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    Spring Boot SpringBootApplication Annotation

    Spring Boot SpringBootApplication annotation is used to mark a configuration class that declares one or more @Bean methods and also triggers auto-configuration and component scanning. It’s same as declaring a class with @Configuration, @EnableAutoConfiguration and @ComponentScan annotations.

    Spring Boot SpringApplication Class

    Spring Boot SpringApplication class is used to bootstrap and launch a Spring application from a Java main method. This class automatically creates the ApplicationContext from the classpath, scan the configuration classes and launch the application. This class is very helpful in launching Spring MVC or Spring REST application using Spring Boot.

    SpringBootApplication and SpringApplication Example

    In the last tutorial on Spring RestController, we created a Spring RESTful web service and deployed it on Tomcat. We had to create web.xml and spring context file. We also had to manually add Spring MVC dependencies and manage their versions. Here we will change the project to run as a Spring Boot Application and get rid of configuration files. This will help in the quick testing of our application logic because we won’t have to manually build and deploy the project to the external Tomcat server.

    You should check out the existing project from our GitHub Repository, in following sections we will make necessary changes to the project files.

    Below image shows our final project structure.

    Adding Spring Boot Maven Dependencies

    The first step is to clean up pom.xml file and configure it for Spring Boot. Since it’s a REST web service, we only need spring-boot-starter-web dependency. However, we will have to keep JAXB dependencies because we are running on Java 10 and we want to support XML request and responses too. We will also have to add spring-boot-maven-plugin plugin, this plugin lets us run our simple java application as spring boot application. Here is our updated pom.xml file.

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    <project xmlns="https://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0"
    xmlns:xsi="https://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xsi:schemaLocation="https://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 https://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd">
    <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
    <groupId>Spring-RestController</groupId>
    <artifactId>Spring-RestController</artifactId>
    <version>0.0.1-SNAPSHOT</version>
    <packaging>war</packaging>

    <parent>
        <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-parent</artifactId>
        <version>2.0.2.RELEASE</version>
        <relativePath /> <!-- lookup parent from repository -->
    </parent>
    <properties>
        <project.build.sourceEncoding>UTF-8</project.build.sourceEncoding>
        <project.reporting.outputEncoding>UTF-8</project.reporting.outputEncoding>
        <java.version>10</java.version>
    </properties>
    <dependencies>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-web</artifactId>
        </dependency>

        <!-- JAXB for XML Response needed to explicitly define from Java 9 onwards -->

        <dependency>
            <groupId>javax.xml.bind</groupId>
            <artifactId>jaxb-api</artifactId>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.glassfish.jaxb</groupId>
            <artifactId>jaxb-runtime</artifactId>
            <version>2.3.0</version>
            <scope>runtime</scope>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>javax.activation</groupId>
            <artifactId>javax.activation-api</artifactId>
            <version>1.2.0</version>
        </dependency>
    </dependencies>

    <build>
        <!-- added to remove Version from WAR file -->
        <finalName>${project.artifactId}</finalName>
        <plugins>
            <plugin>
                <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
                <artifactId>spring-boot-maven-plugin</artifactId>
            </plugin>
        </plugins>
    </build>
</project>

    We can delete WebContent directory or leave it as is, it won’t be used by our Spring Boot application.

    Spring Boot Application Class

    Now we have to create a java class with main method, mark it with @SpringBootApplication annotation and invoke SpringApplication.run() method.

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    package com.journaldev.spring;

import org.springframework.boot.SpringApplication;
import org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.SpringBootApplication;

@SpringBootApplication
public class SpringBootRestApplication {

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

    Just run the class as Java application and it will produce following output. I have removed some loggers that we don’t care about here. The application will not quit and wait for client requests.

