Spring Boot Reference Guide

1.2.5.RELEASE

Phillip Webb , Dave Syer , Josh Long , Stphane Nicoll , Rob Winch ,
Andy Wilkinson , Marcel Overdijk , Christian Dupuis , Sbastien Deleuze

Copyright 2013-2015
Copies of this document may be made for your own use and for distribution to others, provided that you do not charge any fee
for such copies and further provided that each copy contains this Copyright Notice, whether distributed in print or electronically.

Spring Boot Reference Guide

Table of Contents
I. Spring Boot Documentation ...................................................................................................... 1
1. About the documentation ................................................................................................ 2
2. Getting help .................................................................................................................... 3
3. First steps ...................................................................................................................... 4
4. Working with Spring Boot ................................................................................................ 5
5. Learning about Spring Boot features ................................................................................ 6
6. Moving to production ....................................................................................................... 7
7. Advanced topics ............................................................................................................. 8
II. Getting started ........................................................................................................................ 9
8. Introducing Spring Boot ................................................................................................. 10
9. System Requirements ................................................................................................... 11
9.1. Servlet containers ............................................................................................... 11
10. Installing Spring Boot .................................................................................................. 12
10.1. Installation instructions for the Java developer ................................................... 12
Maven installation ............................................................................................. 12
Gradle installation ............................................................................................. 13
10.2. Installing the Spring Boot CLI ........................................................................... 14
Manual installation ............................................................................................ 14
Installation with GVM ........................................................................................ 14
OSX Homebrew installation ............................................................................... 15
MacPorts installation ......................................................................................... 15
Command-line completion ................................................................................. 15
Quick start Spring CLI example ......................................................................... 15
10.3. Upgrading from an earlier version of Spring Boot ............................................... 16
11. Developing your first Spring Boot application ................................................................ 17
11.1. Creating the POM ............................................................................................ 17
11.2. Adding classpath dependencies ........................................................................ 18
11.3. Writing the code ............................................................................................... 18
The @RestController and @RequestMapping annotations .................................. 19
The @EnableAutoConfiguration annotation ........................................................ 19
The main method ........................................................................................... 19
11.4. Running the example ........................................................................................ 19
11.5. Creating an executable jar ................................................................................ 20
12. What to read next ....................................................................................................... 22
III. Using Spring Boot ................................................................................................................ 23
13. Build systems ............................................................................................................. 24
13.1. Maven .............................................................................................................. 24
Inheriting the starter parent ............................................................................... 24
Using Spring Boot without the parent POM ........................................................ 24
Changing the Java version ................................................................................ 25
Using the Spring Boot Maven plugin .................................................................. 25
13.2. Gradle .............................................................................................................. 25
13.3. Ant ................................................................................................................... 26
13.4. Starter POMs ................................................................................................... 26
14. Structuring your code .................................................................................................. 30
14.1. Using the default package .............................................................................. 30
14.2. Locating the main application class ................................................................... 30

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15. Configuration classes .................................................................................................. 32

15.1. Importing additional configuration classes .......................................................... 32
15.2. Importing XML configuration .............................................................................. 32
16. Auto-configuration ....................................................................................................... 33
16.1. Gradually replacing auto-configuration ............................................................... 33
16.2. Disabling specific auto-configuration .................................................................. 33
17. Spring Beans and dependency injection ....................................................................... 34
18. Using the @SpringBootApplication annotation .............................................................. 35
19. Running your application ............................................................................................. 36
19.1. Running from an IDE ........................................................................................ 36
19.2. Running as a packaged application ................................................................... 36
19.3. Using the Maven plugin .................................................................................... 36
19.4. Using the Gradle plugin .................................................................................... 37
19.5. Hot swapping ................................................................................................... 37
20. Packaging your application for production ..................................................................... 38
21. What to read next ....................................................................................................... 39
IV. Spring Boot features ............................................................................................................ 40
22. SpringApplication ......................................................................................................... 41
22.1. Customizing the Banner .................................................................................... 41
22.2. Customizing SpringApplication .......................................................................... 42
22.3. Fluent builder API ............................................................................................. 42
22.4. Application events and listeners ........................................................................ 43
22.5. Web environment ............................................................................................. 43
22.6. Using the CommandLineRunner ........................................................................ 44
22.7. Application exit ................................................................................................. 44
23. Externalized Configuration ........................................................................................... 45
23.1. Configuring random values ............................................................................... 46
23.2. Accessing command line properties .................................................................. 46
23.3. Application property files ................................................................................... 46
23.4. Profile-specific properties .................................................................................. 47
23.5. Placeholders in properties ................................................................................. 47
23.6. Using YAML instead of Properties ..................................................................... 47
Loading YAML .................................................................................................. 48
Exposing YAML as properties in the Spring Environment .................................... 48
Multi-profile YAML documents ........................................................................... 48
YAML shortcomings .......................................................................................... 49
23.7. Typesafe Configuration Properties ..................................................................... 49
Third-party configuration .................................................................................... 50
Relaxed binding ................................................................................................ 51
@ConfigurationProperties Validation .................................................................. 51
24. Profiles ....................................................................................................................... 53
24.1. Adding active profiles ....................................................................................... 53
24.2. Programmatically setting profiles ....................................................................... 53
24.3. Profile specific configuration files ....................................................................... 54
25. Logging ....................................................................................................................... 55
25.1. Log format ....................................................................................................... 55
25.2. Console output ................................................................................................. 55
25.3. File output ........................................................................................................ 56
25.4. Log Levels ....................................................................................................... 56
25.5. Custom log configuration .................................................................................. 56

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26. Developing web applications ........................................................................................ 58

26.1. The Spring Web MVC framework .................................................................... 58
Spring MVC auto-configuration .......................................................................... 58
HttpMessageConverters .................................................................................... 59
MessageCodesResolver .................................................................................... 59
Static Content ................................................................................................... 59
Template engines .............................................................................................. 60
Error Handling .................................................................................................. 60
Error Handling on WebSphere Application Server ....................................... 61
Spring HATEOAS .............................................................................................. 61
26.2. JAX-RS and Jersey .......................................................................................... 62
26.3. Embedded servlet container support .................................................................. 62
Servlets and Filters ........................................................................................... 63
The EmbeddedWebApplicationContext ............................................................... 63
Customizing embedded servlet containers .......................................................... 63
Programmatic customization ...................................................................... 63
Customizing ConfigurableEmbeddedServletContainer directly ...................... 64
JSP limitations .................................................................................................. 64
27. Security ...................................................................................................................... 65
28. Working with SQL databases ....................................................................................... 67
28.1. Configure a DataSource ................................................................................... 67
Embedded Database Support ............................................................................ 67
Connection to a production database ................................................................. 67
Connection to a JNDI DataSource ..................................................................... 68
28.2. Using JdbcTemplate ......................................................................................... 68
28.3. JPA and Spring Data ...................................................................................... 69
Entity Classes ................................................................................................... 69
Spring Data JPA Repositories ........................................................................... 70
Creating and dropping JPA databases ............................................................... 71
29. Working with NoSQL technologies ............................................................................... 72
29.1. Redis ............................................................................................................... 72
Connecting to Redis .......................................................................................... 72
29.2. MongoDB ......................................................................................................... 72
Connecting to a MongoDB database .................................................................. 72
MongoTemplate ................................................................................................ 73
Spring Data MongoDB repositories .................................................................... 74
29.3. Gemfire ............................................................................................................ 74
29.4. Solr .................................................................................................................. 74
Connecting to Solr ............................................................................................ 74
Spring Data Solr repositories ............................................................................. 75
29.5. Elasticsearch .................................................................................................... 75
Connecting to Elasticsearch .............................................................................. 75
Spring Data Elasticsearch repositories ............................................................... 75
30. Messaging .................................................................................................................. 77
30.1. JMS ................................................................................................................. 77
HornetQ support ............................................................................................... 77
ActiveMQ support .............................................................................................. 78
Using a JNDI ConnectionFactory ....................................................................... 78
Sending a message .......................................................................................... 78
Receiving a message ........................................................................................ 78

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31. Sending email ............................................................................................................. 80

32. Distributed Transactions with JTA ................................................................................ 81
32.1. Using an Atomikos transaction manager ............................................................ 81
32.2. Using a Bitronix transaction manager ................................................................ 81
32.3. Using a Java EE managed transaction manager ................................................ 82
32.4. Mixing XA and non-XA JMS connections ........................................................... 82
32.5. Supporting an alternative embedded transaction manager .................................. 82
33. Spring Integration ........................................................................................................ 83
34. Monitoring and management over JMX ........................................................................ 84
35. Testing ....................................................................................................................... 85
35.1. Test scope dependencies ................................................................................. 85
35.2. Testing Spring applications ............................................................................... 85
35.3. Testing Spring Boot applications ....................................................................... 85
Using Spock to test Spring Boot applications ...................................................... 87
35.4. Test utilities ...................................................................................................... 87
ConfigFileApplicationContextInitializer ................................................................ 87
EnvironmentTestUtils ......................................................................................... 87
OutputCapture ................................................................................................... 87
TestRestTemplate ............................................................................................. 88
36. Developing auto-configuration and using conditions ...................................................... 89
36.1. Understanding auto-configured beans ................................................................ 89
36.2. Locating auto-configuration candidates .............................................................. 89
36.3. Condition annotations ....................................................................................... 89
Class conditions ................................................................................................ 89
Bean conditions ................................................................................................ 89
Property conditions ........................................................................................... 90
Resource conditions .......................................................................................... 90
Web application conditions ................................................................................ 90
SpEL expression conditions ............................................................................... 90
37. WebSockets ................................................................................................................ 91
38. What to read next ....................................................................................................... 92
V. Spring Boot Actuator: Production-ready features .................................................................... 93
39. Enabling production-ready features .............................................................................. 94
40. Endpoints .................................................................................................................... 95
40.1. Customizing endpoints ...................................................................................... 95
40.2. Health information ............................................................................................ 96
40.3. Security with HealthIndicators ........................................................................... 96
Auto-configured HealthIndicators ........................................................................ 96
Writing custom HealthIndicators ......................................................................... 97
40.4. Custom application info information ................................................................... 97
Automatically expand info properties at build time ............................................... 98
Automatic property expansion using Maven ................................................ 98
Automatic property expansion using Gradle ................................................ 98
Git commit information ...................................................................................... 99
41. Monitoring and management over HTTP .................................................................... 100
41.1. Securing sensitive endpoints ........................................................................... 100
41.2. Customizing the management server context path ............................................ 100
41.3. Customizing the management server port ........................................................ 100
41.4. Customizing the management server address .................................................. 101
41.5. Disabling HTTP endpoints ............................................................................... 101

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41.6. HTTP health endpoint access restrictions ........................................................ 101

42. Monitoring and management over JMX ...................................................................... 102
42.1. Customizing MBean names ............................................................................. 102
42.2. Disabling JMX endpoints ................................................................................. 102
42.3. Using Jolokia for JMX over HTTP ................................................................... 102
Customizing Jolokia ......................................................................................... 102
Disabling Jolokia ............................................................................................. 102
43. Monitoring and management using a remote shell ....................................................... 104
43.1. Connecting to the remote shell ........................................................................ 104
Remote shell credentials ................................................................................. 104
43.2. Extending the remote shell .............................................................................. 104
Remote shell commands ................................................................................. 105
Remote shell plugins ....................................................................................... 105
44. Metrics ...................................................................................................................... 106
44.1. System metrics ............................................................................................... 106
44.2. DataSource metrics ........................................................................................ 107
44.3. Tomcat session metrics .................................................................................. 107
44.4. Recording your own metrics ............................................................................ 107
44.5. Adding your own public metrics ....................................................................... 108
44.6. Metric repositories .......................................................................................... 108
44.7. Dropwizard Metrics ......................................................................................... 108
44.8. Message channel integration ........................................................................... 109
45. Auditing ..................................................................................................................... 110
46. Tracing ..................................................................................................................... 111
46.1. Custom tracing ............................................................................................... 111
47. Process monitoring .................................................................................................... 112
47.1. Extend configuration ....................................................................................... 112
47.2. Programmatically ............................................................................................ 112
48. What to read next ..................................................................................................... 113
VI. Deploying to the cloud ....................................................................................................... 114
49. Cloud Foundry .......................................................................................................... 115
49.1. Binding to services ......................................................................................... 116
50. Heroku ...................................................................................................................... 117
51. Openshift .................................................................................................................. 119
52. Google App Engine ................................................................................................... 120
53. What to read next ..................................................................................................... 121
VII. Spring Boot CLI ................................................................................................................ 122
54. Installing the CLI ....................................................................................................... 123
55. Using the CLI ............................................................................................................ 124
55.1. Running applications using the CLI ................................................................. 124
Deduced grab dependencies ......................................................................... 125
Deduced grab coordinates ............................................................................. 126
Default import statements ................................................................................ 126
Automatic main method ................................................................................... 126
Custom grab metadata .................................................................................. 126
55.2. Testing your code ........................................................................................... 127
55.3. Applications with multiple source files .............................................................. 127
55.4. Packaging your application ............................................................................. 127
55.5. Initialize a new project .................................................................................... 128
55.6. Using the embedded shell .............................................................................. 128

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55.7. Adding extensions to the CLI .......................................................................... 129

56. Developing application with the Groovy beans DSL ..................................................... 130
57. What to read next ..................................................................................................... 131
VIII. Build tool plugins ............................................................................................................. 132
58. Spring Boot Maven plugin .......................................................................................... 133
58.1. Including the plugin ........................................................................................ 133
58.2. Packaging executable jar and war files ............................................................ 134
59. Spring Boot Gradle plugin .......................................................................................... 135
59.1. Including the plugin ........................................................................................ 135
59.2. Declaring dependencies without versions ......................................................... 135
Custom version management .......................................................................... 136
59.3. Default exclude rules ...................................................................................... 136
59.4. Packaging executable jar and war files ............................................................ 137
59.5. Running a project in-place .............................................................................. 137
59.6. Spring Boot plugin configuration ...................................................................... 138
59.7. Repackage configuration ................................................................................. 138
59.8. Repackage with custom Gradle configuration ................................................... 139
Configuration options ....................................................................................... 139
59.9. Understanding how the Gradle plugin works .................................................... 140
59.10. Publishing artifacts to a Maven repository using Gradle ................................... 140
Configuring Gradle to produce a pom that inherits dependency management ...... 140
Configuring Gradle to produce a pom that imports dependency management ...... 141
60. Supporting other build systems .................................................................................. 142
60.1. Repackaging archives ..................................................................................... 142
60.2. Nested libraries .............................................................................................. 142
60.3. Finding a main class ....................................................................................... 142
60.4. Example repackage implementation ................................................................ 142
61. What to read next ..................................................................................................... 143
IX. How-to guides .................................................................................................................. 144
62. Spring Boot application .............................................................................................. 145
62.1. Troubleshoot auto-configuration ....................................................................... 145
62.2. Customize the Environment or ApplicationContext before it starts ...................... 145
62.3. Build an ApplicationContext hierarchy (adding a parent or root context) .............. 146
62.4. Create a non-web application .......................................................................... 146
63. Properties & configuration .......................................................................................... 147
63.1. Externalize the configuration of SpringApplication ............................................. 147
63.2. Change the location of external properties of an application .............................. 147
63.3. Use short command line arguments ............................................................... 147
63.4. Use YAML for external properties .................................................................... 148
63.5. Set the active Spring profiles .......................................................................... 148
63.6. Change configuration depending on the environment ........................................ 149
63.7. Discover built-in options for external properties ................................................ 149
64. Embedded servlet containers ..................................................................................... 150
64.1. Add a Servlet, Filter or ServletContextListener to an application ........................ 150
64.2. Disable registration of a Servlet or Filter .......................................................... 150
64.3. Change the HTTP port ................................................................................... 150
64.4. Use a random unassigned HTTP port .............................................................. 150
64.5. Discover the HTTP port at runtime .................................................................. 150
64.6. Configure SSL ................................................................................................ 151
64.7. Configure Tomcat ........................................................................................... 151

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65.

66.

67.

68.

69.

64.8. Enable Multiple Connectors with Tomcat ......................................................... 151

64.9. Use Tomcat behind a front-end proxy server .................................................... 152
64.10. Use Jetty instead of Tomcat .......................................................................... 153
64.11. Configure Jetty ............................................................................................. 153
64.12. Use Undertow instead of Tomcat ................................................................... 153
64.13. Configure Undertow ...................................................................................... 154
64.14. Enable Multiple Listeners with Undertow ........................................................ 154
64.15. Use Tomcat 7 ............................................................................................... 154
Use Tomcat 7 with Maven ............................................................................... 154
Use Tomcat 7 with Gradle ............................................................................... 155
64.16. Use Jetty 8 ................................................................................................... 155
Use Jetty 8 with Maven ................................................................................... 155
Use Jetty 8 with Gradle ................................................................................... 156
64.17. Create WebSocket endpoints using @ServerEndpoint .................................... 156
64.18. Enable HTTP response compression ............................................................. 156
Enable Tomcats HTTP response compression ................................................. 156
Enable HTTP response compression using GzipFilter ....................................... 157
Spring MVC .............................................................................................................. 158
65.1. Write a JSON REST service ........................................................................... 158
65.2. Write an XML REST service ........................................................................... 158
65.3. Customize the Jackson ObjectMapper ............................................................. 158
65.4. Customize the @ResponseBody rendering ...................................................... 160
65.5. Handling Multipart File Uploads ....................................................................... 160
65.6. Switch off the Spring MVC DispatcherServlet ................................................... 160
65.7. Switch off the Default MVC configuration ......................................................... 160
65.8. Customize ViewResolvers ............................................................................... 161
Logging ..................................................................................................................... 163
66.1. Configure Logback for logging ......................................................................... 163
66.2. Configure Log4j for logging ............................................................................. 164
Use YAML or JSON to configure Log4j 2 ......................................................... 164
Data Access ............................................................................................................. 165
67.1. Configure a DataSource .................................................................................. 165
67.2. Configure Two DataSources ........................................................................... 165
67.3. Use Spring Data repositories .......................................................................... 165
67.4. Separate @Entity definitions from Spring configuration ..................................... 166
67.5. Configure JPA properties ................................................................................ 166
67.6. Use a custom EntityManagerFactory ............................................................... 166
67.7. Use Two EntityManagers ................................................................................ 166
67.8. Use a traditional persistence.xml ..................................................................... 167
67.9. Use Spring Data JPA and Mongo repositories .................................................. 167
67.10. Expose Spring Data repositories as REST endpoint ........................................ 167
Database initialization ................................................................................................ 168
68.1. Initialize a database using JPA ....................................................................... 168
68.2. Initialize a database using Hibernate ............................................................... 168
68.3. Initialize a database using Spring JDBC .......................................................... 168
68.4. Initialize a Spring Batch database ................................................................... 169
68.5. Use a higher level database migration tool ....................................................... 169
Execute Flyway database migrations on startup ................................................ 169
Execute Liquibase database migrations on startup ............................................ 169
Batch applications ..................................................................................................... 170

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69.1. Execute Spring Batch jobs on startup .............................................................. 170

70. Actuator .................................................................................................................... 171
70.1. Change the HTTP port or address of the actuator endpoints ............................. 171
70.2. Customize the whitelabel error page .............................................................. 171
71. Security ..................................................................................................................... 172
71.1. Switch off the Spring Boot security configuration .............................................. 172
71.2. Change the AuthenticationManager and add user accounts .............................. 172
71.3. Enable HTTPS when running behind a proxy server ......................................... 172
72. Hot swapping ............................................................................................................ 174
72.1. Reload static content ...................................................................................... 174
72.2. Reload Thymeleaf templates without restarting the container ............................. 174
72.3. Reload FreeMarker templates without restarting the container ........................... 174
72.4. Reload Groovy templates without restarting the container ................................. 174
72.5. Reload Velocity templates without restarting the container ................................ 174
72.6. Reload Java classes without restarting the container ........................................ 174
Configuring Spring Loaded for use with Maven ................................................. 174
Configuring Spring Loaded for use with Gradle and IntelliJ ................................ 175
73. Build ......................................................................................................................... 176
73.1. Customize dependency versions with Maven ................................................... 176
73.2. Create an executable JAR with Maven ............................................................ 176
73.3. Create an additional executable JAR ............................................................... 177
73.4. Extract specific libraries when an executable jar runs ....................................... 177
73.5. Create a non-executable JAR with exclusions .................................................. 178
73.6. Remote debug a Spring Boot application started with Maven ............................. 179
73.7. Remote debug a Spring Boot application started with Gradle ............................. 179
73.8. Build an executable archive with Ant ............................................................... 179
73.9. How to use Java 6 ......................................................................................... 180
Embedded servlet container compatibility ......................................................... 180
JTA API compatibility ...................................................................................... 180
74. Traditional deployment ............................................................................................... 181
74.1. Create a deployable war file ........................................................................... 181
74.2. Create a deployable war file for older servlet containers .................................... 182
74.3. Convert an existing application to Spring Boot .................................................. 182
74.4. Deploying a WAR to Weblogic ........................................................................ 183
74.5. Deploying a WAR in an Old (Servlet 2.5) Container .......................................... 184
X. Appendices ......................................................................................................................... 186
A. Common application properties ................................................................................... 187
B. Configuration meta-data .............................................................................................. 197
B.1. Meta-data format .............................................................................................. 197
Group Attributes .............................................................................................. 197
Property Attributes ........................................................................................... 198
Repeated meta-data items ............................................................................... 199
B.2. Generating your own meta-data using the annotation processor .......................... 199
Nested properties ............................................................................................ 200
Adding additional meta-data ............................................................................ 200
C. Auto-configuration classes ........................................................................................... 201
C.1. From the spring-boot-autoconfigure module .................................................... 201
C.2. From the spring-boot-actuator module ............................................................ 203
D. The executable jar format ........................................................................................... 204
D.1. Nested JARs ................................................................................................... 204

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The executable jar file structure .......................................................................

The executable war file structure .....................................................................
D.2. Spring Boots JarFile class .............................................................................
Compatibility with the standard Java JarFile ...................................................
D.3. Launching executable jars ................................................................................
Launcher manifest ...........................................................................................
Exploded archives ...........................................................................................
D.4. PropertiesLauncher Features ............................................................................
D.5. Executable jar restrictions ................................................................................
Zip entry compression .....................................................................................
System ClassLoader .......................................................................................
D.6. Alternative single jar solutions ..........................................................................
E. Dependency versions ..................................................................................................

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205
205
205
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206
207
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Part I. Spring Boot Documentation

This section provides a brief overview of Spring Boot reference documentation. Think of it as map for
the rest of the document. You can read this reference guide in a linear fashion, or you can skip sections
if something doesnt interest you.

Spring Boot Reference Guide

1. About the documentation

The Spring Boot reference guide is available as html, pdf and epub documents. The latest copy is
available at docs.spring.io/spring-boot/docs/current/reference.
Copies of this document may be made for your own use and for distribution to others, provided that
you do not charge any fee for such copies and further provided that each copy contains this Copyright
Notice, whether distributed in print or electronically.

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2. Getting help
Having trouble with Spring Boot, Wed like to help!
Try the How-tos they provide solutions to the most common questions.
Learn the Spring basics Spring Boot builds on many other Spring projects, check the spring.io website for a wealth of reference documentation. If you are just starting out with Spring, try one of the
guides.
Ask a question - we monitor stackoverflow.com for questions tagged with spring-boot.
Report bugs with Spring Boot at github.com/spring-projects/spring-boot/issues.
Note
All of Spring Boot is open source, including the documentation! If you find problems with the docs;
or if you just want to improve them, please get involved.

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3. First steps
If youre just getting started with Spring Boot, or 'Spring' in general, this is the place to start!
From scratch: Overview | Requirements | Installation
Tutorial: Part 1 | Part 2
Running your example: Part 1 | Part 2

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4. Working with Spring Boot

Ready to actually start using Spring Boot? Weve got you covered.
Build systems: Maven | Gradle | Ant | Starter POMs
Best practices: Code Structure | @Configuration | @EnableAutoConfiguration | Beans and
Dependency Injection
Running your code IDE | Packaged | Maven | Gradle
Packaging your app: Production jars
Spring Boot CLI: Using the CLI

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5. Learning about Spring Boot features

Need more details about Spring Boots core features? This is for you!
Core Features: SpringApplication | External Configuration | Profiles | Logging
Web Applications: MVC | Embedded Containers
Working with data: SQL | NO-SQL
Messaging: Overview | JMS
Testing: Overview | Boot Applications | Utils
Extending: Auto-configuration | @Conditions

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6. Moving to production
When youre ready to push your Spring Boot application to production, weve got some tricks that you
might like!
Management endpoints: Overview | Customization
Connection options: HTTP | JMX | SSH
Monitoring: Metrics | Auditing | Tracing | Process

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7. Advanced topics
Lastly, we have a few topics for the more advanced user.
Deploy to the cloud: Cloud Foundry | Heroku | CloudBees
Build tool plugins: Maven | Gradle
Appendix: Application Properties | Auto-configuration classes | Executable Jars

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Part II. Getting started

If youre just getting started with Spring Boot, or 'Spring' in general, this is the section for you! Here we
answer the basic 'what?', 'how?' and 'why?' questions. Youll find a gentle introduction to Spring
Boot along with installation instructions. Well then build our first Spring Boot application, discussing
some core principles as we go.

Spring Boot Reference Guide

8. Introducing Spring Boot

Spring Boot makes it easy to create stand-alone, production-grade Spring based Applications that you
can just run. We take an opinionated view of the Spring platform and third-party libraries so you can
get started with minimum fuss. Most Spring Boot applications need very little Spring configuration.
You can use Spring Boot to create Java applications that can be started using java -jar or more
traditional war deployments. We also provide a command line tool that runs spring scripts.
Our primary goals are:
Provide a radically faster and widely accessible getting started experience for all Spring development.
Be opinionated out of the box, but get out of the way quickly as requirements start to diverge from
the defaults.
Provide a range of non-functional features that are common to large classes of projects (e.g.
embedded servers, security, metrics, health checks, externalized configuration).
Absolutely no code generation and no requirement for XML configuration.

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9. System Requirements
By default, Spring Boot 1.2.5.RELEASE requires Java 7 and Spring Framework 4.1.5 or above. You can
use Spring Boot with Java 6 with some additional configuration. See Section 73.9, How to use Java 6
for more details. Explicit build support is provided for Maven (3.2+) and Gradle (1.12+).
Tip
Although you can use Spring Boot with Java 6 or 7, we generally recommend Java 8 if at all
possible.

9.1 Servlet containers

The following embedded servlet containers are supported out of the box:
Name

Servlet Version

Java Version

Tomcat 8

3.1

Java 7+

Tomcat 7

3.0

Java 6+

Jetty 9

3.1

Java 7+

Jetty 8

3.0

Java 6+

Undertow 1.1

3.1

Java 7+

You can also deploy Spring Boot applications to any Servlet 3.0+ compatible container.

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10. Installing Spring Boot

Spring Boot can be used with classic Java development tools or installed as a command line tool.
Regardless, you will need Java SDK v1.6 or higher. You should check your current Java installation
before you begin:
$ java -version

If you are new to Java development, or if you just want to experiment with Spring Boot you might want
to try the Spring Boot CLI first, otherwise, read on for classic installation instructions.
Tip
Although Spring Boot is compatible with Java 1.6, if possible, you should consider using the latest
version of Java.

10.1 Installation instructions for the Java developer

You can use Spring Boot in the same way as any standard Java library. Simply include the appropriate
spring-boot-*.jar files on your classpath. Spring Boot does not require any special tools
integration, so you can use any IDE or text editor; and there is nothing special about a Spring Boot
application, so you can run and debug as you would any other Java program.
Although you could just copy Spring Boot jars, we generally recommend that you use a build tool that
supports dependency management (such as Maven or Gradle).

