servlet.context-path=/path

Sets session time out time (Default: 30 minutes)

server.servlet.session.timeout=15m

▶▷ Security

Changes the user name

spring.security.user.name=admin

Changes the password

spring.security.user.password=1234

▶▷ Actuator

Adds an endpoint

management.endpoints.web.exposure.include=<endpointName>

Adds all the endpoints

management.endpoints.web.exposure.include=*

Changes the default path (Default: /actuator)

management.endpoints.web.base-path=/newpath

▶▷ Data

Connects to DB

spring.datasource.url=<dbPath>

Sets DB user

spring.datasource.username=<userName>

Sets DB password

spring.datasource.password=<password>

▶▷ Integration

▶▷ Devtools

▶▷ Testing

▶ src/test

Unit test codes

Project managers

Spring boot uses a project manager such as Maven or Gradle to fetch all the dependencies needed for an application automatically (jar files for Spring, Hibernate, ... ). Let's have a look at each type's structure

Maven

▶ target

Where compiled files will be stored (Automatically created when the application is run) 

▶ mvnw

Maven wrapper file. Runs Maven project (if Maven is not installed on your computer, it will automatically install one. Once Maven is installed, you don't need this file

▶ mvnw.cmd (Window) / mvnw.sh (Linux, Mac)

Maven wrapper file. Once Maven is installed, you don't need this file

▶ pom.xml (Project Object Model file)

A file located in the root that stores the information about the project, dependencies list, and plugins list.

 

<parent> section defines the default setup such as default compiler level and UTF-8 source encoding. This can be overridden in the <properties> tag

 

project coordinates

<groupId>	Group name. The convention is to write the domain name backward
<artificialId>	Project name
<version>	Project version, append '-SNAPSHOT' when in development

dependency coordinates

<groupId>
<artificialId>
<version>	Optional, if omitted, the latest version will be used

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
         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>3.1.4</version>
        <relativePath/> <!-- lookup parent from repository -->
    </parent>
    
    <!-- project information -->
    <groupId>com.example</groupId>    <!-- project coordinate -->
    <artifactId>demo</artifactId>     <!-- project coordinate -->
    <version>0.0.1-SNAPSHOT</version> <!-- project coordinate -->
    <packaging>jar</packaging>
    <name>demo</name>
    <description>demo</description>
    <properties>
        <java.version>17</java.version>
    </properties>
    
    <!-- dependencies -->
    <dependencies>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-web</artifactId>
        </dependency>

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

    <!-- plugins -->
    <build>
        <plugins>
            <plugin>
                <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
                <artifactId>spring-boot-maven-plugin</artifactId>
            </plugin>
        </plugins>
    </build>
</project>

---

※ For the coordinates for dependencies, visit the sites below. Unlike other sites that only provide one coordinate for a dependency 'maven central repository' provides dependencies that other dependencies depend on

https://spring.io/

Spring | Home

https://hibernate.org/

Hibernate. Everything data.

http://search.maven.org 

Maven Central Repository Search

※ Dependencies such as the spring boot starter that includes multiple dependencies make it hard to check what dependencies are included by just looking at the coordinates in the pom.xml file.

 

To check what a dependency includes, go to View -> Tool Windows -> Maven

Open the dependencies folder to check

---

Gradle

In this writing, we have seen how to create a Spring boot project.