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    2018-06-18 14:33:51.276  INFO 3830 --- [           main] c.j.spring.SpringBootRestApplication     : Starting SpringBootRestApplication on pankaj with PID 3830 (/Users/pankaj/Documents/eclipse-jee-workspace/Spring-RestController/target/classes started by pankaj in /Users/pankaj/Documents/eclipse-jee-workspace/Spring-RestController)
2018-06-18 14:33:51.280  INFO 3830 --- [           main] c.j.spring.SpringBootRestApplication     : No active profile set, falling back to default profiles: default
2018-06-18 14:33:51.332  INFO 3830 --- [           main] ConfigServletWebServerApplicationContext : Refreshing org.springframework.boot.web.servlet.context.AnnotationConfigServletWebServerApplicationContext@38467116: startup date [Mon Jun 18 14:33:51 IST 2018]; root of context hierarchy
2018-06-18 14:33:52.311  INFO 3830 --- [           main] o.s.b.w.embedded.tomcat.TomcatWebServer  : Tomcat initialized with port(s): 8080 (http)
2018-06-18 14:33:52.344  INFO 3830 --- [           main] o.apache.catalina.core.StandardService   : Starting service [Tomcat]
2018-06-18 14:33:52.344  INFO 3830 --- [           main] org.apache.catalina.core.StandardEngine  : Starting Servlet Engine: Apache Tomcat/8.5.31
2018-06-18 14:33:52.453  INFO 3830 --- [ost-startStop-1] o.a.c.c.C.[Tomcat].[localhost].[/]       : Initializing Spring embedded WebApplicationContext
2018-06-18 14:33:52.453  INFO 3830 --- [ost-startStop-1] o.s.web.context.ContextLoader            : Root WebApplicationContext: initialization completed in 1127 ms
2018-06-18 14:33:52.564  INFO 3830 --- [ost-startStop-1] o.s.b.w.servlet.ServletRegistrationBean  : Servlet dispatcherServlet mapped to [/]
2018-06-18 14:33:52.927  INFO 3830 --- [           main] s.w.s.m.m.a.RequestMappingHandlerMapping : Mapped "{[/rest/employee/get/{id}],methods=[GET]}" onto public com.journaldev.spring.model.Employee com.journaldev.spring.controller.EmployeeRestController.getEmployeeByID(int)
2018-06-18 14:33:52.928  INFO 3830 --- [           main] s.w.s.m.m.a.RequestMappingHandlerMapping : Mapped "{[/rest/employee/getAll],methods=[GET]}" onto public java.util.List com.journaldev.spring.controller.EmployeeRestController.getAllEmployees()
2018-06-18 14:33:52.929  INFO 3830 --- [           main] s.w.s.m.m.a.RequestMappingHandlerMapping : Mapped "{[/rest/employee/create],methods=[POST]}" onto public com.journaldev.spring.model.Employee com.journaldev.spring.controller.EmployeeRestController.createEmployee(com.journaldev.spring.model.Employee)
2018-06-18 14:33:52.929  INFO 3830 --- [           main] s.w.s.m.m.a.RequestMappingHandlerMapping : Mapped "{[/rest/employee/search/{name}],methods=[GET]}" onto public com.journaldev.spring.model.Employee com.journaldev.spring.controller.EmployeeRestController.getEmployeeByName(java.lang.String)
2018-06-18 14:33:52.929  INFO 3830 --- [           main] s.w.s.m.m.a.RequestMappingHandlerMapping : Mapped "{[/rest/employee/delete/{id}],methods=[DELETE]}" onto public com.journaldev.spring.model.Employee com.journaldev.spring.controller.EmployeeRestController.deleteEmployeeByID(int)
2018-06-18 14:33:53.079  INFO 3830 --- [           main] o.s.j.e.a.AnnotationMBeanExporter        : Registering beans for JMX exposure on startup
2018-06-18 14:33:53.118  INFO 3830 --- [           main] o.s.b.w.embedded.tomcat.TomcatWebServer  : Tomcat started on port(s): 8080 (http) with context path ''
2018-06-18 14:33:53.124  INFO 3830 --- [           main] c.j.spring.SpringBootRestApplication     : Started SpringBootRestApplication in 2.204 seconds (JVM running for 2.633)

    Some important points we can deduce from logs:

    • Spring Boot Application Process ID is 3830.
    • Spring Boot Application is launching Tomcat on port 8080.
    • Our application context path is “”. It means when invoking our APIs we don’t need to provide servlet context.
    • The logger prints all the APIs that are configured, see messages Mapped “{[/rest/employee/get/{id}],methods=[GET]}” etc.