Maven installation
Spring Boot is compatible with Apache Maven 3.2 or above. If you dont already have Maven installed
you can follow the instructions at maven.apache.org.
Tip
On many operating systems Maven can be installed via a package manager. If youre an OSX
Homebrew user try brew install maven. Ubuntu users can run sudo apt-get install
maven.
Spring Boot dependencies use the org.springframework.boot groupId. Typically your Maven
POM file will inherit from the spring-boot-starter-parent project and declare dependencies to
one or more Starter POMs. Spring Boot also provides an optional Maven plugin to create executable
jars.
Here is a typical pom.xml file:
<?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 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd">
<modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
<groupId>com.example</groupId>
<artifactId>myproject</artifactId>
<version>0.0.1-SNAPSHOT</version>
<!-- Inherit defaults from Spring Boot -->
<parent>

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<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-boot-starter-parent</artifactId>
<version>1.2.5.RELEASE</version>
</parent>
<!-- Add typical dependencies for a web application -->
<dependencies>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-boot-starter-web</artifactId>
</dependency>
</dependencies>
<!-- Package as an executable jar -->
<build>
<plugins>
<plugin>
<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-boot-maven-plugin</artifactId>
</plugin>
</plugins>
</build>
</project>

Tip
The spring-boot-starter-parent is a great way to use Spring Boot, but it might not be
suitable all of the time. Sometimes you may need to inherit from a different parent POM, or you
might just not like our default settings. See the section called Using Spring Boot without the parent
POM for an alternative solution that uses an import scope.

Gradle installation
Spring Boot is compatible with Gradle 1.12 or above. If you dont already have Gradle installed you can
follow the instructions at www.gradle.org/.
Spring Boot dependencies can be declared using the org.springframework.boot group. Typically
your project will declare dependencies to one or more Starter POMs. Spring Boot provides a useful
Gradle plugin that can be used to simplify dependency declarations and to create executable jars.
Gradle Wrapper
The Gradle Wrapper provides a nice way of obtaining Gradle when you need to build a project.
Its a small script and library that you commit alongside your code to bootstrap the build process.
See www.gradle.org/docs/current/userguide/gradle_wrapper.html for details.
Here is a typical build.gradle file:
buildscript {
repositories {
jcenter()
maven { url "http://repo.spring.io/snapshot" }
maven { url "http://repo.spring.io/milestone" }
}
dependencies {
classpath("org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-gradle-plugin:1.2.5.RELEASE")
}
}
apply plugin: 'java'
apply plugin: 'spring-boot'

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jar {
baseName = 'myproject'
version = '0.0.1-SNAPSHOT'
}
repositories {
jcenter()
maven { url "http://repo.spring.io/snapshot" }
maven { url "http://repo.spring.io/milestone" }
}
dependencies {
compile("org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-web")
testCompile("org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-test")
}

10.2 Installing the Spring Boot CLI

The Spring Boot CLI is a command line tool that can be used if you want to quickly prototype with Spring.
It allows you to run Groovy scripts, which means that you have a familiar Java-like syntax, without so
much boilerplate code.
You dont need to use the CLI to work with Spring Boot but its definitely the quickest way to get a Spring
application off the ground.

Manual installation
You can download the Spring CLI distribution from the Spring software repository:
spring-boot-cli-1.2.5.RELEASE-bin.zip
spring-boot-cli-1.2.5.RELEASE-bin.tar.gz
Cutting edge snapshot distributions are also available.
Once downloaded, follow the INSTALL.txt instructions from the unpacked archive. In summary: there
is a spring script (spring.bat for Windows) in a bin/ directory in the .zip file, or alternatively you
can use java -jar with the .jar file (the script helps you to be sure that the classpath is set correctly).

Installation with GVM

GVM (the Groovy Environment Manager) can be used for managing multiple versions of various Groovy
and Java binary packages, including Groovy itself and the Spring Boot CLI. Get gvm from gvmtool.net
and install Spring Boot with
$ gvm install springboot
$ spring --version
Spring Boot v1.2.5.RELEASE

If you are developing features for the CLI and want easy access to the version you just built, follow
these extra instructions.
$ gvm install springboot dev /path/to/spring-boot/spring-boot-cli/target/spring-boot-cli-1.2.5.RELEASEbin/spring-1.2.5.RELEASE/
$ gvm use springboot dev
$ spring --version
Spring CLI v1.2.5.RELEASE

This will install a local instance of spring called the dev instance inside your gvm repository. It points
at your target build location, so every time you rebuild Spring Boot, spring will be up-to-date.

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You can see it by doing this:

$ gvm ls springboot
================================================================================
Available Springboot Versions
================================================================================
> + dev
* 1.2.5.RELEASE
================================================================================
+ - local version
* - installed
> - currently in use
================================================================================

OSX Homebrew installation

If you are on a Mac and using Homebrew, all you need to do to install the Spring Boot CLI is:
$ brew tap pivotal/tap
$ brew install springboot

Homebrew will install spring to /usr/local/bin.

Note
If you dont see the formula, your installation of brew might be out-of-date. Just execute brew
update and try again.

MacPorts installation
If you are on a Mac and using MacPorts, all you need to do to install the Spring Boot CLI is:
$ sudo port install spring-boot-cli

Command-line completion
Spring Boot CLI ships with scripts that provide command completion for BASH and zsh shells. You can
source the script (also named spring) in any shell, or put it in your personal or system-wide bash
completion initialization. On a Debian system the system-wide scripts are in /shell-completion/
bash and all scripts in that directory are executed when a new shell starts. To run the script manually,
e.g. if you have installed using GVM
$ . ~/.gvm/springboot/current/shell-completion/bash/spring
$ spring <HIT TAB HERE>
grab help jar run test version

Note
If you install Spring Boot CLI using Homebrew or MacPorts, the command-line completion scripts
are automatically registered with your shell.

Quick start Spring CLI example

Heres a really simple web application that you can use to test your installation. Create a file called
app.groovy:

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@RestController
class ThisWillActuallyRun {
@RequestMapping("/")
String home() {
"Hello World!"
}
}

Then simply run it from a shell:

$ spring run app.groovy

Note
It will take some time when you first run the application as dependencies are downloaded.
Subsequent runs will be much quicker.
Open localhost:8080 in your favorite web browser and you should see the following output:
Hello World!

10.3 Upgrading from an earlier version of Spring Boot

If you are upgrading from an earlier release of Spring Boot check the release notes hosted on the
project wiki. Youll find upgrade instructions along with a list of new and noteworthy features for each
release.
To upgrade an existing CLI installation use the appropriate package manager command (for example
brew upgrade) or, if you manually installed the CLI, follow the standard instructions remembering to
update your PATH environment variable to remove any older references.

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11. Developing your first Spring Boot application

Lets develop a simple Hello World! web application in Java that highlights some of Spring Boots key
features. Well use Maven to build this project since most IDEs support it.
Tip
The spring.io web site contains many Getting Started guides that use Spring Boot. If youre
looking to solve a specific problem; check there first.
Before we begin, open a terminal to check that you have valid versions of Java and Maven installed.
$ java -version
java version "1.7.0_51"
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.7.0_51-b13)
Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 24.51-b03, mixed mode)

$ mvn -v
Apache Maven 3.2.3 (33f8c3e1027c3ddde99d3cdebad2656a31e8fdf4; 2014-08-11T13:58:10-07:00)
Maven home: /Users/user/tools/apache-maven-3.1.1
Java version: 1.7.0_51, vendor: Oracle Corporation

Note
This sample needs to be created in its own folder. Subsequent instructions assume that you have
created a suitable folder and that it is your current directory.

11.1 Creating the POM

We need to start by creating a Maven pom.xml file. The pom.xml is the recipe that will be used to build
your project. Open your favorite text editor and add the following:
<?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 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd">
<modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
<groupId>com.example</groupId>
<artifactId>myproject</artifactId>
<version>0.0.1-SNAPSHOT</version>
<parent>
<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-boot-starter-parent</artifactId>
<version>1.2.5.RELEASE</version>
</parent>
<!-- Additional lines to be added here... -->
</project>

This should give you a working build, you can test it out by running mvn package (you can ignore the
jar will be empty - no content was marked for inclusion!' warning for now).
Note
At this point you could import the project into an IDE (most modern Java IDEs include built-in
support for Maven). For simplicity, we will continue to use a plain text editor for this example.

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11.2 Adding classpath dependencies

Spring Boot provides a number of Starter POMs that make easy to add jars to your classpath. Our
sample application has already used spring-boot-starter-parent in the parent section of the
POM. The spring-boot-starter-parent is a special starter that provides useful Maven defaults.
It also provides a dependency-management section so that you can omit version tags for blessed
dependencies.
Other Starter POMs simply provide dependencies that you are likely to need when developing a
specific type of application. Since we are developing a web application, we will add a spring-bootstarter-web dependency but before that, lets look at what we currently have.
$ mvn dependency:tree
[INFO] com.example:myproject:jar:0.0.1-SNAPSHOT

The mvn dependency:tree command prints a tree representation of your project dependencies.
You can see that spring-boot-starter-parent provides no dependencies by itself. Lets edit our
pom.xml and add the spring-boot-starter-web dependency just below the parent section:
<dependencies>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-boot-starter-web</artifactId>
</dependency>
</dependencies>

If you run mvn dependency:tree again, you will see that there are now a number of additional
dependencies, including the Tomcat web server and Spring Boot itself.

11.3 Writing the code

To finish our application we need to create a single Java file. Maven will compile sources from src/
main/java by default so you need to create that folder structure, then add a file named src/main/
java/Example.java:
import
import
import
import

org.springframework.boot.*;
org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.*;
org.springframework.stereotype.*;
org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.*;

@RestController
@EnableAutoConfiguration
public class Example {
@RequestMapping("/")
String home() {
return "Hello World!";
}
public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
SpringApplication.run(Example.class, args);
}
}

Although there isnt much code here, quite a lot is going on. Lets step through the important parts.

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The @RestController and @RequestMapping annotations

The first annotation on our Example class is @RestController. This is known as a stereotype
annotation. It provides hints for people reading the code, and for Spring, that the class plays a specific
role. In this case, our class is a web @Controller so Spring will consider it when handling incoming
web requests.
The @RequestMapping annotation provides routing information. It is telling Spring that any HTTP
request with the path / should be mapped to the home method. The @RestController annotation
tells Spring to render the resulting string directly back to the caller.
Tip
The @RestController and @RequestMapping annotations are Spring MVC annotations (they
are not specific to Spring Boot). See the MVC section in the Spring Reference Documentation
for more details.

The @EnableAutoConfiguration annotation

The second class-level annotation is @EnableAutoConfiguration. This annotation tells Spring
Boot to guess how you will want to configure Spring, based on the jar dependencies that you have
added. Since spring-boot-starter-web added Tomcat and Spring MVC, the auto-configuration
will assume that you are developing a web application and setup Spring accordingly.
Starter POMs and Auto-Configuration
Auto-configuration is designed to work well with Starter POMs, but the two concepts are not
directly tied. You are free to pick-and-choose jar dependencies outside of the starter POMs and
Spring Boot will still do its best to auto-configure your application.

The main method

The final part of our application is the main method. This is just a standard method that follows
the Java convention for an application entry point. Our main method delegates to Spring Boots
SpringApplication class by calling run. SpringApplication will bootstrap our application,
starting Spring which will in turn start the auto-configured Tomcat web server. We need to pass
Example.class as an argument to the run method to tell SpringApplication which is the primary
Spring component. The args array is also passed through to expose any command-line arguments.

11.4 Running the example

At this point our application should work. Since we have used the spring-boot-starter-parent
POM we have a useful run goal that we can use to start the application. Type mvn spring-boot:run
from the root project directory to start the application:
$ mvn spring-boot:run
.
____
_
__ _ _
/\\ / ___'_ __ _ _(_)_ __ __ _ \ \ \ \
( ( )\___ | '_ | '_| | '_ \/ _` | \ \ \ \
\\/ ___)| |_)| | | | | || (_| | ) ) ) )
' |____| .__|_| |_|_| |_\__, | / / / /
=========|_|==============|___/=/_/_/_/

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:: Spring Boot :: (v1.2.5.RELEASE)

....... . . .
....... . . . (log output here)
....... . . .
........ Started Example in 2.222 seconds (JVM running for 6.514)

If you open a web browser to localhost:8080 you should see the following output:
Hello World!

To gracefully exit the application hit ctrl-c.

11.5 Creating an executable jar

Lets finish our example by creating a completely self-contained executable jar file that we could run in
production. Executable jars (sometimes called fat jars) are archives containing your compiled classes
along with all of the jar dependencies that your code needs to run.
Executable jars and Java
Java does not provide any standard way to load nested jar files (i.e. jar files that are themselves
contained within a jar). This can be problematic if you are looking to distribute a self-contained
application.
To solve this problem, many developers use shaded jars. A shaded jar simply packages all
classes, from all jars, into a single uber jar. The problem with shaded jars is that it becomes hard
to see which libraries you are actually using in your application. It can also be problematic if the
the same filename is used (but with different content) in multiple jars.
Spring Boot takes a different approach and allows you to actually nest jars directly.
To create an executable jar we need to add the spring-boot-maven-plugin to our pom.xml. Insert
the following lines just below the dependencies section:
<build>
<plugins>
<plugin>
<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-boot-maven-plugin</artifactId>
</plugin>
</plugins>
</build>

Note
The spring-boot-starter-parent POM includes <executions> configuration to bind the
repackage goal. If you are not using the parent POM you will need to declare this configuration
yourself. See the plugin documentation for details.
Save your pom.xml and run mvn package from the command line:
$ mvn package
[INFO] Scanning for projects...
[INFO]
[INFO] -----------------------------------------------------------------------[INFO] Building myproject 0.0.1-SNAPSHOT

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[INFO]
[INFO]
[INFO]
[INFO]
[INFO]
[INFO]
[INFO]
[INFO]
[INFO]

-----------------------------------------------------------------------.... ..
--- maven-jar-plugin:2.4:jar (default-jar) @ myproject --Building jar: /Users/developer/example/spring-boot-example/target/myproject-0.0.1-SNAPSHOT.jar
--- spring-boot-maven-plugin:1.2.5.RELEASE:repackage (default) @ myproject -------------------------------------------------------------------------BUILD SUCCESS
------------------------------------------------------------------------

If you look in the target directory you should see myproject-0.0.1-SNAPSHOT.jar. The file
should be around 10 Mb in size. If you want to peek inside, you can use jar tvf:
$ jar tvf target/myproject-0.0.1-SNAPSHOT.jar

You should also see a much smaller file named myproject-0.0.1-SNAPSHOT.jar.original in

the target directory. This is the original jar file that Maven created before it was repackaged by Spring
Boot.
To run that application, use the java -jar command:
$ java -jar target/myproject-0.0.1-SNAPSHOT.jar
.
____
_
__ _ _
/\\ / ___'_ __ _ _(_)_ __ __ _ \ \ \ \
( ( )\___ | '_ | '_| | '_ \/ _` | \ \ \ \
\\/ ___)| |_)| | | | | || (_| | ) ) ) )
' |____| .__|_| |_|_| |_\__, | / / / /
=========|_|==============|___/=/_/_/_/
:: Spring Boot :: (v1.2.5.RELEASE)
....... . . .
....... . . . (log output here)
....... . . .
........ Started Example in 2.536 seconds (JVM running for 2.864)

As before, to gracefully exit the application hit ctrl-c.

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12. What to read next

Hopefully this section has provided you with some of the Spring Boot basics, and got you on your way
to writing your own applications. If youre a task-oriented type of developer you might want to jump over
to spring.io and check out some of the getting started guides that solve specific How do I do that with
Spring problems; we also have Spring Boot-specific How-to reference documentation.
Otherwise, the next logical step is to read Part III, Using Spring Boot. If youre really impatient, you
could also jump ahead and read about Spring Boot features.

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This section goes into more detail about how you should use Spring Boot. It covers topics such as
build systems, auto-configuration and run/deployment options. We also cover some Spring Boot best
practices. Although there is nothing particularly special about Spring Boot (it is just another library that
you can consume), there are a few recommendations that, when followed, will make your development
process just a little easier.
If youre just starting out with Spring Boot, you should probably read the Getting Started guide before
diving into this section.

Spring Boot Reference Guide

13. Build systems

It is strongly recommended that you choose a build system that supports dependency management,
and one that can consume artifacts published to the Maven Central repository. We would recommend
that you choose Maven or Gradle. It is possible to get Spring Boot to work with other build systems (Ant
for example), but they will not be particularly well supported.

13.1 Maven
Maven users can inherit from the spring-boot-starter-parent project to obtain sensible defaults.
The parent project provides the following features:
Java 1.6 as the default compiler level.
UTF-8 source encoding.
A Dependency Management section, allowing you to omit <version> tags for common
dependencies, inherited from the spring-boot-dependencies POM.
Sensible resource filtering.
Sensible plugin configuration (exec plugin, surefire, Git commit ID, shade).
Sensible resource filtering for application.properties and application.yml
On the last point: since the default config files accept Spring style placeholders (${}) the Maven
filtering is changed to use @..@ placeholders (you can override that with a Maven property
resource.delimiter).

Inheriting the starter parent

To configure your project to inherit from the spring-boot-starter-parent simply set the parent:
<!-- Inherit defaults from Spring Boot -->
<parent>
<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-boot-starter-parent</artifactId>
<version>1.2.5.RELEASE</version>
</parent>

Note
You should only need to specify the Spring Boot version number on this dependency. If you import
additional starters, you can safely omit the version number.

Using Spring Boot without the parent POM

Not everyone likes inheriting from the spring-boot-starter-parent POM. You may have your
own corporate standard parent that you need to use, or you may just prefer to explicitly declare all your
Maven configuration.
If you dont want to use the spring-boot-starter-parent, you can still keep the benefit of the
dependency management (but not the plugin management) by using a scope=import dependency:

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<dependencyManagement>
<dependencies>
<dependency>
<!-- Import dependency management from Spring Boot -->
<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-boot-dependencies</artifactId>
<version>1.2.5.RELEASE</version>
<type>pom</type>
<scope>import</scope>
</dependency>
</dependencies>
</dependencyManagement>

Changing the Java version

The spring-boot-starter-parent chooses fairly conservative Java compatibility. If you want to
follow our recommendation and use a later Java version you can add a java.version property:
<properties>
<java.version>1.8</java.version>
</properties>

Using the Spring Boot Maven plugin

Spring Boot includes a Maven plugin that can package the project as an executable jar. Add the plugin
to your <plugins> section if you want to use it:
<build>
<plugins>
<plugin>
<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-boot-maven-plugin</artifactId>
</plugin>
</plugins>
</build>

Note
If you use the Spring Boot starter parent pom, you only need to add the plugin, there is no need
for to configure it unless you want to change the settings defined in the parent.

13.2 Gradle
Gradle users can directly import starter POMs in their dependencies section. Unlike Maven, there
is no super parent to import to share some configuration.
apply plugin: 'java'
repositories {
jcenter()
}
dependencies {
compile("org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-web:1.2.5.RELEASE")
}

The spring-boot-gradle-plugin is also available and provides tasks to create executable jars and
run projects from source. It also adds a ResolutionStrategy that enables you to omit the version
number for blessed dependencies:
buildscript {

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repositories {
jcenter()
}
dependencies {
classpath("org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-gradle-plugin:1.2.5.RELEASE")
}
}
apply plugin: 'java'
apply plugin: 'spring-boot'
repositories {
jcenter()
}
dependencies {
compile("org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-web")
testCompile("org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-test")
}

13.3 Ant
It is possible to build a Spring Boot project using Apache Ant, however, no special support or plugins
are provided. Ant scripts can use the Ivy dependency system to import starter POMs.
See the Section 73.8, Build an executable archive with Ant How-to for more complete instructions.

13.4 Starter POMs

Starter POMs are a set of convenient dependency descriptors that you can include in your application.
You get a one-stop-shop for all the Spring and related technology that you need, without having to hunt
through sample code and copy paste loads of dependency descriptors. For example, if you want to get
started using Spring and JPA for database access, just include the spring-boot-starter-datajpa dependency in your project, and you are good to go.
The starters contain a lot of the dependencies that you need to get a project up and running quickly and
with a consistent, supported set of managed transitive dependencies.
Whats in a name
All official starters follow a similar naming pattern; spring-boot-starter-*, where * is a
particular type of application. This naming structure is intended to help when you need to find
a starter. The Maven integration in many IDEs allow you to search dependencies by name. For
example, with the appropriate Eclipse or STS plugin installed, you can simply hit ctrl-space in
the POM editor and type ''spring-boot-starter'' for a complete list.
Third party starters should not start with spring-boot-starter as it is reserved for official
starters. A third-party starter for acme will be typically named acme-spring-boot-starter.
The
following
application
starters
org.springframework.boot group:

are

provided

by

Spring

Boot

under

the

Table 13.1. Spring Boot application starters

Name

Description

spring-boot-starter

The core Spring Boot starter, including autoconfiguration support, logging and YAML.

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Name

Description

spring-boot-starter-actuator

Production ready features to help you monitor

and manage your application.

spring-boot-starter-amqp

Support for the Advanced Message Queuing

Protocol via spring-rabbit.

spring-boot-starter-aop

Support for aspect-oriented programming

including spring-aop and AspectJ.

spring-boot-starter-batch

Support for Spring Batch including HSQLDB

database.

spring-boot-starter-cloud-connectors Support for Spring Cloud Connectors which

simplifies connecting to services in cloud
platforms like Cloud Foundry and Heroku.
spring-boot-starter-dataelasticsearch

Support for the Elasticsearch search and

analytics engine including spring-dataelasticsearch.

spring-boot-starter-data-gemfire

Support for the GemFire distributed data store

including spring-data-gemfire.

spring-boot-starter-data-jpa

Support for the Java Persistence API including

spring-data-jpa, spring-orm and
Hibernate.

spring-boot-starter-data-mongodb

Support for the MongoDB NoSQL Database,

including spring-data-mongodb.

spring-boot-starter-data-rest

Support for exposing Spring Data repositories

over REST via spring-data-rest-webmvc.

spring-boot-starter-data-solr

Support for the Apache Solr search platform,

including spring-data-solr.

spring-boot-starter-freemarker

Support for the FreeMarker templating engine.

spring-boot-starter-groovy-templates Support for the Groovy templating engine.

spring-boot-starter-hateoas

Support for HATEOAS-based RESTful services

via spring-hateoas.

spring-boot-starter-hornetq

Support for Java Message Service API via

HornetQ.

spring-boot-starter-integration

Support for common spring-integration

modules.

spring-boot-starter-jdbc

Support for JDBC databases.

spring-boot-starter-jersey

Support for the Jersey RESTful Web Services

framework.

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Name

Description

spring-boot-starter-jta-atomikos

Support for JTA distributed transactions via

Atomikos.

spring-boot-starter-jta-bitronix

Support for JTA distributed transactions via

Bitronix.

spring-boot-starter-mail

Support for javax.mail.

spring-boot-starter-mobile

Support for spring-mobile.

spring-boot-starter-mustache

Support for the Mustache templating engine.

spring-boot-starter-redis

Support for the REDIS key-value data store,

including spring-redis.

spring-boot-starter-security

Support for spring-security.

spring-boot-starter-social-facebook

Support for spring-social-facebook.

spring-boot-starter-social-linkedin

Support for spring-social-linkedin.

spring-boot-starter-social-twitter

Support for spring-social-twitter.

spring-boot-starter-test

Support for common test dependencies,

including JUnit, Hamcrest and Mockito along
with the spring-test module.

spring-boot-starter-thymeleaf

Support for the Thymeleaf templating engine,

including integration with Spring.

spring-boot-starter-velocity

Support for the Velocity templating engine.

spring-boot-starter-web

Support for full-stack web development,

including Tomcat and spring-webmvc.

spring-boot-starter-websocket

Support for WebSocket development.

spring-boot-starter-ws

Support for Spring Web Services.

In addition to the application starters, the following starters can be used to add production ready features.
Table 13.2. Spring Boot production ready starters
Name

Description

spring-boot-starter-actuator

Adds production ready features such as metrics

and monitoring.

spring-boot-starter-remote-shell

Adds remote ssh shell support.

Finally, Spring Boot includes some starters that can be used if you want to exclude or swap specific
technical facets.

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Table 13.3. Spring Boot technical starters

Name

Description

spring-boot-starter-jetty

Imports the Jetty HTTP engine (to be used as an

alternative to Tomcat).

spring-boot-starter-log4j

Support the Log4J logging framework.

spring-boot-starter-logging

Import Spring Boots default logging framework

(Logback).

spring-boot-starter-tomcat

Import Spring Boots default HTTP engine

(Tomcat).

spring-boot-starter-undertow

Imports the Undertow HTTP engine (to be used

as an alternative to Tomcat).

Tip
For a list of additional community contributed starter POMs, see the README file in the springboot-starters module on GitHub.

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14. Structuring your code

Spring Boot does not require any specific code layout to work, however, there are some best practices
that help.

14.1 Using the default package

When a class doesnt include a package declaration it is considered to be in the default package.
The use of the default package is generally discouraged, and should be avoided. It can cause
particular problems for Spring Boot applications that use @ComponentScan, @EntityScan or
@SpringBootApplication annotations, since every class from every jar, will be read.
Tip
We recommend that you follow Javas recommended package naming conventions and use a
reversed domain name (for example, com.example.project).

14.2 Locating the main application class

We generally recommend that you locate your main application class in a root package above other
classes. The @EnableAutoConfiguration annotation is often placed on your main class, and it
implicitly defines a base search package for certain items. For example, if you are writing a JPA
application, the package of the @EnableAutoConfiguration annotated class will be used to search
for @Entity items.
Using a root package also allows the @ComponentScan annotation to be used without needing to
specify a basePackage attribute. You can also use the @SpringBootApplication annotation if your
main class is in the root package.
Here is a typical layout:
com
+- example
+- myproject
+- Application.java
|
+- domain
|
+- Customer.java
|
+- CustomerRepository.java
|
+- service
|
+- CustomerService.java
|
+- web
+- CustomerController.java

The Application.java file would declare the main method, along with the basic @Configuration.
package com.example.myproject;
import
import
import
import

org.springframework.boot.SpringApplication;
org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.EnableAutoConfiguration;
org.springframework.context.annotation.ComponentScan;
org.springframework.context.annotation.Configuration;

@Configuration
@EnableAutoConfiguration
@ComponentScan

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public class Application {

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

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15. Configuration classes

Spring
Boot
favors
Java-based
configuration.
Although
it
is
possible
to
call
SpringApplication.run() with an XML source, we generally recommend that your primary source
is a @Configuration class. Usually the class that defines the main method is also a good candidate
as the primary @Configuration.
Tip
Many Spring configuration examples have been published on the Internet that use XML
configuration. Always try to use the equivalent Java-base configuration if possible. Searching for
enable* annotations can be a good starting point.

15.1 Importing additional configuration classes

You dont need to put all your @Configuration into a single class. The @Import annotation can
be used to import additional configuration classes. Alternatively, you can use @ComponentScan to
automatically pickup all Spring components, including @Configuration classes.

15.2 Importing XML configuration

If you absolutely must use XML based configuration, we recommend that you still start with a
@Configuration class. You can then use an additional @ImportResource annotation to load XML
configuration files.

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16. Auto-configuration
Spring Boot auto-configuration attempts to automatically configure your Spring application based on the
jar dependencies that you have added. For example, If HSQLDB is on your classpath, and you have
not manually configured any database connection beans, then we will auto-configure an in-memory
database.
You need to opt-in to auto-configuration by adding the @EnableAutoConfiguration or
@SpringBootApplication annotations to one of your @Configuration classes.
Tip
You should only ever add one @EnableAutoConfiguration annotation. We generally
recommend that you add it to your primary @Configuration class.

16.1 Gradually replacing auto-configuration

Auto-configuration is noninvasive, at any point you can start to define your own configuration to replace
specific parts of the auto-configuration. For example, if you add your own DataSource bean, the default
embedded database support will back away.
If you need to find out what auto-configuration is currently being applied, and why, starting your
application with the --debug switch. This will log an auto-configuration report to the console.