    Below image shows an example invocation of the APIs exposed by our Spring Boot Application.

    SpringBootApplication scanBasePackages

    By default SpringApplication scans the configuration class package and all it’s sub-pacakges. So if our SpringBootRestApplication class is in com.journaldev.spring.main package, then it won’t scan com.journaldev.spring.controller package. We can fix this situation using SpringBootApplication scanBasePackages property.

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    @SpringBootApplication(scanBasePackages="com.journaldev.spring")
public class SpringBootRestApplication {
}

    Spring Boot Auto-Configured Beans

    Since Spring Boot provides auto-configuration, there are a lot of beans getting configured by it. We can get a list of these beans using below code snippet.

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    ApplicationContext ctx = SpringApplication.run(SpringBootRestApplication.class, args);
String[] beans = ctx.getBeanDefinitionNames();
for(String s : beans) System.out.println(s);

    Below is the list of beans configured by our spring boot application.

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    org.springframework.context.annotation.internalConfigurationAnnotationProcessor
org.springframework.context.annotation.internalAutowiredAnnotationProcessor
org.springframework.context.annotation.internalRequiredAnnotationProcessor
org.springframework.context.annotation.internalCommonAnnotationProcessor
org.springframework.context.event.internalEventListenerProcessor
org.springframework.context.event.internalEventListenerFactory
springBootRestApplication
org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.internalCachingMetadataReaderFactory
employeeRestController
employeeRepository
org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.AutoConfigurationPackages
org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.context.PropertyPlaceholderAutoConfiguration
org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.condition.BeanTypeRegistry
propertySourcesPlaceholderConfigurer
org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.websocket.servlet.WebSocketServletAutoConfiguration$TomcatWebSocketConfiguration
websocketContainerCustomizer
org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.websocket.servlet.WebSocketServletAutoConfiguration
org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.web.servlet.ServletWebServerFactoryConfiguration$EmbeddedTomcat
tomcatServletWebServerFactory
org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.web.servlet.ServletWebServerFactoryAutoConfiguration
servletWebServerFactoryCustomizer
tomcatServletWebServerFactoryCustomizer
server-org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.web.ServerProperties
org.springframework.boot.context.properties.ConfigurationPropertiesBindingPostProcessor
org.springframework.boot.context.properties.ConfigurationBeanFactoryMetadata
webServerFactoryCustomizerBeanPostProcessor
errorPageRegistrarBeanPostProcessor
org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.web.servlet.DispatcherServletAutoConfiguration$DispatcherServletConfiguration
dispatcherServlet
mainDispatcherServletPathProvider
spring.mvc-org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.web.servlet.WebMvcProperties
org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.web.servlet.DispatcherServletAutoConfiguration$DispatcherServletRegistrationConfiguration
dispatcherServletRegistration
org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.web.servlet.DispatcherServletAutoConfiguration
org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.validation.ValidationAutoConfiguration
defaultValidator
methodValidationPostProcessor
org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.web.servlet.error.ErrorMvcAutoConfiguration$WhitelabelErrorViewConfiguration
error
beanNameViewResolver
org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.web.servlet.error.ErrorMvcAutoConfiguration$DefaultErrorViewResolverConfiguration
conventionErrorViewResolver
org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.web.servlet.error.ErrorMvcAutoConfiguration
errorAttributes
basicErrorController
errorPageCustomizer
preserveErrorControllerTargetClassPostProcessor
spring.resources-org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.web.ResourceProperties
org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.web.servlet.WebMvcAutoConfiguration$WebMvcAutoConfigurationAdapter$FaviconConfiguration
faviconHandlerMapping
faviconRequestHandler
org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.web.servlet.WebMvcAutoConfiguration$EnableWebMvcConfiguration
requestMappingHandlerAdapter
requestMappingHandlerMapping
mvcConversionService
mvcValidator
mvcContentNegotiationManager
mvcPathMatcher
mvcUrlPathHelper
viewControllerHandlerMapping
beanNameHandlerMapping
resourceHandlerMapping
mvcResourceUrlProvider
defaultServletHandlerMapping
mvcUriComponentsContributor
httpRequestHandlerAdapter
simpleControllerHandlerAdapter
handlerExceptionResolver
mvcViewResolver
mvcHandlerMappingIntrospector