16.2 Disabling specific auto-configuration

If you find that specific auto-configure classes are being applied that you dont want, you can use the
exclude attribute of @EnableAutoConfiguration to disable them.
import org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.*;
import org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.jdbc.*;
import org.springframework.context.annotation.*;
@Configuration
@EnableAutoConfiguration(exclude={DataSourceAutoConfiguration.class})
public class MyConfiguration {
}

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17. Spring Beans and dependency injection

You are free to use any of the standard Spring Framework techniques to define your beans and their
injected dependencies. For simplicity, we often find that using @ComponentScan to find your beans, in
combination with @Autowired constructor injection works well.
If you structure your code as suggested above (locating your application class in a root package), you
can add @ComponentScan without any arguments. All of your application components (@Component,
@Service, @Repository, @Controller etc.) will be automatically registered as Spring Beans.
Here is an example @Service Bean that uses constructor injection to obtain a required RiskAssessor
bean.
package com.example.service;
import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Autowired;
import org.springframework.stereotype.Service;
@Service
public class DatabaseAccountService implements AccountService {
private final RiskAssessor riskAssessor;
@Autowired
public DatabaseAccountService(RiskAssessor riskAssessor) {
this.riskAssessor = riskAssessor;
}
// ...
}

Tip
Notice how using constructor injection allows the riskAssessor field to be marked as final,
indicating that it cannot be subsequently changed.

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18. Using the @SpringBootApplication annotation

Many Spring Boot developers always have their main class annotated with @Configuration,
@EnableAutoConfiguration and @ComponentScan. Since these annotations are so frequently
used together (especially if you follow the best practices above), Spring Boot provides a convenient
@SpringBootApplication alternative.
The @SpringBootApplication annotation is equivalent to using @Configuration,
@EnableAutoConfiguration and @ComponentScan with their default attributes:
package com.example.myproject;
import org.springframework.boot.SpringApplication;
import org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.SpringBootApplication;
@SpringBootApplication // same as @Configuration @EnableAutoConfiguration @ComponentScan
public class Application {
public static void main(String[] args) {
SpringApplication.run(Application.class, args);
}
}

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19. Running your application

One of the biggest advantages of packaging your application as jar and using an embedded HTTP
server is that you can run your application as you would any other. Debugging Spring Boot applications
is also easy; you dont need any special IDE plugins or extensions.
Note
This section only covers jar based packaging, If you choose to package your application as a war
file you should refer to your server and IDE documentation.

19.1 Running from an IDE

You can run a Spring Boot application from your IDE as a simple Java application, however, first you
will need to import your project. Import steps will vary depending on your IDE and build system. Most
IDEs can import Maven projects directly, for example Eclipse users can select Import Existing
Maven Projects from the File menu.
If you cant directly import your project into your IDE, you may be able to generate IDE metadata using
a build plugin. Maven includes plugins for Eclipse and IDEA; Gradle offers plugins for various IDEs.
Tip
If you accidentally run a web application twice you will see a Port already in use error. STS users
can use the Relaunch button rather than Run to ensure that any existing instance is closed.

19.2 Running as a packaged application

If you use the Spring Boot Maven or Gradle plugins to create an executable jar you can run your
application using java -jar. For example:
$ java -jar target/myproject-0.0.1-SNAPSHOT.jar

It is also possible to run a packaged application with remote debugging support enabled. This allows
you to attach a debugger to your packaged application:
$ java -Xdebug -Xrunjdwp:server=y,transport=dt_socket,address=8000,suspend=n \
-jar target/myproject-0.0.1-SNAPSHOT.jar

19.3 Using the Maven plugin

The Spring Boot Maven plugin includes a run goal which can be used to quickly compile and run your
application. Applications run in an exploded form, and you can edit resources for instant hot reload.
$ mvn spring-boot:run

You might also want to use the useful operating system environment variable:
$ export MAVEN_OPTS=-Xmx1024m -XX:MaxPermSize=128M -Djava.security.egd=file:/dev/./urandom

(The egd setting is to speed up Tomcat startup by giving it a faster source of entropy for session keys.)

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19.4 Using the Gradle plugin

The Spring Boot Gradle plugin also includes a run goal which can be used to run your application in
an exploded form. The bootRun task is added whenever you import the spring-boot-plugin
$ gradle bootRun

You might also want to use this useful operating system environment variable:
$ export JAVA_OPTS=-Xmx1024m -XX:MaxPermSize=128M -Djava.security.egd=file:/dev/./urandom

19.5 Hot swapping

Since Spring Boot applications are just plain Java applications, JVM hot-swapping should work out of the
box. JVM hot swapping is somewhat limited with the bytecode that it can replace, for a more complete
solution the Spring Loaded project, or JRebel can be used.
See the Hot swapping How-to section for details.

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20. Packaging your application for production

Executable jars can be used for production deployment. As they are self-contained, they are also ideally
suited for cloud-based deployment.
For additional production ready features, such as health, auditing and metric REST or JMX endpoints; consider adding spring-boot-actuator. See Part V, Spring Boot Actuator: Productionready features for details.

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21. What to read next

You should now have good understanding of how you can use Spring Boot along with some best
practices that you should follow. You can now go on to learn about specific Spring Boot features in
depth, or you could skip ahead and read about the production ready aspects of Spring Boot.

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Part IV. Spring Boot features

This section dives into the details of Spring Boot. Here you can learn about the key features that you will
want to use and customize. If you havent already, you might want to read the Part II, Getting started
and Part III, Using Spring Boot sections so that you have a good grounding of the basics.

Spring Boot Reference Guide

22. SpringApplication
The SpringApplication class provides a convenient way to bootstrap a Spring application that
will be started from a main() method. In many situations you can just delegate to the static
SpringApplication.run method:
public static void main(String[] args) {
SpringApplication.run(MySpringConfiguration.class, args);
}

When your application starts you should see something similar to the following:
.
____
_
__ _ _
/\\ / ___'_ __ _ _(_)_ __ __ _ \ \ \ \
( ( )\___ | '_ | '_| | '_ \/ _` | \ \ \ \
\\/ ___)| |_)| | | | | || (_| | ) ) ) )
' |____| .__|_| |_|_| |_\__, | / / / /
=========|_|==============|___/=/_/_/_/
:: Spring Boot ::
v1.2.5.RELEASE
2013-07-31 00:08:16.117 INFO 56603 --- [
main] o.s.b.s.app.SampleApplication
Starting SampleApplication v0.1.0 on mycomputer with PID 56603 (/apps/myapp.jar started by pwebb)
2013-07-31 00:08:16.166 INFO 56603 --- [
main] ationConfigEmbeddedWebApplicationContext
Refreshing
org.springframework.boot.context.embedded.AnnotationConfigEmbeddedWebApplicationContext@6e5a8246:
startup date [Wed Jul 31 00:08:16 PDT 2013]; root of context hierarchy
2014-03-04 13:09:54.912 INFO 41370 --- [
main] .t.TomcatEmbeddedServletContainerFactory
Server initialized with port: 8080
2014-03-04 13:09:56.501 INFO 41370 --- [
main] o.s.b.s.app.SampleApplication
Started SampleApplication in 2.992 seconds (JVM running for 3.658)

:
:

:
:

By default INFO logging messages will be shown, including some relevant startup details such as the
user that launched the application.

22.1 Customizing the Banner

The banner that is printed on start up can be changed by adding a banner.txt file to your classpath,
or by setting banner.location to the location of such a file. If the file has an unusual encoding you
can set banner.charset (default is UTF-8).
You can use the following variables inside your banner.txt file:
Table 22.1. Banner variables
Variable

Description

${application.version}

The version number of your application as

declared in MANIFEST.MF. For example 1.0.

${application.formatted-version}

The version number of your application as

declared in MANIFEST.MF formatted for display
(surrounded with brackets and prefixed with v).
For example (v1.0).

${spring-boot.version}

The Spring Boot version that you are using. For

example 1.2.5.RELEASE.

${spring-boot.formatted-version}

The Spring Boot version that you are using

formatted for display (surrounded with

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Variable

Description
brackets and prefixed with v). For example
(v1.2.5.RELEASE).

Tip
The SpringBootApplication.setBanner() method can be used if you want to generate
a banner programmatically. Use the org.springframework.boot.Banner interface and
implement your own printBanner() method.

22.2 Customizing SpringApplication

If the SpringApplication defaults arent to your taste you can instead create a local instance and
customize it. For example, to turn off the banner you would write:
public static void main(String[] args) {
SpringApplication app = new SpringApplication(MySpringConfiguration.class);
app.setShowBanner(false);
app.run(args);
}

Note
The constructor arguments passed to SpringApplication are configuration sources for spring
beans. In most cases these will be references to @Configuration classes, but they could also
be references to XML configuration or to packages that should be scanned.
It is also possible to configure the SpringApplication using an application.properties file.
See Chapter 23, Externalized Configuration for details.
For a complete list of the configuration options, see the SpringApplication Javadoc.

22.3 Fluent builder API

If you need to build an ApplicationContext hierarchy (multiple contexts with a parent/
child relationship), or if you just prefer using a fluent builder API, you can use the
SpringApplicationBuilder.
The SpringApplicationBuilder allows you to chain together multiple method calls, and includes
parent and child methods that allow you to create a hierarchy.
For example:
new SpringApplicationBuilder()
.showBanner(false)
.sources(Parent.class)
.child(Application.class)
.run(args);

Note
There are some restrictions when creating an ApplicationContext hierarchy, e.g. Web
components must be contained within the child context, and the same Environment will be

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used for both parent and child contexts. See the SpringApplicationBuilder Javadoc for
full details.

22.4 Application events and listeners

In addition to the usual Spring Framework events, such as ContextRefreshedEvent, a
SpringApplication sends some additional application events. Some events are actually triggered
before the ApplicationContext is created.
You can register event listeners in a number
SpringApplication.addListeners() method.

of

ways,

the

most

common

being

Application events are sent in the following order, as your application runs:
1. An ApplicationStartedEvent is sent at the start of a run, but before any processing except the
registration of listeners and initializers.
2. An ApplicationEnvironmentPreparedEvent is sent when the Environment to be used in the
context is known, but before the context is created.
3. An ApplicationPreparedEvent is sent just before the refresh is started, but after bean definitions
have been loaded.
4. An ApplicationFailedEvent is sent if there is an exception on startup.
Tip
You often wont need to use application events, but it can be handy to know that they exist.
Internally, Spring Boot uses events to handle a variety of tasks.

22.5 Web environment

A SpringApplication will attempt to create the right type of ApplicationContext
on
your
behalf.
By
default,
an
AnnotationConfigApplicationContext
or
AnnotationConfigEmbeddedWebApplicationContext will be used, depending on whether you
are developing a web application or not.
The algorithm used to determine a web environment is fairly simplistic (based on the presence of a few
classes). You can use setWebEnvironment(boolean webEnvironment) if you need to override
the default.
It is also possible to take complete control of the ApplicationContext type that will be used by
calling setApplicationContextClass().
Tip
It is often desirable to call setWebEnvironment(false) when using SpringApplication
within a JUnit test.

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22.6 Using the CommandLineRunner

If you want access to the raw command line arguments, or you need to run some specific code once
the SpringApplication has started you can implement the CommandLineRunner interface. The
run(String args) method will be called on all Spring beans implementing this interface.
import org.springframework.boot.*
import org.springframework.stereotype.*
@Component
public class MyBean implements CommandLineRunner {
public void run(String... args) {
// Do something...
}
}

You can additionally implement the org.springframework.core.Ordered interface or use the

org.springframework.core.annotation.Order annotation if several CommandLineRunner
beans are defined that must be called in a specific order.

22.7 Application exit

Each SpringApplication will register a shutdown hook with the JVM to ensure that the
ApplicationContext is closed gracefully on exit. All the standard Spring lifecycle callbacks (such
as the DisposableBean interface, or the @PreDestroy annotation) can be used.
In addition, beans may implement the org.springframework.boot.ExitCodeGenerator
interface if they wish to return a specific exit code when the application ends.

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23. Externalized Configuration

Spring Boot allows you to externalize your configuration so you can work with the same application
code in different environments. You can use properties files, YAML files, environment variables and
command-line arguments to externalize configuration. Property values can be injected directly into your
beans using the @Value annotation, accessed via Springs Environment abstraction or bound to
structured objects.
Spring Boot uses a very particular PropertySource order that is designed to allow sensible overriding
of values, properties are considered in the the following order:
1. Command line arguments.
2. JNDI attributes from java:comp/env.
3. Java System properties (System.getProperties()).
4. OS environment variables.
5. A RandomValuePropertySource that only has properties in random.*.
6. Profile-specific application properties outside
{profile}.properties and YAML variants)

of

7. Profile-specific
application
properties
packaged
{profile}.properties and YAML variants)

your

packaged

inside

your

jar

jar

(application-

(application-

8. Application properties outside of your packaged jar (application.properties and YAML

variants).
9. Application properties packaged inside your jar (application.properties and YAML variants).
10.@PropertySource annotations on your @Configuration classes.
11.Default properties (specified using SpringApplication.setDefaultProperties).
To provide a concrete example, suppose you develop a @Component that uses a name property:
import org.springframework.stereotype.*
import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.*
@Component
public class MyBean {
@Value("${name}")
private String name;
// ...
}

You can bundle an application.properties inside your jar that provides a sensible default name.
When running in production, an application.properties can be provided outside of your jar that
overrides name; and for one-off testing, you can launch with a specific command line switch (e.g. java
-jar app.jar --name="Spring").

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23.1 Configuring random values

The RandomValuePropertySource is useful for injecting random values (e.g. into secrets or test
cases). It can produce integers, longs or strings, e.g.
my.secret=${random.value}
my.number=${random.int}
my.bignumber=${random.long}
my.number.less.than.ten=${random.int(10)}
my.number.in.range=${random.int[1024,65536]}

The random.int* syntax is OPEN value (,max) CLOSE where the OPEN,CLOSE are any character
and value,max are integers. If max is provided then value is the minimum value and max is the
maximum (exclusive).

23.2 Accessing command line properties

By default SpringApplication will convert any command line option arguments (starting with --,
e.g. --server.port=9000) to a property and add it to the Spring Environment. As mentioned
above, command line properties always take precedence over other property sources.
If you dont want command line properties to be added to the Environment you can disable them using
SpringApplication.setAddCommandLineProperties(false).

23.3 Application property files

SpringApplication will load properties from application.properties files in the following
locations and add them to the Spring Environment:
1. A /config subdir of the current directory.
2. The current directory
3. A classpath /config package
4. The classpath root
The list is ordered by precedence (locations higher in the list override lower items).
Note
You can also use YAML ('.yml') files as an alternative to '.properties'.
If you dont like application.properties as the configuration file name you can switch to
another by specifying a spring.config.name environment property. You can also refer to an
explicit location using the spring.config.location environment property (comma-separated list
of directory locations, or file paths).
$ java -jar myproject.jar --spring.config.name=myproject

or
$ java -jar myproject.jar --spring.config.location=classpath:/default.properties,classpath:/
override.properties

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If spring.config.location contains directories (as opposed to files) they should end in / (and
will be appended with the names generated from spring.config.name before being loaded). The
default search path classpath:,classpath:/config,file:,file:config/ is always used,
irrespective of the value of spring.config.location. In that way you can set up default values
for your application in application.properties (or whatever other basename you choose with
spring.config.name) and override it at runtime with a different file, keeping the defaults.
Note
If you use environment variables rather than system properties, most operating systems disallow
period-separated key names, but you can use underscores instead (e.g. SPRING_CONFIG_NAME
instead of spring.config.name).
Note
If you are running in a container then JNDI properties (in java:comp/env) or servlet context
initialization parameters can be used instead of, or as well as, environment variables or system
properties.

23.4 Profile-specific properties

In addition to application.properties files, profile-specific properties can also be defined using
the naming convention application-{profile}.properties.
Profile
specific
properties
are
loaded
from
the
same
locations
as
standard
application.properties, with profile-specific files always overriding the default ones irrespective
of whether the profile-specific files are inside or outside your packaged jar.

23.5 Placeholders in properties

The values in application.properties are filtered through the existing Environment when they
are used so you can refer back to previously defined values (e.g. from System properties).
app.name=MyApp
app.description=${app.name} is a Spring Boot application

Tip
You can also use this technique to create short variants of existing Spring Boot properties. See
the Section 63.3, Use short command line arguments how-to for details.

23.6 Using YAML instead of Properties

YAML is a superset of JSON, and as such is a very convenient format for specifying hierarchical
configuration data. The SpringApplication class will automatically support YAML as an alternative
to properties whenever you have the SnakeYAML library on your classpath.
Note
If you use starter POMs SnakeYAML will be automatically provided via spring-bootstarter.

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Loading YAML
Spring Framework provides two convenient classes that can be used to load YAML documents. The
YamlPropertiesFactoryBean will load YAML as Properties and the YamlMapFactoryBean will
load YAML as a Map.
For example, the following YAML document:
environments:
dev:
url: http://dev.bar.com
name: Developer Setup
prod:
url: http://foo.bar.com
name: My Cool App

Would be transformed into these properties:

environments.dev.url=http://dev.bar.com
environments.dev.name=Developer Setup
environments.prod.url=http://foo.bar.com
environments.prod.name=My Cool App

YAML lists are represented as property keys with [index] dereferencers, for example this YAML:
my:
servers:
- dev.bar.com
- foo.bar.com

Would be transformed into these properties:

my.servers[0]=dev.bar.com
my.servers[1]=foo.bar.com

To bind to properties like that using the Spring DataBinder utilities (which is what
@ConfigurationProperties does) you need to have a property in the target bean of type
java.util.List (or Set) and you either need to provide a setter, or initialize it with a mutable value,
e.g. this will bind to the properties above
@ConfigurationProperties(prefix="my")
public class Config {
private List<String> servers = new ArrayList<String>();
public List<String> getServers() {
return this.servers;
}
}

Exposing YAML as properties in the Spring Environment

The YamlPropertySourceLoader class can be used to expose YAML as a PropertySource in the
Spring Environment. This allows you to use the familiar @Value annotation with placeholders syntax
to access YAML properties.

Multi-profile YAML documents

You can specify multiple profile-specific YAML documents in a single file by using a spring.profiles
key to indicate when the document applies. For example:

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server:
address: 192.168.1.100
--spring:
profiles: development
server:
address: 127.0.0.1
--spring:
profiles: production
server:
address: 192.168.1.120

In the example above, the server.address property will be 127.0.0.1 if the development profile
is active. If the development and production profiles are not enabled, then the value for the property
will be 192.168.1.100

YAML shortcomings
YAML files cant be loaded via the @PropertySource annotation. So in the case that you need to load
values that way, you need to use a properties file.

23.7 Typesafe Configuration Properties

Using the @Value("${property}") annotation to inject configuration properties can sometimes be
cumbersome, especially if you are working with multiple properties or your data is hierarchical in nature.
Spring Boot provides an alternative method of working with properties that allows strongly typed beans
to govern and validate the configuration of your application. For example:
@Component
@ConfigurationProperties(prefix="connection")
public class ConnectionSettings {
private String username;
private InetAddress remoteAddress;
// ... getters and setters
}

Note
The getters and setters are advisable, since binding is via standard Java Beans property
descriptors, just like in Spring MVC. They are mandatory for immutable types or those that are
directly coercible from String. As long as they are initialized, maps, collections, and arrays need
a getter but not necessarily a setter since they can be mutated by the binder. If there is a setter,
Maps, collections, and arrays can be created. Maps and collections can be expanded with only a
getter, whereas arrays require a setter. Nested POJO properties can also be created (so a setter
is not mandatory) if they have a default constructor, or a constructor accepting a single value
that can be coerced from String. Some people use Project Lombok to add getters and setters
automatically.
When the @EnableConfigurationProperties annotation is applied to your @Configuration,
any beans annotated with @ConfigurationProperties will be automatically configured from
the Environment properties. This style of configuration works particularly well with the
SpringApplication external YAML configuration:

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# application.yml
connection:
username: admin
remoteAddress: 192.168.1.1
# additional configuration as required

To work with @ConfigurationProperties beans you can just inject them in the same way as any
other bean.
@Service
public class MyService {
@Autowired
private ConnectionSettings connection;
//...
@PostConstruct
public void openConnection() {
Server server = new Server();
this.connection.configure(server);
}
}

It is also possible to shortcut the registration of @ConfigurationProperties bean definitions by

simply listing the properties classes directly in the @EnableConfigurationProperties annotation:
@Configuration
@EnableConfigurationProperties(ConnectionSettings.class)
public class MyConfiguration {
}

Tip
Using @ConfigurationProperties also allows you to generate meta-data files that can be
used by IDEs. See the Appendix B, Configuration meta-data appendix for details.

Third-party configuration
As well as using @ConfigurationProperties to annotate a class, you can also use it on @Bean
methods. This can be particularly useful when you want to bind properties to third-party components
that are outside of your control.
To configure a bean from the Environment properties, add @ConfigurationProperties to its
bean registration:
@ConfigurationProperties(prefix = "foo")
@Bean
public FooComponent fooComponent() {
...
}

Any property defined with the foo prefix will be mapped onto that FooComponent bean in a similar
manner as the ConnectionSettings example above.

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Relaxed binding
Spring Boot uses some relaxed rules for binding Environment properties to
@ConfigurationProperties beans, so there doesnt need to be an exact match between the
Environment property name and the bean property name. Common examples where this is useful
include dashed separated (e.g. context-path binds to contextPath), and capitalized (e.g. PORT
binds to port) environment properties.
For example, given the following @ConfigurationProperties class:
@Component
@ConfigurationProperties(prefix="person")
public class ConnectionSettings {
private String firstName;
public String getFirstName() {
return this.firstName;
}
public void setFirstName(String firstName) {
this.firstName = firstName;
}
}

The following properties names can all be used:

Table 23.1. relaxed binding
Property

Note

person.firstName
Standard camel case syntax.
person.firstname

Dashed notation, recommended for use in .properties and .yml files.

PERSON_FIRST_NAME
Upper case format. Recommended when using a system environment
variables.
Spring will attempt to coerce the external application properties to the right type when it binds to
the @ConfigurationProperties beans. If you need custom type conversion you can provide a
ConversionService bean (with bean id conversionService) or custom property editors (via a
CustomEditorConfigurer bean).

@ConfigurationProperties Validation
Spring Boot will attempt to validate external configuration, by default using JSR-303 (if it is on
the classpath). You can simply add JSR-303 javax.validation constraint annotations to your
@ConfigurationProperties class:
@Component
@ConfigurationProperties(prefix="connection")
public class ConnectionSettings {
@NotNull
private InetAddress remoteAddress;
// ... getters and setters
}

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You can also add a custom Spring Validator by creating a bean definition called
configurationPropertiesValidator.
Tip
The spring-boot-actuator module includes an endpoint that exposes all
@ConfigurationProperties beans. Simply point your web browser to /configprops or use
the equivalent JMX endpoint. See the Production ready features. section for details.

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24. Profiles
Spring Profiles provide a way to segregate parts of your application configuration and make it
only available in certain environments. Any @Component or @Configuration can be marked with
@Profile to limit when it is loaded:
@Configuration
@Profile("production")
public class ProductionConfiguration {
// ...
}

In the normal Spring way, you can use a spring.profiles.active Environment property to
specify which profiles are active. You can specify the property in any of the usual ways, for example
you could include it in your application.properties:
spring.profiles.active=dev,hsqldb

or specify on the command line using the switch --spring.profiles.active=dev,hsqldb.

24.1 Adding active profiles

The spring.profiles.active property follows the same ordering rules as other properties,
the highest PropertySource will win. This means that you can specify active profiles in
application.properties then replace them using the command line switch.
Sometimes it is useful to have profile specific properties that add to the active profiles rather than replace
them. The spring.profiles.include property can be used to unconditionally add active profiles.
The SpringApplication entry point also has a Java API for setting additional profiles (i.e. on top of
those activated by the spring.profiles.active property): see the setAdditionalProfiles()
method.
For example, when an application with following properties is run using the switch -spring.profiles.active=prod the proddb and prodmq profiles will also be activated:
--my.property: fromyamlfile
--spring.profiles: prod
spring.profiles.include: proddb,prodmq

Note
Remember that the spring.profiles property can be defined in a YAML document to
determine when this particular document is included in the configuration. See Section 63.6,
Change configuration depending on the environment for more details.

24.2 Programmatically setting profiles

You
can
programmatically
set
active
profiles
by
calling
SpringApplication.setAdditionalProfiles() before your application runs. It is also
possible to activate profiles using Springs ConfigurableEnvironment interface.

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24.3 Profile specific configuration files

Profile specific variants of both application.properties (or application.yml) and files
referenced via @ConfigurationProperties are considered as files are loaded. See Section 23.4,
Profile-specific properties for details.

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25. Logging
Spring Boot uses Commons Logging for all internal logging, but leaves the underlying log implementation
open. Default configurations are provided for Java Util Logging, Log4J, Log4J2 and Logback. In each
case loggers are pre-configured to use console output with optional file output also available.
By default, If you use the Starter POMs, Logback will be used for logging. Appropriate Logback routing
is also included to ensure that dependent libraries that use Java Util Logging, Commons Logging, Log4J
or SLF4J will all work correctly.
Tip
There are a lot of logging frameworks available for Java. Dont worry if the above list seems
confusing. Generally you wont need to change your logging dependencies and the Spring Boot
defaults will work just fine.

25.1 Log format

The default log output from Spring Boot looks like this:
2014-03-05 10:57:51.112 INFO 45469 --- [
main] org.apache.catalina.core.StandardEngine
Starting Servlet Engine: Apache Tomcat/7.0.52
2014-03-05 10:57:51.253 INFO 45469 --- [ost-startStop-1] o.a.c.c.C.[Tomcat].[localhost].[/]
Initializing Spring embedded WebApplicationContext
2014-03-05 10:57:51.253 INFO 45469 --- [ost-startStop-1] o.s.web.context.ContextLoader
Root WebApplicationContext: initialization completed in 1358 ms
2014-03-05 10:57:51.698 INFO 45469 --- [ost-startStop-1] o.s.b.c.e.ServletRegistrationBean
Mapping servlet: 'dispatcherServlet' to [/]
2014-03-05 10:57:51.702 INFO 45469 --- [ost-startStop-1] o.s.b.c.embedded.FilterRegistrationBean
Mapping filter: 'hiddenHttpMethodFilter' to: [/*]

:
:
:
:
:

The following items are output:

Date and Time Millisecond precision and easily sortable.
Log Level ERROR, WARN, INFO, DEBUG or TRACE.
Process ID.
A --- separator to distinguish the start of actual log messages.
Thread name Enclosed in square brackets (may be truncated for console output).
Logger name This is usually the source class name (often abbreviated).
The log message.

25.2 Console output

The default log configuration will echo messages to the console as they are written. By default ERROR,
WARN and INFO level messages are logged. To also log DEBUG level messages to the console you can
start your application with a --debug flag.
$ java -jar myapp.jar --debug

If your terminal supports ANSI, color output will be used to aid readability. You can set
spring.output.ansi.enabled to a supported value to override the auto detection.

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25.3 File output

By default, Spring Boot will only log to the console and will not write log files. If you want to write log
files in addition to the console output you need to set a logging.file or logging.path property
(for example in your application.properties).
The following table shows how the logging.* properties can be used together:
Table 25.1. Logging properties
logging.file
logging.path
Example

Description

(none)

(none)

Console only logging.

Specific file

(none)

my.log

Writes to the specified log file. Names can be an exact

location or relative to the current directory.

(none)

Specific
directory

/var/log

Writes spring.log to the specified directory. Names

can be an exact location or relative to the current
directory.

Log files will rotate when they reach 10 Mb and as with console output, ERROR, WARN and INFO level
messages are logged by default.
Note
The logging system is initialized early in the application lifecycle and as such logging properties
will not be found in property files loaded via @PropertySource annotations.

25.4 Log Levels

All the supported logging systems can have the logger levels set in the Spring Environment (so
for example in application.properties) using logging.level.*=LEVEL where LEVEL is one of
TRACE, DEBUG, INFO, WARN, ERROR, FATAL, OFF. Example application.properties:
logging.level.org.springframework.web=DEBUG
logging.level.org.hibernate=ERROR

Note
By default Spring Boot remaps Thymeleaf INFO messages so that they are logged at DEBUG
level. This helps to reduce noise in the standard log output. See LevelRemappingAppender
for details of how you can apply remapping in your own configuration.

25.5 Custom log configuration

The various logging systems can be activated by including the appropriate libraries on the classpath,
and further customized by providing a suitable configuration file in the root of the classpath, or in a
location specified by the Spring Environment property logging.config. (Note however that since
logging is initialized before the ApplicationContext is created, it isnt possible to control logging
from @PropertySources in Spring @Configuration files. System properties and the conventional
Spring Boot external configuration files work just fine.)

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Depending on your logging system, the following files will be loaded:

Logging System

Customization

Logback

logback.xml or logback.groovy

Log4j

log4j.properties or log4j.xml

Log4j2

log4j2.xml

JDK (Java Util Logging)

logging.properties

To help with the customization some other properties are transferred from the Spring Environment
to System properties:
Spring Environment

System Property

Comments

logging.file

LOG_FILE

Used in default log

configuration if defined.

logging.path

LOG_PATH

Used in default log

configuration if defined.

PID

PID

The current process ID

(discovered if possible and
when not already defined as an
OS environment variable).

All the logging systems supported can consult System properties when parsing their configuration files.
See the default configurations in spring-boot.jar for examples.
Warning
There are known classloading issues with Java Util Logging that cause problems when running
from an executable jar. We recommend that you avoid it if at all possible.

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26. Developing web applications

Spring Boot is well suited for web application development. You can easily create a self-contained HTTP
server using embedded Tomcat, Jetty, or Undertow. Most web applications will use the spring-bootstarter-web module to get up and running quickly.
If you havent yet developed a Spring Boot web application you can follow the "Hello World!" example
in the Getting started section.

26.1 The Spring Web MVC framework

The Spring Web MVC framework (often referred to as simply Spring MVC) is a rich model view
controller web framework. Spring MVC lets you create special @Controller or @RestController
beans to handle incoming HTTP requests. Methods in your controller are mapped to HTTP using
@RequestMapping annotations.
Here is a typical example @RestController to serve JSON data:
@RestController
@RequestMapping(value="/users")
public class MyRestController {
@RequestMapping(value="/{user}", method=RequestMethod.GET)
public User getUser(@PathVariable Long user) {
// ...
}
@RequestMapping(value="/{user}/customers", method=RequestMethod.GET)
List<Customer> getUserCustomers(@PathVariable Long user) {
// ...
}
@RequestMapping(value="/{user}", method=RequestMethod.DELETE)
public User deleteUser(@PathVariable Long user) {
// ...
}
}

Spring MVC is part of the core Spring Framework and detailed information is available in the reference
documentation. There are also several guides available at spring.io/guides that cover Spring MVC.

Spring MVC auto-configuration

Spring Boot provides auto-configuration for Spring MVC that works well with most applications.
The auto-configuration adds the following features on top of Springs defaults:
Inclusion of ContentNegotiatingViewResolver and BeanNameViewResolver beans.
Support for serving static resources, including support for WebJars (see below).
Automatic registration of Converter, GenericConverter, Formatter beans.
Support for HttpMessageConverters (see below).
Automatic registration of MessageCodesResolver (see below).

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Static index.html support.

Custom Favicon support.
If you want to take complete control of Spring MVC, you can add your own @Configuration annotated
with @EnableWebMvc. If you want to keep Spring Boot MVC features, and you just want to add additional
MVC configuration (interceptors, formatters, view controllers etc.) you can add your own @Bean of type
WebMvcConfigurerAdapter, but without @EnableWebMvc.

HttpMessageConverters
Spring MVC uses the HttpMessageConverter interface to convert HTTP requests and responses.
Sensible defaults are included out of the box, for example Objects can be automatically converted to
JSON (using the Jackson library) or XML (using the Jackson XML extension if available, else using
JAXB). Strings are encoded using UTF-8 by default.
If you need to add or customize converters you can use Spring Boots HttpMessageConverters
class:
import org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.web.HttpMessageConverters;
import org.springframework.context.annotation.*;
import org.springframework.http.converter.*;
@Configuration
public class MyConfiguration {
@Bean
public HttpMessageConverters customConverters() {
HttpMessageConverter<?> additional = ...
HttpMessageConverter<?> another = ...
return new HttpMessageConverters(additional, another);
}
}

Any HttpMessageConverter bean that is present in the context will be added to the list of converters.
You can also override default converters that way.

MessageCodesResolver
Spring MVC has a strategy for generating error codes for rendering error messages from binding errors:
MessageCodesResolver. Spring Boot will create one for you if you set the spring.mvc.messagecodes-resolver.format property PREFIX_ERROR_CODE or POSTFIX_ERROR_CODE (see the
enumeration in DefaultMessageCodesResolver.Format).

Static Content
By default Spring Boot will serve static content from a directory called /static (or /public or /
resources or /META-INF/resources) in the classpath or from the root of the ServletContext.
It uses the ResourceHttpRequestHandler from Spring MVC so you can modify that behavior by
adding your own WebMvcConfigurerAdapter and overriding the addResourceHandlers method.
In a stand-alone web application the default servlet from the container is also enabled, and acts as a
fallback, serving content from the root of the ServletContext if Spring decides not to handle it. Most
of the time this will not happen (unless you modify the default MVC configuration) because Spring will
always be able to handle requests through the DispatcherServlet.

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In addition to the standard static resource locations above, a special case is made for Webjars content.
Any resources with a path in /webjars/** will be served from jar files if they are packaged in the
Webjars format.
Tip
Do not use the src/main/webapp directory if your application will be packaged as a jar. Although
this directory is a common standard, it will only work with war packaging and it will be silently
ignored by most build tools if you generate a jar.

Template engines
As well as REST web services, you can also use Spring MVC to serve dynamic HTML content. Spring
MVC supports a variety of templating technologies including Velocity, FreeMarker and JSPs. Many other
templating engines also ship their own Spring MVC integrations.
Spring Boot includes auto-configuration support for the following templating engines:
FreeMarker
Groovy
Thymeleaf
Velocity
Mustache
Tip
JSPs should be avoided if possible, there are several known limitations when using them with
embedded servlet containers.
When youre using one of these templating engines with the default configuration, your templates will
be picked up automatically from src/main/resources/templates.
Tip
IntelliJ IDEA orders the classpath differently depending on how you run your application. Running
your application in the IDE via its main method will result in a different ordering to when you
run your application using Maven or Gradle or from its pacakaged jar. This can cause Spring
Boot to fail to find the templates on the classpath. If youre affected by this problem you can
reorder the classpath in the IDE to place the modules classes and resources first. Alternatively,
you can configure the template prefix to search every templates directory on the classpath:
classpath*:/templates/.

Error Handling
Spring Boot provides an /error mapping by default that handles all errors in a sensible way, and
it is registered as a global error page in the servlet container. For machine clients it will produce a
JSON response with details of the error, the HTTP status and the exception message. For browser
clients there is a whitelabel error view that renders the same data in HTML format (to customize
it just add a View that resolves to error). To replace the default behaviour completely you can

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implement ErrorController and register a bean definition of that type, or simply add a bean of type
ErrorAttributes to use the existing mechanism but replace the contents.
If you want more specific error pages for some conditions, the embedded servlet containers support a
uniform Java DSL for customizing the error handling. For example:
@Bean
public EmbeddedServletContainerCustomizer containerCustomizer(){
return new MyCustomizer();
}
// ...
private static class MyCustomizer implements EmbeddedServletContainerCustomizer {
@Override
public void customize(ConfigurableEmbeddedServletContainer container) {
container.addErrorPages(new ErrorPage(HttpStatus.BAD_REQUEST, "/400"));
}
}

You can also use regular Spring MVC features like @ExceptionHandler methods and
@ControllerAdvice. The ErrorController will then pick up any unhandled exceptions.
N.B. if you register an ErrorPage with a path that will end up being handled by a Filter (e.g. as is
common with some non-Spring web frameworks, like Jersey and Wicket), then the Filter has to be
explicitly registered as an ERROR dispatcher, e.g.
@Bean
public FilterRegistrationBean myFilter() {
FilterRegistrationBean registration = new FilterRegistrationBean();
registration.setFilter(new MyFilter());
...
registration.setDispatcherTypes(EnumSet.allOf(DispatcherType.class));
return registration;
}

(the default FilterRegistrationBean does not include the ERROR dispatcher type).
Error Handling on WebSphere Application Server
When deployed to a servlet container, a Spring Boot uses its error page filter to forward a request with an
error status to the appropriate error page. The request can only be forwarded to the correct error page if
the response has not already been committed. By default, WebSphere Application Server 8.0 and later
commits the response upon successful completion of a servlets service method. You should disable
this behaviour by setting com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.invokeFlushAfterService to false

Spring HATEOAS
If youre developing a RESTful API that makes use of hypermedia, Spring Boot provides autoconfiguration for Spring HATEOAS that works well with most applications. The auto-configuration
replaces the need to use @EnableHypermediaSupport and registers a number of beans to
ease building hypermedia-based applications including a LinkDiscoverer and an ObjectMapper
configured to correctly marshal responses into the desired representation. The ObjectMapper will be
customized based on the spring.jackson.* properties or a Jackson2ObjectMapperBuilder
bean if one exists.
You can take control of Spring HATEOASs configuration by using @EnableHypermediaSupport.
Note that this will disable the ObjectMapper customization described above.

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26.2 JAX-RS and Jersey

If you prefer the JAX-RS programming model for REST endpoints you can use one of the available
implementations instead of Spring MVC. Jersey 1.x and Apache Celtix work quite well out of the box
if you just register their Servlet or Filter as a @Bean in your application context. Jersey 2.x has
some native Spring support so we also provide auto-configuration support for it in Spring Boot together
with a starter.
To get started with Jersey 2.x just include the spring-boot-starter-jersey as a dependency and
then you need one @Bean of type ResourceConfig in which you register all the endpoints:
@Component
public class JerseyConfig extends ResourceConfig {
public JerseyConfig() {
register(Endpoint.class);
}
}

All the registered endpoints should be @Components with HTTP resource annotations (@GET etc.), e.g.
@Component
@Path("/hello")
public class Endpoint {
@GET
public String message() {
return "Hello";
}
}

Since the Endpoint is a Spring @Component its lifecycle is managed by Spring and you can
@Autowired dependencies and inject external configuration with @Value. The Jersey servlet will be
registered and mapped to /* by default. You can change the mapping by adding @ApplicationPath
to your ResourceConfig.
By default Jersey will be set up as a Servlet in a @Bean of type ServletRegistrationBean
named jerseyServletRegistration. You can disable or override that bean by creating
one of your own with the same name. You can also use a Filter instead of a Servlet
by setting spring.jersey.type=filter (in which case the @Bean to replace or override
is jerseyFilterRegistration). The servlet has an @Order which you can set with
spring.jersey.filter.order. Both the Servlet and the Filter registrations can be given init
parameters using spring.jersey.init.* to specify a map of properties.
There is a Jersey sample so you can see how to set things up. There is also a Jersey 1.x sample.
Note that in the Jersey 1.x sample that the spring-boot maven plugin has been configured to unpack
some Jersey jars so they can be scanned by the JAX-RS implementation (because the sample asks
for them to be scanned in its Filter registration). You may need to do the same if any of your JAXRS resources are packages as nested jars.

26.3 Embedded servlet container support

Spring Boot includes support for embedded Tomcat, Jetty, and Undertow servers. Most developers will
simply use the appropriate Starter POM to obtain a fully configured instance. By default the embedded
server will listen for HTTP requests on port 8080.

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Servlets and Filters

When using an embedded servlet container you can register Servlets, Filters and all the listeners from
the Servlet spec (e.g. HttpSessionListener) directly as Spring beans. This can be particularly
convenient if you want to refer to a value from your application.properties during configuration.
By default, if the context contains only a single Servlet it will be mapped to /. In the case of multiple
Servlet beans the bean name will be used as a path prefix. Filters will map to /*.
If convention-based mapping is not flexible enough you can use the ServletRegistrationBean,
FilterRegistrationBean and ServletListenerRegistrationBean classes for complete
control.
You
can
also
register
items
directly
if
your
bean
implements
the
ServletContextInitializer interface.

The EmbeddedWebApplicationContext
Under the hood Spring Boot uses a new type of ApplicationContext for embedded servlet container
support. The EmbeddedWebApplicationContext is a special type of WebApplicationContext
that bootstraps itself by searching for a single EmbeddedServletContainerFactory bean. Usually a
TomcatEmbeddedServletContainerFactory, JettyEmbeddedServletContainerFactory,
or UndertowEmbeddedServletContainerFactory will have been auto-configured.
Note
You usually wont need to be aware of these implementation classes. Most
applications will be auto-configured and the appropriate ApplicationContext and
EmbeddedServletContainerFactory will be created on your behalf.

Customizing embedded servlet containers

Common servlet container settings can be configured using Spring Environment properties. Usually
you would define the properties in your application.properties file.
Common server settings include:
server.port The listen port for incoming HTTP requests.
server.address The interface address to bind to.
server.sessionTimeout A session timeout.
See the ServerProperties class for a complete list.
Programmatic customization
If you need to configure your embdedded servlet container programmatically you can
register a Spring bean that implements the EmbeddedServletContainerCustomizer
interface.
EmbeddedServletContainerCustomizer
provides
access
to
the
ConfigurableEmbeddedServletContainer which includes numerous customization setter
methods.
import org.springframework.boot.context.embedded.*;
import org.springframework.stereotype.Component;

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@Component
public class CustomizationBean implements EmbeddedServletContainerCustomizer {
@Override
public void customize(ConfigurableEmbeddedServletContainer container) {
container.setPort(9000);
}
}

Customizing ConfigurableEmbeddedServletContainer directly

If the above customization techniques are too limited, you can register the
TomcatEmbeddedServletContainerFactory, JettyEmbeddedServletContainerFactory
or UndertowEmbeddedServletContainerFactory bean yourself.
@Bean
public EmbeddedServletContainerFactory servletContainer() {
TomcatEmbeddedServletContainerFactory factory = new TomcatEmbeddedServletContainerFactory();
factory.setPort(9000);
factory.setSessionTimeout(10, TimeUnit.MINUTES);
factory.addErrorPages(new ErrorPage(HttpStatus.NOT_FOUND, "/notfound.html"));
return factory;
}

Setters are provided for many configuration options. Several protected method hooks are also provided
should you need to do something more exotic. See the source code documentation for details.

JSP limitations
When running a Spring Boot application that uses an embedded servlet container (and is packaged as
an executable archive), there are some limitations in the JSP support.
With Tomcat it should work if you use war packaging, i.e. an executable war will work, and will also
be deployable to a standard container (not limited to, but including Tomcat). An executable jar will not
work because of a hard coded file pattern in Tomcat.
Jetty does not currently work as an embedded container with JSPs.
Undertow does not support JSPs.
There is a JSP sample so you can see how to set things up.

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27. Security
If Spring Security is on the classpath then web applications will be secure by default with basic
authentication on all HTTP endpoints. To add method-level security to a web application you can also
add @EnableGlobalMethodSecurity with your desired settings. Additional information can be found
in the Spring Security Reference.
The default AuthenticationManager has a single user (user username and random password,
printed at INFO level when the application starts up)
Using default security password: 78fa095d-3f4c-48b1-ad50-e24c31d5cf35

Note
If
you
fine
tune
your
logging
configuration,
ensure
that
the
org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.security category is set to log INFO
messages, otherwise the default password will not be printed.
You can change the password by providing a security.user.password. This and other useful
properties are externalized via SecurityProperties (properties prefix "security").
The default security configuration is implemented in SecurityAutoConfiguration and in the
classes imported from there (SpringBootWebSecurityConfiguration for web security and
AuthenticationManagerConfiguration for authentication configuration which is also relevant in
non-web applications). To switch off the Boot default configuration completely in a web application you
can add a bean with @EnableWebSecurity. To customize it you normally use external properties and
beans of type WebSecurityConfigurerAdapter (e.g. to add form-based login). There are several
secure applications in the Spring Boot samples to get you started with common use cases.
The basic features you get out of the box in a web application are:
An AuthenticationManager bean with in-memory store
SecurityProperties.User for the properties of the user).

and

single

user

(see

Ignored (unsecure) paths for common static resource locations (/css/**, /js/**, /images/**
and **/favicon.ico).
HTTP Basic security for all other endpoints.
Security events published to Springs ApplicationEventPublisher
unsuccessful authentication and access denied).

(successful

and

Common low-level features (HSTS, XSS, CSRF, caching) provided by Spring Security are on by
default.
All of the above can be switched on and off or modified using external
properties (security.*). To override the access rules without changing any other
autoconfigured features add a @Bean of type WebSecurityConfigurerAdapter with
@Order(SecurityProperties.ACCESS_OVERRIDE_ORDER).
If the Actuator is also in use, you will find:
The management endpoints are secure even if the application endpoints are unsecure.

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Security events are transformed into AuditEvents and published to the AuditService.
The default user will have the ADMIN role as well as the USER role.
The Actuator security features can be modified using external properties (management.security.*).
To override the application access rules add a @Bean of type WebSecurityConfigurerAdapter and
use @Order(SecurityProperties.ACCESS_OVERRIDE_ORDER) if you dont want to override the
actuator access rules, or @Order(ManagementServerProperties.ACCESS_OVERRIDE_ORDER)
if you do want to override the actuator access rules.

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28. Working with SQL databases

The Spring Framework provides extensive support for working with SQL databases. From direct JDBC
access using JdbcTemplate to complete object relational mapping technologies such as Hibernate.
Spring Data provides an additional level of functionality, creating Repository implementations directly
from interfaces and using conventions to generate queries from your method names.

28.1 Configure a DataSource

Javas javax.sql.DataSource interface provides a standard method of working with database
connections. Traditionally a DataSource uses a URL along with some credentials to establish a database
connection.

Embedded Database Support

Its often convenient to develop applications using an in-memory embedded database. Obviously, inmemory databases do not provide persistent storage; you will need to populate your database when
your application starts and be prepared to throw away data when your application ends.
Tip
The How-to section includes a section on how to initialize a database
Spring Boot can auto-configure embedded H2, HSQL and Derby databases. You dont need to provide
any connection URLs, simply include a build dependency to the embedded database that you want to
use.
For example, typical POM dependencies would be:
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-boot-starter-data-jpa</artifactId>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.hsqldb</groupId>
<artifactId>hsqldb</artifactId>
<scope>runtime</scope>
</dependency>

Note
You need a dependency on spring-jdbc for an embedded database to be auto-configured. In
this example its pulled in transitively via spring-boot-starter-data-jpa.

Connection to a production database

Production database connections can also be auto-configured using a pooling DataSource. Heres the
algorithm for choosing a specific implementation:
We prefer the Tomcat pooling DataSource for its performance and concurrency, so if that is available
we always choose it.
If HikariCP is available we will use it.
If Commons DBCP is available we will use it, but we dont recommend it in production.

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Lastly, if Commons DBCP2 is available we will use it.

If you use the spring-boot-starter-jdbc or spring-boot-starter-data-jpa starter POMs
you will automatically get a dependency to tomcat-jdbc.
Note
Additional connection pools can always be configured manually. If you define your own
DataSource bean, auto-configuration will not occur.
DataSource configuration is controlled by external configuration properties in spring.datasource.*.
For example, you might declare the following section in application.properties:
spring.datasource.url=jdbc:mysql://localhost/test
spring.datasource.username=dbuser
spring.datasource.password=dbpass
spring.datasource.driver-class-name=com.mysql.jdbc.Driver

See DataSourceProperties for more of the supported options. Note also that you can configure
any of the DataSource implementation specific properties via spring.datasource.*: refer to the
documentation of the connection pool implementation you are using for more details.
Tip
You often wont need to specify the driver-class-name since Spring boot can deduce it for
most databases from the url.
Note
For a pooling DataSource to be created we need to be able to verify that a valid
Driver class is available, so we check for that before doing anything. I.e. if you set
spring.datasource.driverClassName=com.mysql.jdbc.Driver then that class has to
be loadable.

Connection to a JNDI DataSource

If you are deploying your Spring Boot application to an Application Server you might want to configure
and manage your DataSource using your Application Servers built-in features and access it using JNDI.
The
spring.datasource.jndi-name
property
can
be
used
as
an
alternative
to
the
spring.datasource.url,
spring.datasource.username
and
spring.datasource.password properties to access the DataSource from a specific JNDI location.
For example, the following section in application.properties shows how you can access a JBoss
AS defined DataSource:
spring.datasource.jndi-name=java:jboss/datasources/customers

28.2 Using JdbcTemplate

Springs JdbcTemplate and NamedParameterJdbcTemplate classes are auto-configured and you
can @Autowire them directly into your own beans:
import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Autowired;
import org.springframework.jdbc.core.JdbcTemplate;

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import org.springframework.stereotype.Component;
@Component
public class MyBean {
private final JdbcTemplate jdbcTemplate;
@Autowired
public MyBean(JdbcTemplate jdbcTemplate) {
this.jdbcTemplate = jdbcTemplate;
}
// ...
}

28.3 JPA and Spring Data

The Java Persistence API is a standard technology that allows you to map objects to relational
databases. The spring-boot-starter-data-jpa POM provides a quick way to get started. It
provides the following key dependencies:
Hibernate One of the most popular JPA implementations.
Spring Data JPA Makes it easy to implement JPA-based repositories.
Spring ORMs Core ORM support from the Spring Framework.
Tip
We wont go into too many details of JPA or Spring Data here. You can follow the Accessing
Data with JPA guide from spring.io and read the Spring Data JPA and Hibernate reference
documentation.

Entity Classes
Traditionally, JPA Entity classes are specified in a persistence.xml file. With Spring Boot
this file is not necessary and instead Entity Scanning is used. By default all packages
below your main configuration class (the one annotated with @EnableAutoConfiguration or
@SpringBootApplication) will be searched.
Any classes annotated with @Entity, @Embeddable or @MappedSuperclass will be considered. A
typical entity class would look something like this:
package com.example.myapp.domain;
import java.io.Serializable;
import javax.persistence.*;
@Entity
public class City implements Serializable {
@Id
@GeneratedValue
private Long id;
@Column(nullable = false)
private String name;
@Column(nullable = false)
private String state;

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// ... additional members, often include @OneToMany mappings

protected City() {
// no-args constructor required by JPA spec
// this one is protected since it shouldn't be used directly
}
public City(String name, String state) {
this.name = name;
this.country = country;
}
public String getName() {
return this.name;
}
public String getState() {
return this.state;
}
// ... etc
}

Tip
You can customize entity scanning locations using the @EntityScan annotation. See the
Section 67.4, Separate @Entity definitions from Spring configuration how-to.

Spring Data JPA Repositories

Spring Data JPA repositories are interfaces that you can define to access data. JPA queries are created
automatically from your method names. For example, a CityRepository interface might declare a
findAllByState(String state) method to find all cities in a given state.
For more complex queries you can annotate your method using Spring Datas Query annotation.
Spring Data repositories usually extend from the Repository or CrudRepository interfaces.
If you are using auto-configuration, repositories will be searched from the package containing
your main configuration class (the one annotated with @EnableAutoConfiguration or
@SpringBootApplication) down.
Here is a typical Spring Data repository:
package com.example.myapp.domain;
import org.springframework.data.domain.*;
import org.springframework.data.repository.*;
public interface CityRepository extends Repository<City, Long> {
Page<City> findAll(Pageable pageable);
City findByNameAndCountryAllIgnoringCase(String name, String country);
}

Tip
We have barely scratched the surface of Spring Data JPA. For complete details check their
reference documentation.

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Creating and dropping JPA databases

By default, JPA databases will be automatically created only if you use an embedded database
(H2, HSQL or Derby). You can explicitly configure JPA settings using spring.jpa.* properties. For
example, to create and drop tables you can add the following to your application.properties.
spring.jpa.hibernate.ddl-auto=create-drop

Note
Hibernates own internal property name for this (if you happen to remember it better) is
hibernate.hbm2ddl.auto. You can set it, along with other Hibernate native properties, using
spring.jpa.properties.* (the prefix is stripped before adding them to the entity manager).
Example:
spring.jpa.properties.hibernate.globally_quoted_identifiers=true

passes hibernate.globally_quoted_identifiers to the Hibernate entity manager.

By default the DDL execution (or validation) is deferred until the ApplicationContext has started.
There is also a spring.jpa.generate-ddl flag, but it is not used if Hibernate autoconfig is active
because the ddl-auto settings are more fine-grained.

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29. Working with NoSQL technologies

Spring Data provides additional projects that help you access a variety of NoSQL technologies
including MongoDB, Neo4J, Elasticsearch, Solr, Redis, Gemfire, Couchbase and Cassandra. Spring
Boot provides auto-configuration for Redis, MongoDB, Elasticsearch, and Solr; you can make use of
the other projects, but you will need to configure them yourself. Refer to the appropriate reference
documentation at projects.spring.io/spring-data.

29.1 Redis
Redis is a cache, message broker and richly-featured key-value store. Spring Boot offers basic autoconfiguration for the Jedis client library and abstractions on top of it provided by Spring Data Redis. There
is a spring-boot-starter-redis Starter POM for collecting the dependencies in a convenient
way.

Connecting to Redis
You can inject an auto-configured RedisConnectionFactory, StringRedisTemplate or vanilla
RedisTemplate instance as you would any other Spring Bean. By default the instance will attempt to
connect to a Redis server using localhost:6379:
@Component
public class MyBean {
private StringRedisTemplate template;
@Autowired
public MyBean(StringRedisTemplate template) {
this.template = template;
}
// ...
}

If you add a @Bean of your own of any of the auto-configured types it will replace the default (except in
the case of RedisTemplate the exclusion is based on the bean name redisTemplate not its type). If
commons-pool2 is on the classpath you will get a pooled connection factory by default.

29.2 MongoDB
MongoDB is an open-source NoSQL document database that uses a JSON-like schema instead
of traditional table-based relational data. Spring Boot offers several conveniences for working with
MongoDB, including the spring-boot-starter-data-mongodb Starter POM.

Connecting to a MongoDB database

You can inject an auto-configured org.springframework.data.mongodb.MongoDbFactory to
access Mongo databases. By default the instance will attempt to connect to a MongoDB server using
the URL mongodb://localhost/test:
import org.springframework.data.mongodb.MongoDbFactory;
import com.mongodb.DB;
@Component

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public class MyBean {

private final MongoDbFactory mongo;
@Autowired
public MyBean(MongoDbFactory mongo) {
this.mongo = mongo;
}
// ...
public void example() {
DB db = mongo.getDb();
// ...
}
}

You can set spring.data.mongodb.uri property to change the url, or alternatively specify a
host/port. For example, you might declare the following in your application.properties:
spring.data.mongodb.host=mongoserver
spring.data.mongodb.port=27017

Tip
If spring.data.mongodb.port is not specified the default of 27017 is used. You could simply
delete this line from the sample above.
Tip
If you arent using Spring Data Mongo you can inject com.mongodb.Mongo beans instead of
using MongoDbFactory.
You can also declare your own MongoDbFactory or Mongo bean if you want to take complete control
of establishing the MongoDB connection.

MongoTemplate
Spring Data Mongo provides a MongoTemplate class that is very similar in its design to Springs
JdbcTemplate. As with JdbcTemplate Spring Boot auto-configures a bean for you to simply inject:
import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Autowired;
import org.springframework.data.mongodb.core.MongoTemplate;
import org.springframework.stereotype.Component;
@Component
public class MyBean {
private final MongoTemplate mongoTemplate;
@Autowired
public MyBean(MongoTemplate mongoTemplate) {
this.mongoTemplate = mongoTemplate;
}
// ...
}

See the MongoOperations Javadoc for complete details.

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Spring Data MongoDB repositories

Spring Data includes repository support for MongoDB. As with the JPA repositories discussed earlier,
the basic principle is that queries are constructed for you automatically based on method names.
In fact, both Spring Data JPA and Spring Data MongoDB share the same common infrastructure; so
you could take the JPA example from earlier and, assuming that City is now a Mongo data class rather
than a JPA @Entity, it will work in the same way.
package com.example.myapp.domain;
import org.springframework.data.domain.*;
import org.springframework.data.repository.*;
public interface CityRepository extends Repository<City, Long> {
Page<City> findAll(Pageable pageable);
City findByNameAndCountryAllIgnoringCase(String name, String country);
}

Tip
For complete details of Spring Data MongoDB, including its rich object mapping technologies,
refer to their reference documentation.

29.3 Gemfire
Spring Data Gemfire provides convenient Spring-friendly tools for accessing the Pivotal Gemfire
data management platform. There is a spring-boot-starter-data-gemfire Starter POM
for collecting the dependencies in a convenient way. There is currently no auto-configuration
support for Gemfire, but you can enable Spring Data Repositories with a single annotation
(@EnableGemfireRepositories).