org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.web.servlet.WebMvcAutoConfiguration$WebMvcAutoConfigurationAdapter
defaultViewResolver
viewResolver
welcomePageHandlerMapping
requestContextFilter
org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.web.servlet.WebMvcAutoConfiguration
hiddenHttpMethodFilter
httpPutFormContentFilter
org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.jmx.JmxAutoConfiguration
mbeanExporter
objectNamingStrategy
mbeanServer
org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.context.ConfigurationPropertiesAutoConfiguration
org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.jackson.JacksonAutoConfiguration$Jackson2ObjectMapperBuilderCustomizerConfiguration
standardJacksonObjectMapperBuilderCustomizer
spring.jackson-org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.jackson.JacksonProperties
org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.jackson.JacksonAutoConfiguration$JacksonObjectMapperBuilderConfiguration
jacksonObjectMapperBuilder
org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.jackson.JacksonAutoConfiguration$ParameterNamesModuleConfiguration
parameterNamesModule
org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.jackson.JacksonAutoConfiguration$JacksonObjectMapperConfiguration
jacksonObjectMapper
org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.jackson.JacksonAutoConfiguration
jsonComponentModule
org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.http.HttpMessageConvertersAutoConfiguration$StringHttpMessageConverterConfiguration
stringHttpMessageConverter
spring.http.encoding-org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.http.HttpEncodingProperties
org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.http.JacksonHttpMessageConvertersConfiguration$MappingJackson2HttpMessageConverterConfiguration
mappingJackson2HttpMessageConverter
org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.http.JacksonHttpMessageConvertersConfiguration
org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.http.HttpMessageConvertersAutoConfiguration
messageConverters
org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.http.codec.CodecsAutoConfiguration$JacksonCodecConfiguration
jacksonCodecCustomizer
org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.http.codec.CodecsAutoConfiguration
org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.info.ProjectInfoAutoConfiguration
spring.info-org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.info.ProjectInfoProperties
org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.security.reactive.ReactiveSecurityAutoConfiguration
spring.security-org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.security.SecurityProperties
org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.web.client.RestTemplateAutoConfiguration
restTemplateBuilder
org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.web.embedded.EmbeddedWebServerFactoryCustomizerAutoConfiguration$TomcatWebServerFactoryCustomizerConfiguration
tomcatWebServerFactoryCustomizer
org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.web.embedded.EmbeddedWebServerFactoryCustomizerAutoConfiguration
org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.web.servlet.HttpEncodingAutoConfiguration
characterEncodingFilter
localeCharsetMappingsCustomizer
org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.web.servlet.MultipartAutoConfiguration
multipartConfigElement
multipartResolver
spring.servlet.multipart-org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.web.servlet.MultipartProperties

    That’s a huge list, there are many auto-configured beans that we are not using. We can optimize our spring boot application by disabling these using @SpringBootApplication exclude or excludeName property. Below code snippet will disable JMX and Multipart autoconfiguration.

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    @SpringBootApplication(scanBasePackages = "com.journaldev.spring", exclude = {
org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.web.servlet.MultipartAutoConfiguration.class, org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.jmx.JmxAutoConfiguration.class })
public class SpringBootRestApplication {
}

    Note that if we try to exclude any non-auto-configuration classes, we will get an error and our application won’t start.

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    @SpringBootApplication(scanBasePackages = "com.journaldev.spring", exclude = {com.journaldev.spring.controller.EmployeeRestController.class })
public class SpringBootRestApplication {
}

    Above code snippet will throw the following error:

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    2018-06-18 15:10:43.602 ERROR 3899 --- [main] o.s.boot.SpringApplication: Application run failed

java.lang.IllegalStateException: The following classes could not be excluded because they are not auto-configuration classes:
    - com.journaldev.spring.controller.EmployeeRestController

    That’s all for SpringBootApplication annotation and SpringApplication example – a Guide.

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