29.4 Solr
Apache Solr is a search engine. Spring Boot offers basic auto-configuration for the Solr client library
and abstractions on top of it provided by Spring Data Solr. There is a spring-boot-starter-datasolr Starter POM for collecting the dependencies in a convenient way.

Connecting to Solr
You can inject an auto-configured SolrServer instance as you would any other Spring bean. By default
the instance will attempt to connect to a server using localhost:8983/solr:
@Component
public class MyBean {
private SolrServer solr;
@Autowired
public MyBean(SolrServer solr) {
this.solr = solr;
}
// ...

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If you add a @Bean of your own of type SolrServer it will replace the default.

Spring Data Solr repositories

Spring Data includes repository support for Apache Solr. As with the JPA repositories discussed earlier,
the basic principle is that queries are constructed for you automatically based on method names.
In fact, both Spring Data JPA and Spring Data Solr share the same common infrastructure; so you could
take the JPA example from earlier and, assuming that City is now a @SolrDocument class rather
than a JPA @Entity, it will work in the same way.
Tip
For complete details of Spring Data Solr, refer to their reference documentation.

29.5 Elasticsearch
Elasticsearch is an open source, distributed, real-time search and analytics engine. Spring Boot
offers basic auto-configuration for the Elasticsearch and abstractions on top of it provided by Spring
Data Elasticsearch. There is a spring-boot-starter-data-elasticsearch Starter POM for
collecting the dependencies in a convenient way.

Connecting to Elasticsearch
You can inject an auto-configured ElasticsearchTemplate or Elasticsearch Client instance as
you would any other Spring Bean. By default the instance will attempt to connect to a local inmemory server (a NodeClient in Elasticsearch terms), but you can switch to a remote server (i.e.
a TransportClient) by setting spring.data.elasticsearch.cluster-nodes to a commaseparated host:port list.
@Component
public class MyBean {
private ElasticsearchTemplate template;
@Autowired
public MyBean(ElasticsearchTemplate template) {
this.template = template;
}
// ...
}

If you add a @Bean of your own of type ElasticsearchTemplate it will replace the default.

Spring Data Elasticsearch repositories

Spring Data includes repository support for Elasticsearch. As with the JPA repositories discussed earlier,
the basic principle is that queries are constructed for you automatically based on method names.
In fact, both Spring Data JPA and Spring Data Elasticsearch share the same common infrastructure;
so you could take the JPA example from earlier and, assuming that City is now an Elasticsearch
@Document class rather than a JPA @Entity, it will work in the same way.

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Tip
For complete details of Spring Data Elasticsearch, refer to their reference documentation.

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30. Messaging
The Spring Framework provides extensive support for integrating with messaging systems: from
simplified use of the JMS API using JmsTemplate to a complete infrastructure to receive messages
asynchronously. Spring AMQP provides a similar feature set for the Advanced Message Queuing
Protocol and Spring Boot also provides auto-configuration options for RabbitTemplate and
RabbitMQ. There is also support for STOMP messaging natively in Spring WebSocket and Spring Boot
has support for that through starters and a small amount of auto-configuration.

30.1 JMS
The javax.jms.ConnectionFactory interface provides a standard method of creating
a javax.jms.Connection for interacting with a JMS broker. Although Spring needs a
ConnectionFactory to work with JMS, you generally wont need to use it directly yourself and you can
instead rely on higher level messaging abstractions (see the relevant section of the Spring Framework
reference documentation for details). Spring Boot also auto-configures the necessary infrastructure to
send and receive messages.

HornetQ support
Spring Boot can auto-configure a ConnectionFactory when it detects that HornetQ is available on
the classpath. If the broker is present, an embedded broker is started and configured automatically
(unless the mode property has been explicitly set). The supported modes are: embedded (to make
explicit that an embedded broker is required and should lead to an error if the broker is not available in
the classpath), and native to connect to a broker using the netty transport protocol. When the latter
is configured, Spring Boot configures a ConnectionFactory connecting to a broker running on the
local machine with the default settings.
Note
If you are using spring-boot-starter-hornetq the necessary dependencies to connect to
an existing HornetQ instance are provided, as well as the Spring infrastructure to integrate with
JMS. Adding org.hornetq:hornetq-jms-server to your application allows you to use the
embedded mode.
HornetQ configuration is controlled by external configuration properties in spring.hornetq.*. For
example, you might declare the following section in application.properties:
spring.hornetq.mode=native
spring.hornetq.host=192.168.1.210
spring.hornetq.port=9876

When embedding the broker, you can choose if you want to enable persistence,
and the list of destinations that should be made available. These can be specified
as a comma-separated list to create them with the default options; or you can
define bean(s) of type org.hornetq.jms.server.config.JMSQueueConfiguration or
org.hornetq.jms.server.config.TopicConfiguration, for advanced queue and topic
configurations respectively.
See HornetQProperties for more of the supported options.
No JNDI lookup is involved at all and destinations are resolved against their names, either using the
name attribute in the HornetQ configuration or the names provided through configuration.

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ActiveMQ support
Spring Boot can also configure a ConnectionFactory when it detects that ActiveMQ is available on
the classpath. If the broker is present, an embedded broker is started and configured automatically (as
long as no broker URL is specified through configuration).
ActiveMQ configuration is controlled by external configuration properties in spring.activemq.*. For
example, you might declare the following section in application.properties:
spring.activemq.broker-url=tcp://192.168.1.210:9876
spring.activemq.user=admin
spring.activemq.password=secret

See ActiveMQProperties for more of the supported options.

By default, ActiveMQ creates a destination if it does not exist yet, so destinations are resolved against
their provided names.

Using a JNDI ConnectionFactory

If you are running your application in an Application Server Spring Boot will attempt to locate
a JMS ConnectionFactory using JNDI. By default the locations java:/JmsXA and java:/
XAConnectionFactory will be checked. You can use the spring.jms.jndi-name property if you
need to specify an alternative location:
spring.jms.jndi-name=java:/MyConnectionFactory

Sending a message
Springs JmsTemplate is auto-configured and you can autowire it directly into your own beans:
import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Autowired;
import org.springframework.jms.core.JmsTemplate;
import org.springframework.stereotype.Component;
@Component
public class MyBean {
private final JmsTemplate jmsTemplate;
@Autowired
public MyBean(JmsTemplate jmsTemplate) {
this.jmsTemplate = jmsTemplate;
}
// ...
}

Note
JmsMessagingTemplate (new in Spring 4.1) can be injected in a similar manner.

Receiving a message
When the JMS infrastructure is present, any bean can be annotated with @JmsListener to create
a listener endpoint. If no JmsListenerContainerFactory has been defined, a default one is
configured automatically.

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The following component creates a listener endpoint on the someQueue destination:

@Component
public class MyBean {
@JmsListener(destination = "someQueue")
public void processMessage(String content) {
// ...
}
}

Check the Javadoc of @EnableJms for more details.

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31. Sending email

The Spring Framework provides an easy abstraction for sending email using the JavaMailSender
interface and Spring Boot provides auto-configuration for it as well as a starter module.
Tip
Check the reference documentation for a detailed explanation of how you can use
JavaMailSender.
If spring.mail.host and the relevant libraries (as defined by spring-boot-starter-mail) are
available, a default JavaMailSender is created if none exists. The sender can be further customized
by configuration items from the spring.mail namespace, see the MailProperties for more details.

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32. Distributed Transactions with JTA

Spring Boot supports distributed JTA transactions across multiple XA resources using either an
Atomikos or Bitronix embedded transaction manager. JTA transactions are also supported when
deploying to a suitable Java EE Application Server.
When a JTA environment is detected, Springs JtaTransactionManager will be used to manage
transactions. Auto-configured JMS, DataSource and JPA beans will be upgraded to support XA
transactions. You can use standard Spring idioms such as @Transactional to participate in a
distributed transaction. If you are within a JTA environment and still want to use local transactions you
can set the spring.jta.enabled property to false to disable the JTA auto-configuration.

32.1 Using an Atomikos transaction manager

Atomikos is a popular open source transaction manager which can be embedded into your Spring Boot
application. You can use the spring-boot-starter-jta-atomikos Starter POM to pull in the
appropriate Atomikos libraries. Spring Boot will auto-configure Atomikos and ensure that appropriate
depends-on settings are applied to your Spring beans for correct startup and shutdown ordering.
By default Atomikos transaction logs will be written to a transaction-logs directory in
your application home directory (the directory in which your application jar file resides).
You can customize this directory by setting a spring.jta.log-dir property in your
application.properties file. Properties starting spring.jta. can also be used to customize the
Atomikos UserTransactionServiceImp. See the AtomikosProperties Javadoc for complete
details.
Note
To ensure that multiple transaction managers can safely coordinate the same resource managers,
each Atomikos instance must be configured with a unique ID. By default this ID is the IP address
of the machine on which Atomikos is running. To ensure uniqueness in production, you should
configure the spring.jta.transaction-manager-id property with a different value for each
instance of your application.

32.2 Using a Bitronix transaction manager

Bitronix is another popular open source JTA transaction manager implementation. You can use the
spring-boot-starter-jta-bitronix starter POM to add the appropriate Birtronix dependencies
to your project. As with Atomikos, Spring Boot will automatically configure Bitronix and post-process
your beans to ensure that startup and shutdown ordering is correct.
By default Bitronix transaction log files (part1.btm and part2.btm) will be written to a
transaction-logs directory in your application home directory. You can customize this directory
by using the spring.jta.log-dir property. Properties starting spring.jta. are also bound to
the bitronix.tm.Configuration bean, allowing for complete customization. See the Bitronix
documentation for details.
Note
To ensure that multiple transaction managers can safely coordinate the same resource managers,
each Bitronix instance must be configured with a unique ID. By default this ID is the IP address

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of the machine on which Bitronix is running. To ensure uniqueness in production, you should
configure the spring.jta.transaction-manager-id property with a different value for each
instance of your application.

32.3 Using a Java EE managed transaction manager

If you are packaging your Spring Boot application as a war or ear file and deploying it to a Java
EE application server, you can use your application servers built-in transaction manager. Spring
Boot will attempt to auto-configure a transaction manager by looking at common JNDI locations
(java:comp/UserTransaction, java:comp/TransactionManager etc). If you are using a
transaction service provided by your application server, you will generally also want to ensure
that all resources are managed by the server and exposed over JNDI. Spring Boot will attempt
to auto-configure JMS by looking for a ConnectionFactory at the JNDI path java:/JmsXA or
java:/XAConnectionFactory and you can use the spring.datasource.jndi-name property
to configure your DataSource.

32.4 Mixing XA and non-XA JMS connections

When using JTA, the primary JMS ConnectionFactory bean will be XA aware and participate in
distributed transactions. In some situations you might want to process certain JMS messages using a
non-XA ConnectionFactory. For example, your JMS processing logic might take longer than the
XA timeout.
If you want to use a non-XA ConnectionFactory you can inject the nonXaJmsConnectionFactory
bean rather than the @Primary jmsConnectionFactory bean. For consistency the
jmsConnectionFactory bean is also provided using the bean alias xaJmsConnectionFactory.
For example:
// Inject the primary (XA aware) ConnectionFactory
@Autowired
private ConnectionFactory defaultConnectionFactory;
// Inject the XA aware ConnectionFactory (uses the alias and injects the same as above)
@Autowired
@Qualifier("xaJmsConnectionFactory")
private ConnectionFactory xaConnectionFactory;
// Inject the non-XA aware ConnectionFactory
@Autowired
@Qualifier("nonXaJmsConnectionFactory")
private ConnectionFactory nonXaConnectionFactory;

32.5 Supporting an alternative embedded transaction manager

The XAConnectionFactoryWrapper and XADataSourceWrapper interfaces can be used
to support alternative embedded transaction managers. The interfaces are responsible for
wrapping XAConnectionFactory and XADataSource beans and exposing them as regular
ConnectionFactory and DataSource beans which will transparently enroll in the distributed
transaction. DataSource and JMS auto-configuration will use JTA variants as long as you have
a JtaTransactionManager bean and appropriate XA wrapper beans registered within your
ApplicationContext.
The BitronixXAConnectionFactoryWrapper and BitronixXADataSourceWrapper provide good examples
of how to write XA wrappers.

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33. Spring Integration

Spring Integration provides abstractions over messaging and also other transports such
as HTTP, TCP etc. If Spring Integration is available on your classpath it will be
initialized through the @EnableIntegration annotation. Message processing statistics will
be published over JMX if 'spring-integration-jmx' is also on the classpath. See the
IntegrationAutoConfiguration class for more details.

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34. Monitoring and management over JMX

Java Management Extensions (JMX) provide a standard mechanism to monitor and manage
applications. By default Spring Boot will create an MBeanServer with bean id mbeanServer and
expose any of your beans that are annotated with Spring JMX annotations (@ManagedResource,
@ManagedAttribute, @ManagedOperation).
See the JmxAutoConfiguration class for more details.

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35. Testing
Spring Boot provides a number of useful tools for testing your application. The spring-bootstarter-test POM provides Spring Test, JUnit, Hamcrest and Mockito dependencies. There are also
useful test utilities in the core spring-boot module under the org.springframework.boot.test
package.

35.1 Test scope dependencies

If you use the spring-boot-starter-test Starter POM (in the test scope), you will find the
following provided libraries:
Spring Test integration test support for Spring applications.
JUnit The de-facto standard for unit testing Java applications.
Hamcrest A library of matcher objects (also known as constraints or predicates) allowing
assertThat style JUnit assertions.
Mockito A Java mocking framework.
These are common libraries that we generally find useful when writing tests. You are free to add
additional test dependencies of your own if these dont suit your needs.

35.2 Testing Spring applications

One of the major advantages of dependency injection is that it should make your code easier to unit
test. You can simply instantiate objects using the new operator without even involving Spring. You can
also use mock objects instead of real dependencies.
Often you need to move beyond unit testing and start integration testing (with a Spring
ApplicationContext actually involved in the process). Its useful to be able to perform integration
testing without requiring deployment of your application or needing to connect to other infrastructure.
The Spring Framework includes a dedicated test module for just such integration testing. You can
declare a dependency directly to org.springframework:spring-test or use the spring-bootstarter-test Starter POM to pull it in transitively.
If you have not used the spring-test module before you should start by reading the relevant section
of the Spring Framework reference documentation.

35.3 Testing Spring Boot applications

A Spring Boot application is just a Spring ApplicationContext so nothing very special has to be
done to test it beyond what you would normally do with a vanilla Spring context. One thing to watch out
for though is that the external properties, logging and other features of Spring Boot are only installed in
the context by default if you use SpringApplication to create it.
Spring Boot provides a @SpringApplicationConfiguration annotation as an alternative
to the standard spring-test @ContextConfiguration annotation. If you use
@SpringApplicationConfiguration to configure the ApplicationContext used in your tests,
it will be created via SpringApplication and you will get the additional Spring Boot features.
For example:

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@RunWith(SpringJUnit4ClassRunner.class)
@SpringApplicationConfiguration(classes = SampleDataJpaApplication.class)
public class CityRepositoryIntegrationTests {
@Autowired
CityRepository repository;
// ...
}

Tip
The context loader guesses whether you want to test a web application or not (e.g.
with MockMVC) by looking for the @WebIntegrationTest or @WebAppConfiguration
annotations. (MockMVC and @WebAppConfiguration are part of spring-test).
If you want a web application to start up and listen on its normal port, so you can test it with
HTTP (e.g. using RestTemplate), annotate your test class (or one of its superclasses) with
@WebIntegrationTest. This can be very useful because it means you can test the full stack of your
application, but also inject its components into the test class and use them to assert the internal state
of the application after an HTTP interaction. For example:
@RunWith(SpringJUnit4ClassRunner.class)
@SpringApplicationConfiguration(classes = SampleDataJpaApplication.class)
@WebIntegrationTest
public class CityRepositoryIntegrationTests {
@Autowired
CityRepository repository;
RestTemplate restTemplate = new TestRestTemplate();
// ... interact with the running server
}

Note
Springs test framework will cache application contexts between tests. Therefore, as long as your
tests share the same configuration, the time consuming process of starting and stopping the server
will only happen once, regardless of the number of tests that actually run.
To change the port you can add environment properties to @WebIntegrationTest as colonor equals-separated name-value pairs, e.g. @WebIntegrationTest("server.port:9000").
Additionally you can set the server.port and management.port properties to 0 in order to run your
integration tests using random ports. For example:
@RunWith(SpringJUnit4ClassRunner.class)
@SpringApplicationConfiguration(classes = MyApplication.class)
@WebIntegrationTest({"server.port=0", "management.port=0"})
public class SomeIntegrationTests {
// ...
}

See Section 64.5, Discover the HTTP port at runtime for a description of how you can discover the
actual port that was allocated for the duration of the tests.

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Using Spock to test Spring Boot applications

If you wish to use Spock to test a Spring Boot application you should add a dependency on Spocks
spock-spring module to your applications build. spock-spring integrates Springs test framework
into Spock.
Please note that you cannot use the @SpringApplicationConfiguration annotation that was
described above as Spock does not find the @ContextConfiguration meta-annotation. To work
around this limitation, you should use the @ContextConfiguration annotation directly and configure
it to use the Spring Boot specific context loader:
@ContextConfiguration(loader = SpringApplicationContextLoader.class)
class ExampleSpec extends Specification {
// ...
}

Note
The annotations described above can be used with Spock, i.e. you can annotate your
Specification with @WebIntegrationTest to suit the needs of your tests.

35.4 Test utilities

A few test utility classes are packaged as part of spring-boot that are generally useful when testing
your application.

ConfigFileApplicationContextInitializer
ConfigFileApplicationContextInitializer is an ApplicationContextInitializer that
can apply to your tests to load Spring Boot application.properties files. You can use this when
you dont need the full features provided by @SpringApplicationConfiguration.
@ContextConfiguration(classes = Config.class,
initializers = ConfigFileApplicationContextInitializer.class)

EnvironmentTestUtils
EnvironmentTestUtils allows you to quickly add properties to a ConfigurableEnvironment or
ConfigurableApplicationContext. Simply call it with key=value strings:
EnvironmentTestUtils.addEnvironment(env, "org=Spring", "name=Boot");

OutputCapture
OutputCapture is a JUnit Rule that you can use to capture System.out and System.err output.
Simply declare the capture as a @Rule then use toString() for assertions:
import org.junit.Rule;
import org.junit.Test;
import org.springframework.boot.test.OutputCapture;
import static org.hamcrest.Matchers.*;
import static org.junit.Assert.*;

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public class MyTest {

@Rule
public OutputCapture capture = new OutputCapture();
@Test
public void testName() throws Exception {
System.out.println("Hello World!");
assertThat(capture.toString(), containsString("World"));
}
}

TestRestTemplate
TestRestTemplate is a convenience subclass of Springs RestTemplate that is useful in integration
tests. You can get a vanilla template or one that sends Basic HTTP authentication (with a username
and password). In either case the template will behave in a test-friendly way: not following redirects (so
you can assert the response location), ignoring cookies (so the template is stateless), and not throwing
exceptions on server-side errors. It is recommended, but not mandatory, to use Apache HTTP Client
(version 4.3.2 or better), and if you have that on your classpath the TestRestTemplate will respond
by configuring the client appropriately.
public class MyTest {
RestTemplate template = new TestRestTemplate();
@Test
public void testRequest() throws Exception {
HttpHeaders headers = template.getForEntity("http://myhost.com", String.class).getHeaders();
assertThat(headers.getLocation().toString(), containsString("myotherhost"));
}
}

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36. Developing auto-configuration and using

conditions
If you work in a company that develops shared libraries, or if you work on an open-source or commercial
library, you might want to develop your own auto-configuration. Auto-configuration classes can be
bundled in external jars and still be picked-up by Spring Boot.

36.1 Understanding auto-configured beans

Under the hood, auto-configuration is implemented with standard @Configuration classes. Additional
@Conditional annotations are used to constrain when the auto-configuration should apply. Usually
auto-configuration classes use @ConditionalOnClass and @ConditionalOnMissingBean
annotations. This ensures that auto-configuration only applies when relevant classes are found and
when you have not declared your own @Configuration.
You can browse the source code of spring-boot-autoconfigure to see the @Configuration
classes that we provide (see the META-INF/spring.factories file).

36.2 Locating auto-configuration candidates

Spring Boot checks for the presence of a META-INF/spring.factories file within your published
jar. The file should list your configuration classes under the EnableAutoConfiguration key.
org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.EnableAutoConfiguration=\
com.mycorp.libx.autoconfigure.LibXAutoConfiguration,\
com.mycorp.libx.autoconfigure.LibXWebAutoConfiguration

You can use the @AutoConfigureAfter or @AutoConfigureBefore annotations if your

configuration needs to be applied in a specific order. For example, if you provide web-specific
configuration, your class may need to be applied after WebMvcAutoConfiguration.

36.3 Condition annotations

You almost always want to include one or more @Conditional annotations on your auto-configuration
class. The @ConditionalOnMissingBean is one common example that is used to allow developers
to override auto-configuration if they are not happy with your defaults.
Spring Boot includes a number of @Conditional annotations that you can reuse in your own code by
annotating @Configuration classes or individual @Bean methods.

Class conditions
The @ConditionalOnClass and @ConditionalOnMissingClass annotations allows
configuration to be included based on the presence or absence of specific classes. Due to the fact that
annotation metadata is parsed using ASM you can actually use the value attribute to refer to the real
class, even though that class might not actually appear on the running application classpath. You can
also use the name attribute if you prefer to specify the class name using a String value.

Bean conditions
The @ConditionalOnBean and @ConditionalOnMissingBean annotations allow configurations
to be included based on the presence or absence of specific beans. You can use the value attribute

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to specify beans by type, or name to specify beans by name. The search attribute allows you to limit
the ApplicationContext hierarchy that should be considered when searching for beans.
Note
@Conditional annotations are processed when @Configuration classes are parsed. Autoconfigured @Configuration is always parsed last (after any user defined beans), however, if
you are using these annotations on regular @Configuration classes, care must be taken not
to refer to bean definitions that have not yet been created.

Property conditions
The @ConditionalOnProperty annotation allows configuration to be included based on a Spring
Environment property. Use the prefix and name attributes to specify the property that should be
checked. By default any property that exists and is not equal to false will be matched. You can also
create more advanced checks using the havingValue and matchIfMissing attributes.

Resource conditions
The @ConditionalOnResource annotation allows configuration to be included only when a specific
resource is present. Resources can be specified using the usual Spring conventions, for example,
file:/home/user/test.dat.

Web application conditions

The @ConditionalOnWebApplication and @ConditionalOnNotWebApplication annotations
allow configuration to be included depending on whether the application is a 'web application'. A web
application is any application that is using a Spring WebApplicationContext, defines a session
scope or has a StandardServletEnvironment.

SpEL expression conditions

The @ConditionalOnExpression annotation allows configuration to be included based on the result
of a SpEL expression.

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37. WebSockets
Spring Boot provides WebSockets auto-configuration for embedded Tomcat (8 and 7), Jetty 9 and
Undertow. If youre deploying a war file to a standalone container, Spring Boot assumes that the
container will be responsible for the configuration of its WebSocket support.
Spring Framework provides rich WebSocket support that can be easily accessed via the springboot-starter-websocket module.

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38. What to read next

If you want to learn more about any of the classes discussed in this section you can check out the Spring
Boot API documentation or you can browse the source code directly. If you have specific questions,
take a look at the how-to section.
If you are comfortable with Spring Boots core features, you can carry on and read about productionready features.

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Production-ready features
Spring Boot includes a number of additional features to help you monitor and manage your application
when its pushed to production. You can choose to manage and monitor your application using HTTP
endpoints, with JMX or even by remote shell (SSH or Telnet). Auditing, health and metrics gathering
can be automatically applied to your application.

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39. Enabling production-ready features

The spring-boot-actuator module provides all of Spring Boots production-ready features. The
simplest way to enable the features is to add a dependency to the spring-boot-starter-actuator
Starter POM.
Definition of Actuator
An actuator is a manufacturing term, referring to a mechanical device for moving or controlling
something. Actuators can generate a large amount of motion from a small change.
To add the actuator to a Maven based project, add the following starter dependency:
<dependencies>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-boot-starter-actuator</artifactId>
</dependency>
</dependencies>

For Gradle, use the declaration:

dependencies {
compile("org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-actuator")
}

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40. Endpoints
Actuator endpoints allow you to monitor and interact with your application. Spring Boot includes a
number of built-in endpoints and you can also add your own. For example the health endpoint provides
basic application health information.
The way that endpoints are exposed will depend on the type of technology that you choose. Most
applications choose HTTP monitoring, where the ID of the endpoint is mapped to a URL. For example,
by default, the health endpoint will be mapped to /health.
The following endpoints are available:
ID

Description

Sensitive

autoconfig

Displays an auto-configuration report showing all autoconfiguration candidates and the reason why they were or
were not applied.

true

beans

Displays a complete list of all the Spring beans in your

application.

true

configprops

Displays a collated list of all @ConfigurationProperties.

true

dump

Performs a thread dump.

true

env

Exposes properties from Springs

ConfigurableEnvironment.

true

health

Shows application health information (a simple status when

false
accessed over an unauthenticated connection or full message
details when authenticated).

info

Displays arbitrary application info.

false

metrics

Shows metrics information for the current application.

true

mappings

Displays a collated list of all @RequestMapping paths.

true

shutdown

Allows the application to be gracefully shutdown (not enabled

by default).

true

trace

Displays trace information (by default the last few HTTP

requests).

true

Note
Depending on how an endpoint is exposed, the sensitive property may be used as a security
hint. For example, sensitive endpoints will require a username/password when they are accessed
over HTTP (or simply disabled if web security is not enabled).

40.1 Customizing endpoints

Endpoints can be customized using Spring properties. You can change if an endpoint is enabled, if it
is considered sensitive and even its id.

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For example, here is an application.properties that changes the sensitivity and id of the beans
endpoint and also enables shutdown.
endpoints.beans.id=springbeans
endpoints.beans.sensitive=false
endpoints.shutdown.enabled=true

Note
The prefix #endpoints + . + name is used to uniquely identify the endpoint that is being
configured.
By default, all endpoints except for shutdown are enabled. If you prefer to specifically opt-in endpoint
enablement you can use the endpoints.enabled property. For example, the following will disable
all endpoints except for info:
endpoints.enabled=false
endpoints.info.enabled=true

40.2 Health information

Health information can be used to check the status of your running application. It is often used by
monitoring software to alert someone if a production system goes down. The default information exposed
by the health endpoint depends on how it is accessed. For an insecure unauthenticated connection a
simple status message is returned, for a secure or authenticated connection additional details are also
displayed (see Section 41.6, HTTP health endpoint access restrictions for HTTP details).
Health information is collected from all HealthIndicator beans defined in your
ApplicationContext. Spring Boot includes a number of auto-configured HealthIndicators and
you can also write your own.

40.3 Security with HealthIndicators

Information returned by HealthIndicators is often somewhat sensitive in nature. For example, you
probably dont want to publish details of your database server to the world. For this reason, by default,
only the health status is exposed over an unauthenticated HTTP connection. If you are happy for
complete health information to always be exposed you can set endpoints.health.sensitive to
false.
Health responses are also cached to prevent denial of service attacks. Use the
endpoints.health.time-to-live property if you want to change the default cache period of 1000
milliseconds.

Auto-configured HealthIndicators
The following HealthIndicators are auto-configured by Spring Boot when appropriate:
Name

Description

DiskSpaceHealthIndicator
Checks for low disk space.
DataSourceHealthIndicator
Checks that a connection to DataSource can be obtained.

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Name

Description

MongoHealthIndicator
Checks that a Mongo database is up.
RabbitHealthIndicator
Checks that a Rabbit server is up.
RedisHealthIndicator
Checks that a Redis server is up.
SolrHealthIndicator
Checks that a Solr server is up.

Writing custom HealthIndicators

To provide custom health information you can register Spring beans that implement the
HealthIndicator interface. You need to provide an implementation of the health() method and
return a Health response. The Health response should include a status and can optionally include
additional details to be displayed.
import org.springframework.boot.actuate.health.HealthIndicator;
import org.springframework.stereotype.Component;
@Component
public class MyHealth implements HealthIndicator {
@Override
public Health health() {
int errorCode = check(); // perform some specific health check
if (errorCode != 0) {
return Health.down().withDetail("Error Code", errorCode).build();
}
return Health.up().build();
}
}

In addition to Spring Boots predefined Status types, it is also possible for Health to return a
custom Status that represents a new system state. In such cases a custom implementation of the
HealthAggregator interface also needs to be provided, or the default implementation has to be
configured using the management.health.status.order configuration property.
For example, assuming a new Status with code FATAL is being used in one of your
HealthIndicator implementations. To configure the severity order add the following to your
application properties:
management.health.status.order=DOWN, OUT_OF_SERVICE, UNKNOWN, UP

You might also want to register custom status mappings with the HealthMvcEndpoint
if you access the health endpoint over HTTP. For example you could map FATAL to
HttpStatus.SERVICE_UNAVAILABLE.

40.4 Custom application info information

You can customize the data exposed by the info endpoint by setting info.* Spring properties. All
Environment properties under the info key will be automatically exposed. For example, you could add
the following to your application.properties:
info.app.name=MyService
info.app.description=My awesome service
info.app.version=1.0.0

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Automatically expand info properties at build time

Rather than hardcoding some properties that are also specified in your projects build configuration, you
can automatically expand info properties using the existing build configuration instead. This is possible
in both Maven and Gradle.
Automatic property expansion using Maven
You can automatically expand info properties from the Maven project using resource filtering. If you use
the spring-boot-starter-parent you can then refer to your Maven project properties via @..@
placeholders, e.g.
project.artifactId=myproject
project.name=Demo
project.version=X.X.X.X
project.description=Demo project for info endpoint
[email protected]@
[email protected]@
[email protected]@
[email protected]@

Note
In the above example we used project.* to set some values to be used as fallbacks if the
Maven resource filtering has not been switched on for some reason.
Tip
The spring-boot:run maven goal adds src/main/resources directly to the classpath (for
hot reloading purposes). This circumvents the resource filtering and this feature. You can use the
exec:java goal instead or customize the plugins configuration, see the plugin usage page for
more details.
If you dont use the starter parent, in your pom.xml you need (inside the <build/> element):
<resources>
<resource>
<directory>src/main/resources</directory>
<filtering>true</filtering>
</resource>
</resources>

and (inside <plugins/>):

<plugin>
<groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
<artifactId>maven-resources-plugin</artifactId>
<version>2.6</version>
<configuration>
<delimiters>
<delimiter>@</delimiter>
</delimiters>
</configuration>
</plugin>

Automatic property expansion using Gradle

You can automatically expand info properties from the Gradle project by configuring the Java plugins
processResources task to do so:

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processResources {
expand(project.properties)
}

You can then refer to your Gradle projects properties via placeholders, e.g.
info.build.name=${name}
info.build.description=${description}
info.build.version=${version}

Note
Gradles expand method uses Groovys SimpleTemplateEngine which transforms ${..}
tokens. The ${..} style conflicts with Springs own property placeholder mechanism. To use
Spring property placeholders together with automatic expansion the Spring property placeholders
need to be escaped like \${..}.

Git commit information

Another useful feature of the info endpoint is its ability to publish information about the state of your
git source code repository when the project was built. If a git.properties file is contained in your
jar the git.branch and git.commit properties will be loaded.
For Maven users the spring-boot-starter-parent POM includes a pre-configured plugin to
generate a git.properties file. Simply add the following declaration to your POM:
<build>
<plugins>
<plugin>
<groupId>pl.project13.maven</groupId>
<artifactId>git-commit-id-plugin</artifactId>
</plugin>
</plugins>
</build>

A similar gradle-git plugin is also available for Gradle users, although a little more work is required
to generate the properties file.

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41. Monitoring and management over HTTP

If you are developing a Spring MVC application, Spring Boot Actuator will auto-configure all enabled
endpoints to be exposed over HTTP. The default convention is to use the id of the endpoint as the URL
path. For example, health is exposed as /health.

41.1 Securing sensitive endpoints

If you add Spring Security to your project, all sensitive endpoints exposed over HTTP will be protected.
By default basic authentication will be used with the username user and a generated password (which
is printed on the console when the application starts).
Tip
Generated passwords are logged as the application starts. Search for Using default security
password.
You can use Spring properties to change the username and password and to change the
security role required to access the endpoints. For example, you might set the following in your
application.properties:
security.user.name=admin
security.user.password=secret
management.security.role=SUPERUSER

Tip
If you dont use Spring Security and your HTTP endpoints are exposed publicly, you should
carefully consider which endpoints you enable. See Section 40.1, Customizing endpoints for
details of how you can set endpoints.enabled to false then opt-in only specific endpoints.

41.2 Customizing the management server context path

Sometimes it is useful to group all management endpoints under a single path. For example, your
application might already use /info for another purpose. You can use the management.contextpath property to set a prefix for your management endpoint:
management.context-path=/manage

The application.properties example above will change the endpoint from /{id} to /manage/
{id} (e.g. /manage/info).

41.3 Customizing the management server port

Exposing management endpoints using the default HTTP port is a sensible choice for cloud based
deployments. If, however, your application runs inside your own data center you may prefer to expose
endpoints using a different HTTP port.
The management.port property can be used to change the HTTP port.
management.port=8081

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Since your management port is often protected by a firewall, and not exposed to the public you might
not need security on the management endpoints, even if your main application is secure. In that case
you will have Spring Security on the classpath, and you can disable management security like this:
management.security.enabled=false

(If you dont have Spring Security on the classpath then there is no need to explicitly disable the
management security in this way, and it might even break the application.)

41.4 Customizing the management server address

You can customize the address that the management endpoints are available on by setting the
management.address property. This can be useful if you want to listen only on an internal or opsfacing network, or to only listen for connections from localhost.
Note
You can only listen on a different address if the port is different to the main server port.
Here is an example application.properties that will not allow remote management connections:
management.port=8081
management.address=127.0.0.1

41.5 Disabling HTTP endpoints

If you dont want to expose endpoints over HTTP you can set the management port to -1:
management.port=-1

41.6 HTTP health endpoint access restrictions

The information exposed by the health endpoint varies depending on whether or not its accessed
anonymously. By default, when accessed anonymously, any details about the servers health are hidden
and the endpoint will simply indicate whether or not the server is up or down. Furthermore, when
accessed anonymously, the response is cached for a configurable period to prevent the endpoint
being used in a denial of service attack. The endpoints.health.time-to-live property is used
to configure the caching period in milliseconds. It defaults to 1000, i.e. one second.
The above-described restrictions can be disabled, thereby allowing anonymous users full access to the
health endpoint. To do so, set endpoints.health.sensitive to false.

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42. Monitoring and management over JMX

Java Management Extensions (JMX) provide a standard mechanism to monitor and manage
applications. By default Spring Boot will expose management endpoints as JMX MBeans under the
org.springframework.boot domain.

42.1 Customizing MBean names

The name of the MBean is usually generated from the id of the endpoint. For example the health
endpoint is exposed as org.springframework.boot/Endpoint/HealthEndpoint.
If your application contains more than one Spring ApplicationContext you may find that names
clash. To solve this problem you can set the endpoints.jmx.uniqueNames property to true so that
MBean names are always unique.
You can also customize the JMX domain under which endpoints are exposed. Here is an example
application.properties:
endpoints.jmx.domain=myapp
endpoints.jmx.uniqueNames=true

42.2 Disabling JMX endpoints

If you dont want to expose endpoints over JMX you can set the spring.jmx.enabled property to
false:
spring.jmx.enabled=false

42.3 Using Jolokia for JMX over HTTP

Jolokia is a JMX-HTTP bridge giving an alternative method of accessing JMX beans. To use Jolokia,
simply include a dependency to org.jolokia:jolokia-core. For example, using Maven you would
add the following:
<dependency>
<groupId>org.jolokia</groupId>
<artifactId>jolokia-core</artifactId>
</dependency>

Jolokia can then be accessed using /jolokia on your management HTTP server.

Customizing Jolokia
Jolokia has a number of settings that you would traditionally configure using servlet parameters.
With Spring Boot you can use your application.properties, simply prefix the parameter with
jolokia.config.:
jolokia.config.debug=true

Disabling Jolokia
If you are using Jolokia but you dont want Spring Boot to configure it, simply set the
endpoints.jolokia.enabled property to false:

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endpoints.jolokia.enabled=false

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43. Monitoring and management using a remote

shell
Spring Boot supports an integrated Java shell called CRaSH. You can use CRaSH to ssh or telnet
into your running application. To enable remote shell support add a dependency to spring-bootstarter-remote-shell:
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-boot-starter-remote-shell</artifactId>
</dependency>

Tip
If you want to also enable telnet access you will additionally need a dependency on
org.crsh:crsh.shell.telnet.

43.1 Connecting to the remote shell

By default the remote shell will listen for connections on port 2000. The default user is user and the
default password will be randomly generated and displayed in the log output. If your application is using
Spring Security, the shell will use the same configuration by default. If not, a simple authentication will
be applied and you should see a message like this:
Using default password for shell access: ec03e16c-4cf4-49ee-b745-7c8255c1dd7e

Linux and OSX users can use ssh to connect to the remote shell, Windows users can download and
install PuTTY.
$ ssh -p 2000 user@localhost
user@localhost's password:
.
____
_
__ _ _
/\\ / ___'_ __ _ _(_)_ __ __ _ \ \ \ \
( ( )\___ | '_ | '_| | '_ \/ _` | \ \ \ \
\\/ ___)| |_)| | | | | || (_| | ) ) ) )
' |____| .__|_| |_|_| |_\__, | / / / /
=========|_|==============|___/=/_/_/_/
:: Spring Boot :: (v1.2.5.RELEASE) on myhost

Type help for a list of commands. Spring Boot provides metrics, beans, autoconfig and endpoint
commands.

Remote shell credentials

You can use the shell.auth.simple.user.name and shell.auth.simple.user.password
properties to configure custom connection credentials. It is also possible to use a Spring
Security AuthenticationManager to handle login duties. See the CrshAutoConfiguration and
ShellProperties Javadoc for full details.

43.2 Extending the remote shell

The remote shell can be extended in a number of interesting ways.

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Remote shell commands

You can write additional shell commands using Groovy or Java (see the CRaSH documentation for
details). By default Spring Boot will search for commands in the following locations:
classpath*:/commands/**
classpath*:/crash/commands/**
Tip
You can change the search path by settings a shell.command-path-patterns property.
Here is a simple hello world command that could be loaded from src/main/resources/commands/
hello.groovy
package commands
import org.crsh.cli.Usage
import org.crsh.cli.Command
class hello {
@Usage("Say Hello")
@Command
def main(InvocationContext context) {
return "Hello"
}
}

Spring Boot adds some additional attributes to InvocationContext that you can access from your
command:
Attribute Name

Description

spring.boot.version

The version of Spring Boot

spring.version

The version of the core Spring Framework

spring.beanfactory

Access to the Spring BeanFactory

spring.environment

Access to the Spring Environment

Remote shell plugins

In addition to new commands, it is also possible to extend other CRaSH shell features. All Spring Beans
that extend org.crsh.plugin.CRaSHPlugin will be automatically registered with the shell.
For more information please refer to the CRaSH reference documentation.

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44. Metrics
Spring Boot Actuator includes a metrics service with gauge and counter support. A gauge records
a single value; and a counter records a delta (an increment or decrement). Spring Boot Actuator also
provides a PublicMetrics interface that you can implement to expose metrics that you cannot record
via one of those two mechanisms. Look at SystemPublicMetrics for an example.
Metrics for all HTTP requests are automatically recorded, so if you hit the metrics endpoint you should
see a response similar to this:
{
"counter.status.200.root": 20,
"counter.status.200.metrics": 3,
"counter.status.200.star-star": 5,
"counter.status.401.root": 4,
"gauge.response.star-star": 6,
"gauge.response.root": 2,
"gauge.response.metrics": 3,
"classes": 5808,
"classes.loaded": 5808,
"classes.unloaded": 0,
"heap": 3728384,
"heap.committed": 986624,
"heap.init": 262144,
"heap.used": 52765,
"mem": 986624,
"mem.free": 933858,
"processors": 8,
"threads": 15,
"threads.daemon": 11,
"threads.peak": 15,
"uptime": 494836,
"instance.uptime": 489782,
"datasource.primary.active": 5,
"datasource.primary.usage": 0.25
}

Here we can see basic memory, heap, class loading, processor and thread pool information
along with some HTTP metrics. In this instance the root (/) and /metrics URLs have returned HTTP
200 responses 20 and 3 times respectively. It also appears that the root URL returned HTTP 401
(unauthorized) 4 times. The double asterix (star-star) comes from a request matched by Spring
MVC as /** (normally a static resource).
The gauge shows the last response time for a request. So the last request to root took 2ms to respond
and the last to /metrics took 3ms.
Note
In this example we are actually accessing the endpoint over HTTP using the /metrics URL, this
explains why metrics appears in the response.

44.1 System metrics

The following system metrics are exposed by Spring Boot:
The total system memory in KB (mem)
The amount of free memory in KB (mem.free)

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The number of processors (processors)

The system uptime in milliseconds (uptime)
The application context uptime in milliseconds (instance.uptime)
The average system load (systemload.average)
Heap information in KB (heap, heap.committed, heap.init, heap.used)
Thread information (threads, thread.peak, thead.daemon)
Class load information (classes, classes.loaded, classes.unloaded)
Garbage collection information (gc.xxx.count, gc.xxx.time)

44.2 DataSource metrics

The following metrics are exposed for each supported DataSource defined in your application:
The number of active connections (datasource.xxx.active)
The current usage of the connection pool (datasource.xxx.usage).
All data source metrics share the datasource. prefix. The prefix is further qualified for each data
source:
If the data source is the primary data source (that is either the only available data source or the one
flagged @Primary amongst the existing ones), the prefix is datasource.primary.
If the data source bean name ends with DataSource, the prefix is the name of the bean without
DataSource (i.e. datasource.batch for batchDataSource).
In all other cases, the name of the bean is used.
It is possible to override part or all of those defaults by registering a bean with a customized version
of DataSourcePublicMetrics. By default, Spring Boot provides metadata for all supported data
sources; you can add additional DataSourcePoolMetadataProvider beans if your favorite data
source isnt supported out of the box. See DataSourcePoolMetadataProvidersConfiguration
for examples.

44.3 Tomcat session metrics

If you are using Tomcat as your embedded servlet container, session metrics will automatically be
exposed. The httpsessions.active and httpsessions.max keys provide the number of active
and maximum sessions.

44.4 Recording your own metrics

To record your own metrics inject a CounterService and/or GaugeService into your bean.
The CounterService exposes increment, decrement and reset methods; the GaugeService
provides a submit method.
Here is a simple example that counts the number of times that a method is invoked:

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import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Autowired;
import org.springframework.boot.actuate.metrics.CounterService;
import org.springframework.stereotype.Service;
@Service
public class MyService {
private final CounterService counterService;
@Autowired
public MyService(CounterService counterService) {
this.counterService = counterService;
}
public void exampleMethod() {
this.counterService.increment("services.system.myservice.invoked");
}
}

Tip
You can use any string as a metric name but you should follow guidelines of your chosen store/
graphing technology. Some good guidelines for Graphite are available on Matt Aimonettis Blog.

44.5 Adding your own public metrics

To add additional metrics that are computed every time the metrics endpoint is invoked, simply register
additional PublicMetrics implementation bean(s). By default, all such beans are gathered by the
endpoint. You can easily change that by defining your own MetricsEndpoint.

44.6 Metric repositories

Metric service implementations are usually bound to a MetricRepository. A MetricRepository
is responsible for storing and retrieving metric information. Spring Boot provides an
InMemoryMetricRepository and a RedisMetricRepository out of the box (the in-memory
repository is the default) but you can also write your own. The MetricRepository interface is actually
composed of higher level MetricReader and MetricWriter interfaces. For full details refer to the
Javadoc.
Theres nothing to stop you hooking a MetricRepository with back-end storage directly into your
app, but we recommend using the default InMemoryMetricRepository (possibly with a custom Map
instance if you are worried about heap usage) and populating a back-end repository through a scheduled
export job. In that way you get some buffering in memory of the metric values and you can reduce the
network chatter by exporting less frequently or in batches. Spring Boot provides an Exporter interface
and a few basic implementations for you to get started with that.

44.7 Dropwizard Metrics

User
of
the
Dropwizard
Metrics
library
will
automatically
find
that
Spring
Boot metrics are published to com.codahale.metrics.MetricRegistry. A default
com.codahale.metrics.MetricRegistry Spring bean will be created when you declare a
dependency to the io.dropwizard.metrics:metrics-core library; you can also register you own
@Bean instance if you need customizations. Metrics from the MetricRegistry are also automatically
exposed via the /metrics endpoint.

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Users can create Dropwizard metrics by prefixing their metric names with the appropriate type (e.g.
histogram.*, meter.*).

44.8 Message channel integration

If the Spring Messaging jar is on your classpath a MessageChannel called metricsChannel is
automatically created (unless one already exists). All metric update events are additionally published
as messages on that channel. Additional analysis or actions can be taken by clients subscribing to
that channel.

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45. Auditing
Spring Boot Actuator has a flexible audit framework that will publish events once Spring Security is
in play (authentication success, failure and access denied exceptions by default). This can be very
useful for reporting, and also to implement a lock-out policy based on authentication failures.
You can also choose to use the audit services for your own business events. To do that you can either
inject the existing AuditEventRepository into your own components and use that directly, or you
can simply publish AuditApplicationEvent via the Spring ApplicationEventPublisher (using
ApplicationEventPublisherAware).

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46. Tracing
Tracing is automatically enabled for all HTTP requests. You can view the trace endpoint and obtain
basic information about the last few requests:
[{
"timestamp": 1394343677415,
"info": {
"method": "GET",
"path": "/trace",
"headers": {
"request": {
"Accept": "text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8",
"Connection": "keep-alive",
"Accept-Encoding": "gzip, deflate",
"User-Agent": "Mozilla/5.0 Gecko/Firefox",
"Accept-Language": "en-US,en;q=0.5",
"Cookie": "_ga=GA1.1.827067509.1390890128; ..."
"Authorization": "Basic ...",
"Host": "localhost:8080"
},
"response": {
"Strict-Transport-Security": "max-age=31536000 ; includeSubDomains",
"X-Application-Context": "application:8080",
"Content-Type": "application/json;charset=UTF-8",
"status": "200"
}
}
}
},{
"timestamp": 1394343684465,
...
}]

46.1 Custom tracing

If you need to trace additional events you can inject a TraceRepository into your Spring beans. The
add method accepts a single Map structure that will be converted to JSON and logged.
By default an InMemoryTraceRepository will be used that stores the last 100 events. You can define
your own instance of the InMemoryTraceRepository bean if you need to expand the capacity. You
can also create your own alternative TraceRepository implementation if needed.

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47. Process monitoring

In Spring Boot Actuator you can find a couple of classes to create files that are useful for process
monitoring:
ApplicationPidFileWriter creates a file containing the application PID (by default in the
application directory with the file name application.pid).
EmbeddedServerPortFileWriter creates a file (or files) containing the ports of the embedded
server (by default in the application directory with the file name application.port).
These writers are not activated by default, but you can enable them in one of the ways described below.

47.1 Extend configuration

In META-INF/spring.factories file you have to activate the listener(s):
org.springframework.context.ApplicationListener=\
org.springframework.boot.actuate.system.ApplicationPidFileWriter,
org.springframework.boot.actuate.system.EmbeddedServerPortFileWriter

47.2 Programmatically
You can also activate a listener by invoking the SpringApplication.addListeners() method
and passing the appropriate Writer object. This method also allows you to customize the file name
and path via the Writer constructor.

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48. What to read next

If you want to explore some of the concepts discussed in this chapter, you can take a look at the actuator
sample applications. You also might want to read about graphing tools such as Graphite.
Otherwise, you can continue on, to read about cloud deployment options or jump ahead for some indepth information about Spring Boots build tool plugins.

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Part VI. Deploying to the cloud

Spring Boots executable jars are ready-made for most popular cloud PaaS (platform-as-a-service)
providers. These providers tend to require that you bring your own container; they manage application
processes (not Java applications specifically), so they need some intermediary layer that adapts your
application to the clouds notion of a running process.
Two popular cloud providers, Heroku and Cloud Foundry, employ a buildpack approach. The buildpack
wraps your deployed code in whatever is needed to start your application: it might be a JDK and a call to
java, it might be an embedded webserver, or it might be a full-fledged application server. A buildpack
is pluggable, but ideally you should be able to get by with as few customizations to it as possible. This
reduces the footprint of functionality that is not under your control. It minimizes divergence between
development and production environments.
Ideally, your application, like a Spring Boot executable jar, has everything that it needs to run packaged
within it.
In this section well look at what it takes to get the simple application that we developed in the Getting
Started section up and running in the Cloud.

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49. Cloud Foundry

Cloud Foundry provides default buildpacks that come into play if no other buildpack is specified. The
Cloud Foundry Java buildpack has excellent support for Spring applications, including Spring Boot. You
can deploy stand-alone executable jar applications, as well as traditional .war packaged applications.
Once youve built your application (using, for example, mvn clean package) and installed the cf
command line tool, simply deploy your application using the cf push command as follows, substituting
the path to your compiled .jar. Be sure to have logged in with your cf command line client before
pushing an application.
$ cf push acloudyspringtime -p target/demo-0.0.1-SNAPSHOT.jar

See the cf push documentation for more options. If there is a Cloud Foundry manifest.yml file
present in the same directory, it will be consulted.
Note
Here we are substituting acloudyspringtime for whatever value you give cf as the name of
your application.
At this point cf will start uploading your application:
Uploading acloudyspringtime... OK
Preparing to start acloudyspringtime... OK
-----> Downloaded app package (8.9M)
-----> Java Buildpack source: system
-----> Downloading Open JDK 1.7.0_51 from .../x86_64/openjdk-1.7.0_51.tar.gz (1.8s)
Expanding Open JDK to .java-buildpack/open_jdk (1.2s)
-----> Downloading Spring Auto Reconfiguration from 0.8.7 .../auto-reconfiguration-0.8.7.jar (0.1s)
-----> Uploading droplet (44M)
Checking status of app 'acloudyspringtime'...
0 of 1 instances running (1 starting)
...
0 of 1 instances running (1 down)
...
0 of 1 instances running (1 starting)
...
1 of 1 instances running (1 running)
App started

Congratulations! The application is now live!

Its easy to then verify the status of the deployed application:
$ cf apps
Getting applications in ...
OK
name
...
acloudyspringtime
...

requested state

instances

memory

disk

urls

started

1/1

512M

1G

acloudyspringtime.cfapps.io

Once Cloud Foundry acknowledges that your application has been deployed, you should be able to hit
the application at the URI given, in this case acloudyspringtime.cfapps.io/.

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49.1 Binding to services

By default, metadata about the running application as well as service connection information is exposed
to the application as environment variables (for example: $VCAP_SERVICES). This architecture decision
is due to Cloud Foundrys polyglot (any language and platform can be supported as a buildpack) nature;
process-scoped environment variables are language agnostic.
Environment variables dont always make for the easiest API so Spring Boot automatically extracts them
and flattens the data into properties that can be accessed through Springs Environment abstraction:
@Component
class MyBean implements EnvironmentAware {
private String instanceId;
@Override
public void setEnvironment(Environment environment) {
this.instanceId = environment.getProperty("vcap.application.instance_id");
}
// ...
}

All Cloud Foundry properties are prefixed with vcap. You can use vcap properties to access application
information (such as the public URL of the application) and service information (such as database
credentials). See VcapApplicationListener Javdoc for complete details.
Tip
The Spring Cloud Connectors project is a better fit for tasks such as configuring a DataSource.
Spring Boot includes auto-configuration support and a spring-boot-starter-cloudconnectors starter POM.

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50. Heroku
Heroku is another popular PaaS platform. To customize Heroku builds, you provide a Procfile,
which provides the incantation required to deploy an application. Heroku assigns a port for the Java
application to use and then ensures that routing to the external URI works.
You must configure your application to listen on the correct port. Heres the Procfile for our starter
REST application:
web: java -Dserver.port=$PORT -jar target/demo-0.0.1-SNAPSHOT.jar

Spring Boot makes -D arguments available as properties accessible from a Spring Environment
instance. The server.port configuration property is fed to the embedded Tomcat, Jetty or Undertow
instance which then uses it when it starts up. The $PORT environment variable is assigned to us by
the Heroku PaaS.
Heroku by default will use Java 1.8. This is fine as long as your Maven or Gradle build is set to use the
same version (Maven users can use the java.version property). If you want to use JDK 1.7, create a
new file adjacent to your pom.xml and Procfile, called system.properties. In this file add the
following:
java.runtime.version=1.7

This should be everything you need. The most common workflow for Heroku deployments is to git
push the code to production.
$ git push heroku master
Initializing repository, done.
Counting objects: 95, done.
Delta compression using up to 8 threads.
Compressing objects: 100% (78/78), done.
Writing objects: 100% (95/95), 8.66 MiB | 606.00 KiB/s, done.
Total 95 (delta 31), reused 0 (delta 0)
----->
----->
----->
----->
----->

Java app detected

Installing OpenJDK 1.8... done
Installing Maven 3.3.1... done
Installing settings.xml... done
Executing: mvn -B -DskipTests=true clean install
[INFO] Scanning for projects...
Downloading: http://repo.spring.io/...
Downloaded: http://repo.spring.io/... (818 B at 1.8 KB/sec)
....
Downloaded: http://s3pository.heroku.com/jvm/... (152 KB at 595.3 KB/sec)
[INFO] Installing /tmp/build_0c35a5d2-a067-4abc-a232-14b1fb7a8229/target/...
[INFO] Installing /tmp/build_0c35a5d2-a067-4abc-a232-14b1fb7a8229/pom.xml ...
[INFO] -----------------------------------------------------------------------[INFO] BUILD SUCCESS
[INFO] -----------------------------------------------------------------------[INFO] Total time: 59.358s
[INFO] Finished at: Fri Mar 07 07:28:25 UTC 2014
[INFO] Final Memory: 20M/493M
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------

-----> Discovering process types

Procfile declares types -> web
-----> Compressing... done, 70.4MB
-----> Launching... done, v6
http://agile-sierra-1405.herokuapp.com/ deployed to Heroku

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To [email protected]:agile-sierra-1405.git
* [new branch]
master -> master

Your application should now be up and running on Heroku.

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51. Openshift
Openshift is the RedHat public (and enterprise) PaaS solution. Like Heroku, it works by running scripts
triggered by git commits, so you can script the launching of a Spring Boot application in pretty much any
way you like as long as the Java runtime is available (which is a standard feature you can ask for at
Openshift). To do this you can use the DIY Cartridge and hooks in your repository under .openshift/
action_scripts:
The basic model is to:
1. Ensure Java and your build tool are installed remotely, e.g. using a pre_build hook (Java and
Maven are installed by default, Gradle is not)
2. Use a build hook to build your jar (using Maven or Gradle), e.g.
#!/bin/bash
cd $OPENSHIFT_REPO_DIR
mvn package -s .openshift/settings.xml -DskipTests=true

3. Add a start hook that calls java -jar

#!/bin/bash
cd $OPENSHIFT_REPO_DIR
nohup java -jar target/*.jar --server.port=${OPENSHIFT_DIY_PORT} --server.address=${OPENSHIFT_DIY_IP}
&

4. Use a stop hook (since the start is supposed to return cleanly), e.g.
#!/bin/bash
source $OPENSHIFT_CARTRIDGE_SDK_BASH
PID=$(ps -ef | grep java.*\.jar | grep -v grep | awk '{ print $2 }')
if [ -z "$PID" ]
then
client_result "Application is already stopped"
else
kill $PID
fi

5. Embed service bindings from environment variables provided by the platform in your
application.properties, e.g.
spring.datasource.url: jdbc:mysql://${OPENSHIFT_MYSQL_DB_HOST}:${OPENSHIFT_MYSQL_DB_PORT}/
${OPENSHIFT_APP_NAME}
spring.datasource.username: ${OPENSHIFT_MYSQL_DB_USERNAME}
spring.datasource.password: ${OPENSHIFT_MYSQL_DB_PASSWORD}

Theres a blog on running Gradle in Openshift on their website that will get you started with a gradle
build to run the app. A bug in Gradle currently prevents you from using Gradle newer than 1.6.

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52. Google App Engine

Google App Engine is tied to the Servlet 2.5 API, so you cant deploy a Spring Application there without
some modifications. See the Servlet 2.5 section of this guide.

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53. What to read next

Check out the Cloud Foundry, Heroku and Openshift web sites for more information about the kinds of
features that a PaaS can offer. These are just three of the most popular Java PaaS providers, since
Spring Boot is so amenable to cloud-based deployment youre free to consider other providers as well.
The next section goes on to cover the Spring Boot CLI; or you can jump ahead to read about build
tool plugins.

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Part VII. Spring Boot CLI

The Spring Boot CLI is a command line tool that can be used if you want to quickly develop with Spring.
It allows you to run Groovy scripts, which means that you have a familiar Java-like syntax, without so
much boilerplate code. You can also bootstrap a new project or write your own command for it.

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54. Installing the CLI

The Spring Boot CLI can be installed manually; using GVM (the Groovy Environment Manually) or using
Homebrew or MacPorts if you are an OSX user. See Section 10.2, Installing the Spring Boot CLI in
the Getting started section for comprehensive installation instructions.

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55. Using the CLI

Once you have installed the CLI you can run it by typing spring. If you run spring without any
arguments, a simple help screen is displayed:
$ spring
usage: spring [--help] [--version]
<command> [<args>]
Available commands are:
run [options] <files> [--] [args]
Run a spring groovy script
... more command help is shown here

You can use help to get more details about any of the supported commands. For example:
$ spring help run
spring run - Run a spring groovy script
usage: spring run [options] <files> [--] [args]
Option
-------autoconfigure [Boolean]
--classpath, -cp
-e, --edit
--no-guess-dependencies
--no-guess-imports
-q, --quiet
-v, --verbose
--watch

Description
----------Add autoconfigure compiler
transformations (default: true)
Additional classpath entries
Open the file with the default system
editor
Do not attempt to guess dependencies
Do not attempt to guess imports
Quiet logging
Verbose logging of dependency
resolution
Watch the specified file for changes

The version command provides a quick way to check which version of Spring Boot you are using.
$ spring version
Spring CLI v1.2.5.RELEASE

55.1 Running applications using the CLI

You can compile and run Groovy source code using the run command. The Spring Boot CLI is
completely self-contained so you dont need any external Groovy installation.
Here is an example hello world web application written in Groovy:
hello.groovy.
@RestController
class WebApplication {
@RequestMapping("/")
String home() {
"Hello World!"
}
}

To compile and run the application type:

$ spring run hello.groovy

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To pass command line arguments to the application, you need to use a -- to separate them from the
spring command arguments, e.g.
$ spring run hello.groovy -- --server.port=9000

To set JVM command line arguments you can use the JAVA_OPTS environment variable, e.g.
$ JAVA_OPTS=-Xmx1024m spring run hello.groovy

Deduced grab dependencies

Standard Groovy includes a @Grab annotation which allows you to declare dependencies on a thirdparty libraries. This useful technique allows Groovy to download jars in the same way as Maven or
Gradle would, but without requiring you to use a build tool.
Spring Boot extends this technique further, and will attempt to deduce which libraries to grab
based on your code. For example, since the WebApplication code above uses @RestController
annotations, Tomcat and Spring MVC will be grabbed.
The following items are used as grab hints:
Items

Grabs

JdbcTemplate,
NamedParameterJdbcTemplate,
DataSource

JDBC Application.

@EnableJms

JMS Application.

@EnableCaching

Caching abstraction.

@Test

JUnit.

@EnableRabbit

RabbitMQ.

@EnableReactor

Project Reactor.

extends Specification

Spock test.

@EnableBatchProcessing

Spring Batch.

@MessageEndpoint
@EnableIntegrationPatterns

Spring Integration.

@EnableDeviceResolver

Spring Mobile.

@Controller @RestController
@EnableWebMvc

Spring MVC + Embedded Tomcat.

@EnableWebSecurity

Spring Security.

@EnableTransactionManagement

Spring Transaction Management.

Tip
See subclasses of CompilerAutoConfiguration in the Spring Boot CLI source code to
understand exactly how customizations are applied.

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Deduced grab coordinates

Spring Boot extends Groovys standard @Grab support by allowing you to specify a dependency
without a group or version, for example @Grab('freemarker'). This will consult Spring Boots default
dependency metadata to deduce the artifacts group and version. Note that the default metadata is tied
to the version of the CLI that youre using it will only change when you move to a new version of the
CLI, putting you in control of when the versions of your dependencies may change. A table showing the
dependencies and their versions that are included in the default metadata can be found in the appendix.

Default import statements

To help reduce the size of your Groovy code, several import statements are automatically included.
Notice how the example above refers to @Component, @RestController and @RequestMapping
without needing to use fully-qualified names or import statements.
Tip
Many Spring annotations will work without using import statements. Try running your application
to see what fails before adding imports.

Automatic main method

Unlike the equivalent Java application, you do not need to include a public static void
main(String[] args) method with your Groovy scripts. A SpringApplication is automatically
created, with your compiled code acting as the source.

Custom grab metadata

Spring Boot provides a new @GrabMetadata annotation that can be used to provide custom
dependency metadata that overrides Spring Boots defaults. This metadata is specified by using the
annotation to provide coordinates of one or more properties files (deployed to a Maven repository
with a type identifier of properties). Each entry in each properties file must be in the form
group:module=version.
For example, the following declaration:
`@GrabMetadata("com.example.custom-versions:1.0.0")`

Will pick up custom-versions-1.0.0.properties in a Maven repository under com/example/

custom-versions/1.0.0/.
Multiple properties files can be specified from the annotation, they will be applied in the order that theyre
declared. For example:
`@GrabMetadata(["com.example.custom-versions:1.0.0",
"com.example.more-versions:1.0.0"])`

indicates that properties in more-versions will override properties in custom-versions.

You can use @GrabMetadata anywhere that you can use @Grab, however, to ensure consistent
ordering of the metadata, you can only use @GrabMetadata at most once in your application. A
useful source of dependency metadata (a superset of Spring Boot) is the Spring IO Platform, e.g.
@GrabMetadata('io.spring.platform:platform-versions:1.0.4.RELEASE').

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55.2 Testing your code

The test command allows you to compile and run tests for your application. Typical usage looks like
this:
$ spring test app.groovy tests.groovy
Total: 1, Success: 1, : Failures: 0
Passed? true

In this example, tests.groovy contains JUnit @Test methods or Spock Specification classes.
All the common framework annotations and static methods should be available to you without having
to import them.
Here is the tests.groovy file that we used above (with a JUnit test):
class ApplicationTests {
@Test
void homeSaysHello() {
assertEquals("Hello World!", new WebApplication().home())
}
}

Tip
If you have more than one test source files, you might prefer to organize them into a test
directory.

55.3 Applications with multiple source files

You can use shell globbing with all commands that accept file input. This allows you to easily use
multiple files from a single directory, e.g.
$ spring run *.groovy

This technique can also be useful if you want to segregate your test or spec code from the main
application code:
$ spring test app/*.groovy test/*.groovy

55.4 Packaging your application

You can use the jar command to package your application into a self-contained executable jar file.
For example:
$ spring jar my-app.jar *.groovy

The resulting jar will contain the classes produced by compiling the application and all of the applications
dependencies so that it can then be run using java -jar. The jar file will also contain entries from the
applications classpath. You can add explicit paths to the jar using --include and --exclude (both
are comma-separated, and both accept prefixes to the values + and - to signify that they should be
removed from the defaults). The default includes are
public/**, resources/**, static/**, templates/**, META-INF/**, *

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and the default excludes are

.*, repository/**, build/**, target/**, **/*.jar, **/*.groovy

See the output of spring help jar for more information.

55.5 Initialize a new project

The init command allows you to create a new project using start.spring.io without leaving the shell.
For example:
$ spring init --dependencies=web,data-jpa my-project
Using service at https://start.spring.io
Project extracted to '/Users/developer/example/my-project'

This creates a my-project directory with a Maven-based project using spring-boot-starterweb and spring-boot-starter-data-jpa. You can list the capabilities of the service using the -list flag
$ spring init --list
=======================================
Capabilities of https://start.spring.io
=======================================
Available dependencies:
----------------------actuator - Actuator: Production ready features to help you monitor and manage your application
...
web - Web: Support for full-stack web development, including Tomcat and spring-webmvc
websocket - Websocket: Support for WebSocket development
ws - WS: Support for Spring Web Services
Available project types:
-----------------------gradle-build - Gradle Config [format:build, build:gradle]
gradle-project - Gradle Project [format:project, build:gradle]
maven-build - Maven POM [format:build, build:maven]
maven-project - Maven Project [format:project, build:maven] (default)
...

The init command supports many options, check the help output for more details. For instance, the
following command creates a gradle project using Java 8 and war packaging:
$ spring init --build=gradle --java-version=1.8 --dependencies=websocket --packaging=war sample-app.zip
Using service at https://start.spring.io
Content saved to 'sample-app.zip'

55.6 Using the embedded shell

Spring Boot includes command-line completion scripts for BASH and zsh shells. If you dont use either
of these shells (perhaps you are a Windows user) then you can use the shell command to launch
an integrated shell.
$ spring shell
Spring Boot (v1.2.5.RELEASE)
Hit TAB to complete. Type \'help' and hit RETURN for help, and \'exit' to quit.

From inside the embedded shell you can run other commands directly:
$ version
Spring CLI v1.2.5.RELEASE

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The embedded shell supports ANSI color output as well as tab completion. If you need to run a native
command you can use the $ prefix. Hitting ctrl-c will exit the embedded shell.

55.7 Adding extensions to the CLI

You can add extensions to the CLI using the install command. The command takes one or more
sets of artifact coordinates in the format group:artifact:version. For example:
$ spring install com.example:spring-boot-cli-extension:1.0.0.RELEASE

In addition to installing the artifacts identified by the coordinates you supply, all of the artifacts'
dependencies will also be installed.
To uninstall a dependency use the uninstall command. As with the install command, it takes one
or more sets of artifact coordinates in the format group:artifact:version. For example:
$ spring uninstall com.example:spring-boot-cli-extension:1.0.0.RELEASE

It will uninstall the artifacts identified by the coordinates you supply and their dependencies.
To uninstall all additional dependencies you can use the --all option. For example:
$ spring uninstall --all

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56. Developing application with the Groovy beans

DSL
Spring Framework 4.0 has native support for a beans{} DSL (borrowed from Grails), and you can
embed bean definitions in your Groovy application scripts using the same format. This is sometimes a
good way to include external features like middleware declarations. For example:
@Configuration
class Application implements CommandLineRunner {
@Autowired
SharedService service
@Override
void run(String... args) {
println service.message
}
}
import my.company.SharedService
beans {
service(SharedService) {
message = "Hello World"
}
}

You can mix class declarations with beans{} in the same file as long as they stay at the top level, or
you can put the beans DSL in a separate file if you prefer.

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57. What to read next

There are some sample groovy scripts available from the GitHub repository that you can use to try out
the Spring Boot CLI. There is also extensive javadoc throughout the source code.
If you find that you reach the limit of the CLI tool, you will probably want to look at converting your
application to full Gradle or Maven built groovy project. The next section covers Spring Boots Build
tool plugins that you can use with Gradle or Maven.

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Part VIII. Build tool plugins

Spring Boot provides build tool plugins for Maven and Gradle. The plugins offer a variety of features,
including the packaging of executable jars. This section provides more details on both plugins, as well
as some help should you need to extend an unsupported build system. If you are just getting started,
you might want to read Chapter 13, Build systems from the Part III, Using Spring Boot section first.

Spring Boot Reference Guide

58. Spring Boot Maven plugin

The Spring Boot Maven Plugin provides Spring Boot support in Maven, allowing you to package
executable jar or war archives and run an application in-place. To use it you must be using Maven
3.2 (or better).
Note
Refer to the Spring Boot Maven Plugin Site for complete plugin documentation.

58.1 Including the plugin

To use the Spring Boot Maven Plugin simply include the appropriate XML in the plugins section of
your pom.xml
<?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 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd">
<modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
<!-- ... -->
<build>
<plugins>
<plugin>
<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-boot-maven-plugin</artifactId>
<version>1.2.5.RELEASE</version>
<executions>
<execution>
<goals>
<goal>repackage</goal>
</goals>
</execution>
</executions>
</plugin>
</plugins>
</build>
</project>

This configuration will repackage a jar or war that is built during the package phase of the Maven
lifecycle. The following example shows both the repackaged jar, as well as the original jar, in the target
directory:
$ mvn package
$ ls target/*.jar
target/myproject-1.0.0.jar target/myproject-1.0.0.jar.original

If you dont include the <execution/> configuration as above, you can run the plugin on its own (but
only if the package goal is used as well). For example:
$ mvn package spring-boot:repackage
$ ls target/*.jar
target/myproject-1.0.0.jar target/myproject-1.0.0.jar.original

If you are using a milestone or snapshot release you will also need to add appropriate
pluginRepository elements:
<pluginRepositories>
<pluginRepository>
<id>spring-snapshots</id>
<url>http://repo.spring.io/snapshot</url>

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</pluginRepository>
<pluginRepository>
<id>spring-milestones</id>
<url>http://repo.spring.io/milestone</url>
</pluginRepository>
</pluginRepositories>

58.2 Packaging executable jar and war files

Once spring-boot-maven-plugin has been included in your pom.xml it will automatically attempt
to rewrite archives to make them executable using the spring-boot:repackage goal. You should
configure your project to build a jar or war (as appropriate) using the usual packaging element:
<?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 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd">
<!-- ... -->
<packaging>jar</packaging>
<!-- ... -->
</project>

Your existing archive will be enhanced by Spring Boot during the package phase. The main class that
you want to launch can either be specified using a configuration option, or by adding a Main-Class
attribute to the manifest in the usual way. If you dont specify a main class the plugin will search for a
class with a public static void main(String[] args) method.
To build and run a project artifact, you can type the following:
$ mvn package
$ java -jar target/mymodule-0.0.1-SNAPSHOT.jar

To build a war file that is both executable and deployable into an external container you need to mark
the embedded container dependencies as provided, e.g:
<?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 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd">
<!-- ... -->
<packaging>war</packaging>
<!-- ... -->
<dependencies>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-boot-starter-web</artifactId>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-boot-starter-tomcat</artifactId>
<scope>provided</scope>
</dependency>
<!-- ... -->
</dependencies>
</project>

Tip
See the Section 74.1, Create a deployable war file section for more details on how to create
a deployable war file.
Advanced configuration options and examples are available in the plugin info page.

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59. Spring Boot Gradle plugin

The Spring Boot Gradle Plugin provides Spring Boot support in Gradle, allowing you to package
executable jar or war archives, run Spring Boot applications and omit version information from your
build.gradle file for blessed dependencies.

59.1 Including the plugin

To use the Spring Boot Gradle Plugin simply include a buildscript dependency and apply the
spring-boot plugin:
buildscript {
dependencies {
classpath("org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-gradle-plugin:1.2.5.RELEASE")
}
}
apply plugin: 'spring-boot'

If you are using a milestone or snapshot release you will also need to add appropriate repositories
reference:
buildscript {
repositories {
maven.url "http://repo.spring.io/snapshot"
maven.url "http://repo.spring.io/milestone"
}
// ...
}

59.2 Declaring dependencies without versions

The spring-boot plugin will register a custom Gradle ResolutionStrategy with your build that
allows you to omit version numbers when declaring dependencies to blessed artifacts. To make use
of this functionality, simply declare dependencies in the usual way, but leave the version number empty:
dependencies {
compile("org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-web")
compile("org.thymeleaf:thymeleaf-spring4")
compile("nz.net.ultraq.thymeleaf:thymeleaf-layout-dialect")
}

Note
The version of the spring-boot gradle plugin that you declare determines the actual versions of
the blessed dependencies (this ensures that builds are always repeatable). You should always
set the version of the spring-boot gradle plugin to the actual Spring Boot version that you wish
to use. Details of the versions that are provided can be found in the appendix.
The spring-boot plugin will only supply a version where one is not specified. To use a version of
an artifact that differs from the one that the plugin would provide, simply specify the version when you
declare the dependency as you usually would. For example:
dependencies {
compile("org.thymeleaf:thymeleaf-spring4:2.1.1.RELEASE")
}

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Custom version management

If is possible to customize the versions used by the ResolutionStrategy if you need to deviate
from Spring Boots blessed dependencies. Alternative version metadata is consulted using the
versionManagement configuration. For example:
dependencies {
versionManagement("com.mycorp:mycorp-versions:1.0.0.RELEASE@properties")
compile("org.springframework.data:spring-data-hadoop")
}

Version information needs to be published to a repository as a .properties file. For the above
example mycorp-versions.properties file might contain the following:
org.springframework.data\:spring-data-hadoop=2.0.0.RELEASE

The properties file takes precedence over Spring Boots defaults, and can be used to override version
numbers if necessary.

59.3 Default exclude rules

Gradle handles exclude rules in a slightly different way to Maven which can cause unexpected results
when using the starter POMs. Specifically, exclusions declared on a dependency will not be applied
when the dependency can be reached through a different path. For example, if a starter POM declares
the following:
<dependencies>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-core</artifactId>
<version>4.0.5.RELEASE</version>
<exclusions>
<exclusion>
<groupId>commons-logging</groupId>
<artifactId>commons-logging</artifactId>
</exclusion>
</exclusions>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-context</artifactId>
<version>4.0.5.RELEASE</version>
</dependency>
</dependencies>

The commons-logging jar will not be excluded by Gradle because it is pulled in transitively via
spring-context (spring-context spring-core commons-logging) which does not have
an exclusion element.
To ensure that correct exclusions are actually applied, the Spring Boot Gradle plugin will automatically
add exclusion rules. All exclusions defined in the spring-boot-dependencies POM and implicit
rules for the starter POMs will be added.
If you dont want exclusion rules automatically applied you can use the following configuration:
springBoot {
applyExcludeRules=false
}

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59.4 Packaging executable jar and war files

Once the spring-boot plugin has been applied to your project it will automatically attempt to rewrite
archives to make them executable using the bootRepackage task. You should configure your project
to build a jar or war (as appropriate) in the usual way.
The main class that you want to launch can either be specified using a configuration option, or by adding
a Main-Class attribute to the manifest. If you dont specify a main class the plugin will search for a
class with a public static void main(String[] args) method.
To build and run a project artifact, you can type the following:
$ gradle build
$ java -jar build/libs/mymodule-0.0.1-SNAPSHOT.jar

To build a war file that is both executable and deployable into an external container, you need to mark
the embedded container dependencies as belonging to a configuration named providedRuntime, e.g:
...
apply plugin: 'war'
war {
baseName = 'myapp'
version = '0.5.0'
}
repositories {
jcenter()
maven { url "http://repo.spring.io/libs-snapshot" }
}
configurations {
providedRuntime
}
dependencies {
compile("org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-web")
providedRuntime("org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-tomcat")
...
}

Tip
See the Section 74.1, Create a deployable war file section for more details on how to create
a deployable war file.

59.5 Running a project in-place

To run a project in place without building a jar first you can use the bootRun task:
$ gradle bootRun

By default, running this way makes your static classpath resources (i.e. in src/main/resources
by default) reloadable in the live application, which can be helpful at development time. Making
static classpath resources reloadable means that bootRun does not use the output of the
processResources task, i.e., when invoked using bootRun, your application will use the resources
in their unprocessed form.

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You can disable the direct use of your static classpath resources. This will mean that the resources
are no longer reloadable but the output of the processResources task will be used. To do so, set
addResources on the bootRun task to false:
bootRun {
addResources = false
}

59.6 Spring Boot plugin configuration

The gradle plugin automatically extends your build script DSL with a springBoot element for global
configuration of the Boot plugin. Set the appropriate properties as you would with any other Gradle
extension (see below for a list of configuration options):
springBoot {
backupSource = false
}

59.7 Repackage configuration

The plugin adds a bootRepackage task which you can also configure directly, e.g.:
bootRepackage {
mainClass = 'demo.Application'
}

The following configuration options are available:

Name

Description

enabled

Boolean flag to switch the repackager off (sometimes useful if you

want the other Boot features but not this one)

mainClass

The main class that should be run. If not specified the

mainClassName project property will be used or, if the no
mainClassName id defined the archive will be searched for a
suitable class. "Suitable" means a unique class with a well-formed
main() method (if more than one is found the build will fail). You
should also be able to specify the main class name via the "run"
task (main property) and/or the "startScripts" (mainClassName
property) as an alternative to using the "springBoot" configuration.

classifier

A file name segment (before the extension) to add to the archive,

so that the original is preserved in its original location. Defaults
to null in which case the archive is repackaged in place. The
default is convenient for many purposes, but if you want to use
the original jar as a dependency in another project, its best to use
an extension to define the executable archive.

withJarTask

The name or value of the Jar task (defaults to all tasks of type
Jar) which is used to locate the archive to repackage.

customConfiguration

The name of the custom configuration which is used to populate

the nested lib directory (without specifying this you get all compile
and runtime dependencies).

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59.8 Repackage with custom Gradle configuration

Sometimes it may be more appropriate to not package default dependencies resolved from compile,
runtime and provided scopes. If the created executable jar file is intended to be run as it is, you
need to have all dependencies nested inside it; however, if the plan is to explode a jar file and run the
main class manually, you may already have some of the libraries available via CLASSPATH. This is a
situation where you can repackage your jar with a different set of dependencies.
Using a custom configuration will automatically disable dependency resolving from compile, runtime
and provided scopes. Custom configuration can be either defined globally (inside the springBoot
section) or per task.
task clientJar(type: Jar) {
appendix = 'client'
from sourceSets.main.output
exclude('**/*Something*')
}
task clientBoot(type: BootRepackage, dependsOn: clientJar) {
withJarTask = clientJar
customConfiguration = "mycustomconfiguration"
}

In above example, we created a new clientJar Jar task to package a customized file set from your
compiled sources. Then we created a new clientBoot BootRepackage task and instructed it to work
with only clientJar task and mycustomconfiguration.
configurations {
mycustomconfiguration.exclude group: 'log4j'
}
dependencies {
mycustomconfiguration configurations.runtime
}

The configuration that we are referring to in BootRepackage is a normal Gradle configuration. In

the above example we created a new configuration named mycustomconfiguration instructing it
to derive from a runtime and exclude the log4j group. If the clientBoot task is executed, the
repackaged boot jar will have all dependencies from runtime but no log4j jars.

Configuration options
The following configuration options are available:
Name

Description

mainClass

The main class that should be run by the executable archive.

providedConfiguration

The name of the provided configuration (defaults to

providedRuntime).

backupSource

If the original source archive should be backed-up before being

repackaged (defaults to true).

customConfiguration

The name of the custom configuration.

layout

The type of archive, corresponding to how the dependencies are

laid out inside (defaults to a guess based on the archive type).

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Name

Description

requiresUnpack

A list of dependencies (in the form groupId:artifactId that must

be unpacked from fat jars in order to run. Items are still packaged
into the fat jar, but they will be automatically unpacked when it
runs.

59.9 Understanding how the Gradle plugin works

When spring-boot is applied to your Gradle project a default task named bootRepackage is created
automatically. The bootRepackage task depends on Gradle assemble task, and when executed, it
tries to find all jar artifacts whose qualifier is empty (i.e. tests and sources jars are automatically skipped).
Due to the fact that bootRepackage finds 'all' created jar artifacts, the order of Gradle task execution
is important. Most projects only create a single jar file, so usually this is not an issue; however, if you
are planning to create a more complex project setup, with custom Jar and BootRepackage tasks,
there are few tweaks to consider.
If you are 'just' creating custom jar files from your project you can simply disable default jar and
bootRepackage tasks:
jar.enabled = false
bootRepackage.enabled = false

Another option is to instruct the default bootRepackage task to only work with a default jar task.
bootRepackage.withJarTask = jar

If you have a default project setup where the main jar file is created and repackaged, 'and' you still
want to create additional custom jars, you can combine your custom repackage tasks together and use
dependsOn so that the bootJars task will run after the default bootRepackage task is executed:
task bootJars
bootJars.dependsOn = [clientBoot1,clientBoot2,clientBoot3]
build.dependsOn(bootJars)

All the above tweaks are usually used to avoid situations where an already created boot jar is repackaged
again. Repackaging an existing boot jar will not break anything, but you may find that it includes
unnecessary dependencies.

59.10 Publishing artifacts to a Maven repository using Gradle

If you are declaring dependencies without versions and you want to publish artifacts to a Maven
repository you will need to configure the Maven publication with details of Spring Boots dependency
management. This can be achieved by configuring it to publish poms that inherit from spring-bootstarter-parent or that import dependency management from spring-boot-dependencies. The
exact details of this configuration depend on how youre using Gradle and how youre trying to publish
the artifacts.

Configuring Gradle to produce a pom that inherits dependency

management
The following is an example of configuring Gradle to generate a pom that inherits from spring-bootstarter-parent. Please refer to the Gradle User Guide for further information.

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uploadArchives {
repositories {
mavenDeployer {
pom {
project {
parent {
groupId "org.springframework.boot"
artifactId "spring-boot-starter-parent"
version "1.2.5.RELEASE"
}
}
}
}
}
}

Configuring Gradle to produce a pom that imports dependency

management
The following is an example of configuring Gradle to generate a pom that imports the dependency
management provided by spring-boot-dependencies. Please refer to the Gradle User Guide for
further information.
uploadArchives {
repositories {
mavenDeployer {
pom {
project {
dependencyManagement {
dependencies {
dependency {
groupId "org.springframework.boot"
artifactId "spring-boot-dependencies"
version "1.2.5.RELEASE"
type "pom"
scope "import"
}
}
}
}
}
}
}
}

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60. Supporting other build systems

If you want to use a build tool other than Maven or Gradle, you will likely need to develop your own
plugin. Executable jars need to follow a specific format and certain entries need to be written in an
uncompressed form (see the executable jar format section in the appendix for details).
The Spring Boot Maven and Gradle plugins both make use of spring-boot-loader-tools to
actually generate jars. You are also free to use this library directly yourself if you need to.

60.1 Repackaging archives

To repackage an existing archive so that it becomes a self-contained executable archive use
org.springframework.boot.loader.tools.Repackager. The Repackager class takes a
single constructor argument that refers to an existing jar or war archive. Use one of the two available
repackage() methods to either replace the original file or write to a new destination. Various settings
can also be configured on the repackager before it is run.

60.2 Nested libraries

When repackaging an archive you can include references to dependency files using the
org.springframework.boot.loader.tools.Libraries interface. We dont provide any
concrete implementations of Libraries here as they are usually build system specific.
If your archive already includes libraries you can use Libraries.NONE.

60.3 Finding a main class

If you dont use Repackager.setMainClass() to specify a main class, the repackager will use ASM
to read class files and attempt to find a suitable class with a public static void main(String[]
args) method. An exception is thrown if more than one candidate is found.

60.4 Example repackage implementation

Here is a typical example repackage:
Repackager repackager = new Repackager(sourceJarFile);
repackager.setBackupSource(false);
repackager.repackage(new Libraries() {
@Override
public void doWithLibraries(LibraryCallback callback) throws IOException {
// Build system specific implementation, callback for each dependency
// callback.library(new Library(nestedFile, LibraryScope.COMPILE));
}
});

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61. What to read next

If youre interested in how the build tool plugins work you can look at the spring-boot-tools module
on GitHub. More technical details of the executable jar format are covered in the appendix.
If you have specific build-related questions you can check out the how-to guides.

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Part IX. How-to guides

This section provides answers to some common how do I do that type of questions that often arise
when using Spring Boot. This is by no means an exhaustive list, but it does cover quite a lot.
If you are having a specific problem that we dont cover here, you might want to check out
stackoverflow.com to see if someone has already provided an answer; this is also a great place to ask
new questions (please use the spring-boot tag).
Were also more than happy to extend this section; If you want to add a how-to you can send us a
pull request.

Spring Boot Reference Guide

62. Spring Boot application

62.1 Troubleshoot auto-configuration
The Spring Boot auto-configuration tries its best to do the right thing, but sometimes things fail and it
can be hard to tell why.
There is a really useful ConditionEvaluationReport available in any Spring Boot
ApplicationContext. You will see it if you enable DEBUG logging output. If you use the springboot-actuator there is also an autoconfig endpoint that renders the report in JSON. Use that to
debug the application and see what features have been added (and which not) by Spring Boot at runtime.
Many more questions can be answered by looking at the source code and the javadoc. Some rules
of thumb:
Look for classes called *AutoConfiguration and read their sources, in particular the
@Conditional* annotations to find out what features they enable and when. Add --debug to the
command line or a System property -Ddebug to get a log on the console of all the autoconfiguration
decisions that were made in your app. In a running Actuator app look at the autoconfig endpoint
(/autoconfig or the JMX equivalent) for the same information.
Look for classes that are @ConfigurationProperties (e.g. ServerProperties) and read
from there the available external configuration options. The @ConfigurationProperties has
a name attribute which acts as a prefix to external properties, thus ServerProperties has
prefix="server" and its configuration properties are server.port, server.address etc. In a
running Actuator app look at the configprops endpoint.
Look for use of RelaxedEnvironment to pull configuration values explicitly out of the
Environment. It often is used with a prefix.
Look for @Value annotations that bind directly to the Environment. This is less flexible than
the RelaxedEnvironment approach, but does allow some relaxed binding, specifically for OS
environment variables (so CAPITALS_AND_UNDERSCORES are synonyms for period.separated).
Look for @ConditionalOnExpression annotations that switch features on and off in response to
SpEL expressions, normally evaluated with place-holders resolved from the Environment.

62.2 Customize the Environment or ApplicationContext before

it starts
A SpringApplication has ApplicationListeners and ApplicationContextInitializers
that are used to apply customizations to the context or environment. Spring Boot loads a number of
such customizations for use internally from META-INF/spring.factories. There is more than one
way to register additional ones:
Programmatically per application by calling the addListeners and addInitializers methods
on SpringApplication before you run it.
Declaratively
per
application
context.listener.classes.

by

setting

context.initializer.classes

or

Declaratively for all applications by adding a META-INF/spring.factories and packaging a jar

file that the applications all use as a library.

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The SpringApplication sends some special ApplicationEvents to the listeners (even some
before the context is created), and then registers the listeners for events published by the
ApplicationContext as well. See Section 22.4, Application events and listeners in the Spring Boot
features section for a complete list.

62.3 Build an ApplicationContext hierarchy (adding a parent or

root context)
You can use the ApplicationBuilder class to create parent/child ApplicationContext
hierarchies. See Section 22.3, Fluent builder API in the Spring Boot features section for more
information.

62.4 Create a non-web application

Not all Spring applications have to be web applications (or web services). If you want to execute some
code in a main method, but also bootstrap a Spring application to set up the infrastructure to use, then
its easy with the SpringApplication features of Spring Boot. A SpringApplication changes its
ApplicationContext class depending on whether it thinks it needs a web application or not. The
first thing you can do to help it is to just leave the servlet API dependencies off the classpath. If you
cant do that (e.g. you are running 2 applications from the same code base) then you can explicitly call
SpringApplication.setWebEnvironment(false), or set the applicationContextClass
property (through the Java API or with external properties). Application code that you want to run as
your business logic can be implemented as a CommandLineRunner and dropped into the context as
a @Bean definition.

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63. Properties & configuration

63.1 Externalize the configuration of SpringApplication
A SpringApplication has bean properties (mainly setters) so you can use its Java API as you
create the application to modify its behavior. Or you can externalize the configuration using properties
in spring.main.*. E.g. in application.properties you might have.
spring.main.web_environment=false
spring.main.show_banner=false

and then the Spring Boot banner will not be printed on startup, and the application will not be a web
application.
Note
The example above also demonstrates how flexible binding allows the use of underscores (_) as
well as dashes (-) in property names.

63.2 Change the location of external properties of an

application
By default properties from different sources are added to the Spring Environment in a defined order
(see Chapter 23, Externalized Configuration in the Spring Boot features section for the exact order).
A nice way to augment and modify this is to add @PropertySource annotations to your application
sources. Classes passed to the SpringApplication static convenience methods, and those added
using setSources() are inspected to see if they have @PropertySources, and if they do,
those properties are added to the Environment early enough to be used in all phases of the
ApplicationContext lifecycle. Properties added in this way have precedence over any added using
the default locations, but have lower priority than system properties, environment variables or the
command line.
You can also provide System properties (or environment variables) to change the behavior:
spring.config.name (SPRING_CONFIG_NAME), defaults to application as the root of the file
name.
spring.config.location (SPRING_CONFIG_LOCATION) is the file to load (e.g. a classpath
resource or a URL). A separate Environment property source is set up for this document and it can
be overridden by system properties, environment variables or the command line.
No matter what you set in the environment, Spring Boot will always load application.properties
as described above. If YAML is used then files with the .yml extension are also added to the list by
default.
See ConfigFileApplicationListener for more detail.

63.3 Use short command line arguments

Some people like to use (for example) --port=9000 instead of --server.port=9000 to set
configuration properties on the command line. You can easily enable this by using placeholders in
application.properties, e.g.

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server.port=${port:8080}

Tip
If you are inheriting from the spring-boot-starter-parent POM, the default filter token
of the maven-resources-plugins has been changed from ${*} to @ (i.e. @maven.token@
instead of ${maven.token}) to prevent conflicts with Spring-style placeholders. If you have
enabled maven filtering for the application.properties directly, you may want to also
change the default filter token to use other delimiters.
Note
In this specific case the port binding will work in a PaaS environment like Heroku and Cloud
Foundry, since in those two platforms the PORT environment variable is set automatically and
Spring can bind to capitalized synonyms for Environment properties.

63.4 Use YAML for external properties

YAML is a superset of JSON and as such is a very convenient syntax for storing external properties
in a hierarchical format. E.g.
spring:
application:
name: cruncher
datasource:
driverClassName: com.mysql.jdbc.Driver
url: jdbc:mysql://localhost/test
server:
port: 9000

Create a file called application.yml and stick it in the root of your classpath, and also add
snakeyaml to your dependencies (Maven coordinates org.yaml:snakeyaml, already included if
you use the spring-boot-starter). A YAML file is parsed to a Java Map<String,Object> (like
a JSON object), and Spring Boot flattens the map so that it is 1-level deep and has period-separated
keys, a lot like people are used to with Properties files in Java.
The example YAML above corresponds to an application.properties file
spring.application.name=cruncher
spring.datasource.driverClassName=com.mysql.jdbc.Driver
spring.datasource.url=jdbc:mysql://localhost/test
server.port=9000

See Section 23.6, Using YAML instead of Properties in the Spring Boot features section for more
information about YAML.

63.5 Set the active Spring profiles

The Spring Environment has an API for this, but normally you would set a System profile
(spring.profiles.active) or an OS environment variable (SPRING_PROFILES_ACTIVE). E.g.
launch your application with a -D argument (remember to put it before the main class or jar archive):
$ java -jar -Dspring.profiles.active=production demo-0.0.1-SNAPSHOT.jar

In Spring Boot you can also set the active profile in application.properties, e.g.

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spring.profiles.active=production

A value set this way is replaced by the System property or environment variable setting, but not by
the SpringApplicationBuilder.profiles() method. Thus the latter Java API can be used to
augment the profiles without changing the defaults.
See Chapter 24, Profiles in the Spring Boot features section for more information.

63.6 Change configuration depending on the environment

A YAML file is actually a sequence of documents separated by --- lines, and each document is parsed
separately to a flattened map.
If a YAML document contains a spring.profiles key, then the profiles value (comma-separated list
of profiles) is fed into the Spring Environment.acceptsProfiles() and if any of those profiles is
active that document is included in the final merge (otherwise not).
Example:
server:
port: 9000
--spring:
profiles: development
server:
port: 9001
--spring:
profiles: production
server:
port: 0

In this example the default port is 9000, but if the Spring profile development is active then the port is
9001, and if production is active then it is 0.
The YAML documents are merged in the order they are encountered (so later values override earlier
ones).
To do the same thing with properties files you can use application-${profile}.properties to
specify profile-specific values.

63.7 Discover built-in options for external properties

Spring Boot binds external properties from application.properties (or .yml) (and other places)
into an application at runtime. There is not (and technically cannot be) an exhaustive list of all supported
properties in a single location because contributions can come from additional jar files on your classpath.
A running application with the Actuator features has a configprops endpoint that shows all the bound
and bindable properties available through @ConfigurationProperties.
The appendix includes an application.properties example with a list of the most common
properties supported by Spring Boot. The definitive list comes from searching the source code
for @ConfigurationProperties and @Value annotations, as well as the occasional use of
RelaxedEnvironment.

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64. Embedded servlet containers

64.1 Add a Servlet, Filter or ServletContextListener to an
application
Servlet, Filter, ServletContextListener and the other listeners supported by the Servlet spec
can be added to your application as @Bean definitions. Be very careful that they dont cause eager
initialization of too many other beans because they have to be installed in the container very early in
the application lifecycle (e.g. its not a good idea to have them depend on your DataSource or JPA
configuration). You can work around restrictions like that by initializing them lazily when first used instead
of on initialization.
In the case of Filters and Servlets you can also add mappings and init parameters by adding a
FilterRegistrationBean or ServletRegistrationBean instead of or as well as the underlying
component.

64.2 Disable registration of a Servlet or Filter

As described above any Servlet or Filter beans will be registered with the servlet container
automatically. To disable registration of a particular Filter or Servlet bean create a registration
bean for it and mark it as disabled. For example:
@Bean
public FilterRegistrationBean registration(MyFilter filter) {
FilterRegistrationBean registration = new FilterRegistrationBean(filter);
registration.setEnabled(false);
return registration;
}

64.3 Change the HTTP port

In a standalone application the main HTTP port defaults to 8080, but can be set with server.port (e.g.
in application.properties or as a System property). Thanks to relaxed binding of Environment
values you can also use SERVER_PORT (e.g. as an OS environment variable).
To switch off the HTTP endpoints completely, but still create a WebApplicationContext, use
server.port=-1 (this is sometimes useful for testing).
For more details look at the section called Customizing embedded servlet containers in the Spring
Boot features section, or the ServerProperties source code.

64.4 Use a random unassigned HTTP port

To scan for a free port (using OS natives to prevent clashes) use server.port=0.

64.5 Discover the HTTP port at runtime

You can access the port the server is running on from log output or from
the EmbeddedWebApplicationContext via its EmbeddedServletContainer. The best
way to get that and be sure that it has initialized is to add a @Bean of
type ApplicationListener<EmbeddedServletContainerInitializedEvent> and pull the
container out of the event when it is published.

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A useful practice for use with @WebIntegrationTests is to set server.port=0 and then inject the
actual (local) port as a @Value. For example:
@RunWith(SpringJUnit4ClassRunner.class)
@SpringApplicationConfiguration(classes = SampleDataJpaApplication.class)
@WebIntegrationTest("server.port:0")
public class CityRepositoryIntegrationTests {
@Autowired
EmbeddedWebApplicationContext server;
@Value("${local.server.port}")
int port;
// ...
}

64.6 Configure SSL

SSL can be configured declaratively by setting the various server.ssl.* properties, typically in
application.properties or application.yml. For example:
server.port=8443
server.ssl.key-store=classpath:keystore.jks
server.ssl.key-store-password=secret
server.ssl.key-password another-secret

See Ssl for details of all of the supported properties.

Note
Tomcat requires the key store (and trust store if youre using one) to be directly accessible on
the filesystem, i.e. it cannot be read from within a jar file. This limitation doesnt apply to Jetty
and Undertow.
Using configuration like the example above means the application will no longer support plain HTTP
connector at port 8080. Spring Boot doesnt support the configuration of both an HTTP connector and
an HTTPS connector via application.properties. If you want to have both then youll need to
configure one of them programmatically. Its recommended to use application.properties to
configure HTTPS as the HTTP connector is the easier of the two to configure programmatically. See
the spring-boot-sample-tomcat-multi-connectors sample project for an example.

64.7 Configure Tomcat

Generally you can follow the advice from Section 63.7, Discover built-in options for external properties
about @ConfigurationProperties (ServerProperties is the main one here), but also look
at EmbeddedServletContainerCustomizer and various Tomcat-specific *Customizers that
you can add in one of those. The Tomcat APIs are quite rich so once you have access to the
TomcatEmbeddedServletContainerFactory you can modify it in a number of ways. Or the nuclear
option is to add your own TomcatEmbeddedServletContainerFactory.

64.8 Enable Multiple Connectors with Tomcat

Add
a
org.apache.catalina.connector.Connector
to
the
TomcatEmbeddedServletContainerFactory which can allow multiple connectors, e.g. HTTP and
HTTPS connector:

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@Bean
public EmbeddedServletContainerFactory servletContainer() {
TomcatEmbeddedServletContainerFactory tomcat = new TomcatEmbeddedServletContainerFactory();
tomcat.addAdditionalTomcatConnectors(createSslConnector());
return tomcat;
}
private Connector createSslConnector() {
Connector connector = new Connector("org.apache.coyote.http11.Http11NioProtocol");
Http11NioProtocol protocol = (Http11NioProtocol) connector.getProtocolHandler();
try {
File keystore = new ClassPathResource("keystore").getFile();
File truststore = new ClassPathResource("keystore").getFile();
connector.setScheme("https");
connector.setSecure(true);
connector.setPort(8443);
protocol.setSSLEnabled(true);
protocol.setKeystoreFile(keystore.getAbsolutePath());
protocol.setKeystorePass("changeit");
protocol.setTruststoreFile(truststore.getAbsolutePath());
protocol.setTruststorePass("changeit");
protocol.setKeyAlias("apitester");
return connector;
}
catch (IOException ex) {
throw new IllegalStateException("can't access keystore: [" + "keystore"
+ "] or truststore: [" + "keystore" + "]", ex);
}
}

64.9 Use Tomcat behind a front-end proxy server

Spring Boot will automatically configure Tomcats RemoteIpValve if you enable it. This allows you
to transparently use the standard x-forwarded-for and x-forwarded-proto headers that most
front-end proxy servers add. The valve is switched on by setting one or both of these properties to
something non-empty (these are the conventional values used by most proxies, and if you only set one
the other will be set automatically):
server.tomcat.remote_ip_header=x-forwarded-for
server.tomcat.protocol_header=x-forwarded-proto

If your proxy uses different headers you can customize the valves configuration by adding some entries
to application.properties, e.g.
server.tomcat.remote_ip_header=x-your-remote-ip-header
server.tomcat.protocol_header=x-your-protocol-header

The valve is also configured with a default regular expression that matches internal proxies that are to
be trusted. By default, IP addresses in 10/8, 192.168/16, 169.254/16 and 127/8 are trusted. You can
customize the valves configuration by adding an entry to application.properties, e.g.
server.tomcat.internal_proxies=192\\.168\\.\\d{1,3}\\.\\d{1,3}

Note
The double backslashes are only required when youre using a properties file for configuration.
If you are using YAML, single backslashes are sufficient and a value thats equivalent to the one
shown above would be 192\.168\.\d{1,3}\.\d{1,3}.
Alternatively, you can take complete control of the configuration of the RemoteIpValve by configuring
and adding it in a TomcatEmbeddedServletContainerFactory bean.

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64.10 Use Jetty instead of Tomcat

The Spring Boot starters (spring-boot-starter-web in particular) use Tomcat as an embedded
container by default. You need to exclude those dependencies and include the Jetty one instead. Spring
Boot provides Tomcat and Jetty dependencies bundled together as separate starters to help make this
process as easy as possible.
Example in Maven:
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-boot-starter-web</artifactId>
<exclusions>
<exclusion>
<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-boot-starter-tomcat</artifactId>
</exclusion>
</exclusions>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-boot-starter-jetty</artifactId>
</dependency>

Example in Gradle:
configurations {
compile.exclude module: "spring-boot-starter-tomcat"
}
dependencies {
compile("org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-web:1.2.5.RELEASE")
compile("org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-jetty:1.2.5.RELEASE")
// ...
}

64.11 Configure Jetty

Generally you can follow the advice from Section 63.7, Discover built-in options for external properties
about @ConfigurationProperties (ServerProperties is the main one here), but also look at
EmbeddedServletContainerCustomizer. The Jetty APIs are quite rich so once you have access
to the JettyEmbeddedServletContainerFactory you can modify it in a number of ways. Or the
nuclear option is to add your own JettyEmbeddedServletContainerFactory.

64.12 Use Undertow instead of Tomcat

Using Undertow instead of Tomcat is very similar to using Jetty instead of Tomcat. You need to exclude
the Tomcat dependencies and include the Undertow starter instead.
Example in Maven:
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-boot-starter-web</artifactId>
<exclusions>
<exclusion>
<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-boot-starter-tomcat</artifactId>
</exclusion>
</exclusions>
</dependency>

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

Example in Gradle:
configurations {
compile.exclude module: "spring-boot-starter-tomcat"
}
dependencies {
compile("org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-web:1.2.5.RELEASE")
compile("org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-undertow:1.2.5.RELEASE")
// ...
}

64.13 Configure Undertow

Generally you can follow the advice from Section 63.7, Discover built-in options for external properties
about @ConfigurationProperties (ServerProperties and ServerProperties.Undertow
are the main ones here), but also look at EmbeddedServletContainerCustomizer. Once
you have access to the UndertowEmbeddedServletContainerFactory you can use an
UndertowBuilderCustomizer to modify Undertows configuration to meet your needs. Or the
nuclear option is to add your own UndertowEmbeddedServletContainerFactory.

64.14 Enable Multiple Listeners with Undertow

Add an UndertowBuilderCustomizer to the UndertowEmbeddedServletContainerFactory
and add a listener to the Builder:
@Bean
public UndertowEmbeddedServletContainerFactory embeddedServletContainerFactory() {
UndertowEmbeddedServletContainerFactory factory = new UndertowEmbeddedServletContainerFactory();
factory.addBuilderCustomizers(new UndertowBuilderCustomizer() {
@Override
public void customize(Builder builder) {
builder.addHttpListener(8080, "0.0.0.0");
}
});
return factory;
}

64.15 Use Tomcat 7

Tomcat 7 works with Spring Boot, but the default is to use Tomcat 8. If you cannot use Tomcat 8 (for
example, because you are using Java 1.6) you will need to change your classpath to reference Tomcat
7.

Use Tomcat 7 with Maven

If you are using the starter poms and parent you can just change the Tomcat version property, e.g. for
a simple webapp or service:
<properties>
<tomcat.version>7.0.59</tomcat.version>
</properties>
<dependencies>

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

Use Tomcat 7 with Gradle

You can use a resolution strategy to change the versions of the Tomcat dependencies, e.g. for a simple
webapp or service:
configurations.all {
resolutionStrategy {
eachDependency {
if (it.requested.group == 'org.apache.tomcat.embed') {
it.useVersion '7.0.59'
}
}
}
}
dependencies {
compile 'org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-web'
}

64.16 Use Jetty 8

Jetty 8 works with Spring Boot, but the default is to use Jetty 9. If you cannot use Jetty 9 (for example,
because you are using Java 1.6) you will need to change your classpath to reference Jetty 8. You will
also need to exclude Jettys WebSocket-related dependencies.

Use Jetty 8 with Maven

If you are using the starter poms and parent you can just add the Jetty starter with the required
WebSocket exclusion and change the version properties, e.g. for a simple webapp or service:
<properties>
<jetty.version>8.1.15.v20140411</jetty.version>
<jetty-jsp.version>2.2.0.v201112011158</jetty-jsp.version>
</properties>
<dependencies>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-boot-starter-web</artifactId>
<exclusions>
<exclusion>
<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-boot-starter-tomcat</artifactId>
</exclusion>
</exclusions>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-boot-starter-jetty</artifactId>
<exclusions>
<exclusion>
<groupId>org.eclipse.jetty.websocket</groupId>
<artifactId>*</artifactId>
</exclusion>
</exclusions>
</dependency>
</dependencies>

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Use Jetty 8 with Gradle

You can use a resolution strategy to change the version of the Jetty dependencies, e.g. for a simple
webapp or service:
configurations.all {
resolutionStrategy {
eachDependency {
if (it.requested.group == 'org.eclipse.jetty') {
it.useVersion '8.1.15.v20140411'
}
}
}
}
dependencies {
compile ('org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-web') {
exclude group: 'org.springframework.boot', module: 'spring-boot-starter-tomcat'
}
compile ('org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-jetty') {
exclude group: 'org.eclipse.jetty.websocket'
}
}

64.17 Create WebSocket endpoints using @ServerEndpoint

If you want to use @ServerEndpoint in a Spring Boot application that used an embedded container,
you must declare a single ServerEndpointExporter @Bean:
@Bean
public ServerEndpointExporter serverEndpointExporter() {
return new ServerEndpointExporter();
}

This bean will register any @ServerEndpoint annotated beans with the underlying WebSocket
container. When deployed to a standalone servlet container this role is performed by a servlet container
initializer and the ServerEndpointExporter bean is not required.

64.18 Enable HTTP response compression

Spring Boot provides two mechanisms for enabling compression of HTTP compression; one that is
Tomcat-specific and another that uses a filter and works with Jetty, Tomcat, and Undertow.

Enable Tomcats HTTP response compression

Tomcat provides built-in support for HTTP response compression. It is disabled by default, but can easily
be enabled via application.properties:
server.tomcat.compression=on

When set to on Tomcat will compress responses with a length that is at least 2048 bytes. This limit can
be configured by specifying an integer value rather than on, e.g.:
server.tomcat.compression=4096

By default Tomcat will only compress responses with certain MIME types (text/html, text/xml,
and text/plain). You can customize this using the server.tomcat.compressableMimeTypes
property, e.g.:

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server.tomcat.compressableMimeTypes=application/json,application/xml

Enable HTTP response compression using GzipFilter

If youre using Jetty or Undertow, or you want more sophisticated control over HTTP response
compression, Spring Boot provides auto-configuration for Jettys GzipFilter. While this filter is part of
Jetty, its compatible with Tomcat and Undertow as well. To enable the filter, simply add a dependency
on org.eclipse.jetty:jetty-servlets to your application.
GzipFilter can be configured using
GzipFilterProperties for more details.

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spring.http.gzip.*

properties.

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65. Spring MVC

65.1 Write a JSON REST service
Any Spring @RestController in a Spring Boot application should render JSON response by default
as long as Jackson2 is on the classpath. For example:
@RestController
public class MyController {
@RequestMapping("/thing")
public MyThing thing() {
return new MyThing();
}
}

As long as MyThing can be serialized by Jackson2 (e.g. a normal POJO or Groovy object) then
localhost:8080/thing will serve a JSON representation of it by default. Sometimes in a browser
you might see XML responses because browsers tend to send accept headers that prefer XML.

65.2 Write an XML REST service

If you have the Jackson XML extension (jackson-dataformat-xml) on the classpath, it will be used
to render XML responses and the very same example as we used for JSON would work. To use it, add
the following dependency to your project:
<dependency>
<groupId>com.fasterxml.jackson.dataformat</groupId>
<artifactId>jackson-dataformat-xml</artifactId>
</dependency>

You may also want to add a dependency on Woodstox. Its faster than the default Stax implementation
provided by the JDK and also adds pretty print support and improved namespace handling:
<dependency>
<groupId>org.codehaus.woodstox</groupId>
<artifactId>woodstox-core-asl</artifactId>
</dependency>

If Jacksons XML extension is not available, JAXB (provided by default in the JDK) will be used, with
the additional requirement to have MyThing annotated as @XmlRootElement:
@XmlRootElement
public class MyThing {
private String name;
// .. getters and setters
}

To get the server to render XML instead of JSON you might have to send an Accept: text/xml
header (or use a browser).

65.3 Customize the Jackson ObjectMapper

Spring MVC (client and server side) uses HttpMessageConverters to negotiate content conversion
in an HTTP exchange. If Jackson is on the classpath you already get the default converter(s) provided
by Jackson2ObjectMapperBuilder.

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The ObjectMapper (or XmlMapper for Jackson XML converter) instance created by default have the
following customized properties:
MapperFeature.DEFAULT_VIEW_INCLUSION is disabled
DeserializationFeature.FAIL_ON_UNKNOWN_PROPERTIES is disabled
Spring Boot has also some features to make it easier to customize this behavior.
You can configure the ObjectMapper and XmlMapper instances using the environment. Jackson
provides an extensive suite of simple on/off features that can be used to configure various aspects of
its processing. These features are described in five enums in Jackson which map onto properties in
the environment:
Jackson enum

Environment property

com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.DeserializationFeature
spring.jackson.deserialization.<feature_name>=tru
false
com.fasterxml.jackson.core.JsonGenerator.Feature
spring.jackson.generator.<feature_name>=true|
false
com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.MapperFeature
spring.jackson.mapper.<feature_name>=true|
false
com.fasterxml.jackson.core.JsonParser.Feature
spring.jackson.parser.<feature_name>=true|
false

com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.SerializationFeature
spring.jackson.serialization.<feature_name>=true|
false
For
example,
to
enable
pretty
print,
set
spring.jackson.serialization.indent_output=true. Note that, thanks to the use of relaxed
binding, the case of indent_output doesnt have to match the case of the corresponding enum
constant which is INDENT_OUTPUT.
If you want to replace the default ObjectMapper completely, define a @Bean of that type and mark
it as @Primary.
Defining a @Bean of type Jackson2ObjectMapperBuilder will allow you to customize both
default ObjectMapper and XmlMapper (used in MappingJackson2HttpMessageConverter and
MappingJackson2XmlHttpMessageConverter respectively).
Another
way
to
customize
Jackson
is
to
add
beans
of
type
com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.Module to your context. They will be registered with every
bean of type ObjectMapper, providing a global mechanism for contributing custom modules when you
add new features to your application.
Finally, if you provide any @Beans of type MappingJackson2HttpMessageConverter then they
will replace the default value in the MVC configuration. Also, a convenience bean is provided of type
HttpMessageConverters (always available if you use the default MVC configuration) which has
some useful methods to access the default and user-enhanced message converters.
See also the Section 65.4, Customize the @ResponseBody rendering section and the
WebMvcAutoConfiguration source code for more details.

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65.4 Customize the @ResponseBody rendering

Spring uses HttpMessageConverters to render @ResponseBody (or responses from
@RestController). You can contribute additional converters by simply adding beans of that type in a
Spring Boot context. If a bean you add is of a type that would have been included by default anyway (like
MappingJackson2HttpMessageConverter for JSON conversions) then it will replace the default
value. A convenience bean is provided of type HttpMessageConverters (always available if you
use the default MVC configuration) which has some useful methods to access the default and userenhanced message converters (useful, for example if you want to manually inject them into a custom
RestTemplate).
As in normal MVC usage, any WebMvcConfigurerAdapter beans that you provide can also
contribute converters by overriding the configureMessageConverters method, but unlike with
normal MVC, you can supply only additional converters that you need (because Spring Boot
uses the same mechanism to contribute its defaults). Finally, if you opt-out of the Spring
Boot default MVC configuration by providing your own @EnableWebMvc configuration, then you
can take control completely and do everything manually using getMessageConverters from
WebMvcConfigurationSupport.
See the WebMvcAutoConfiguration source code for more details.

65.5 Handling Multipart File Uploads

Spring Boot embraces the Servlet 3 javax.servlet.http.Part API to support uploading files. By
default Spring Boot configures Spring MVC with a maximum file of 1Mb per file and a maximum of
10Mb of file data in a single request. You may override these values, as well as the location to which
intermediate data is stored (e.g., to the /tmp directory) and the threshold past which data is flushed to
disk by using the properties exposed in the MultipartProperties class. If you want to specify that
files be unlimited, for example, set the multipart.maxFileSize property to -1.
The multipart support is helpful when you want to receive multipart encoded file data as a
@RequestParam-annotated parameter of type MultipartFile in a Spring MVC controller handler
method.
See the MultipartAutoConfiguration source for more details.

65.6 Switch off the Spring MVC DispatcherServlet

Spring Boot wants to serve all content from the root of your application / down. If you would rather map
your own servlet to that URL you can do it, but of course you may lose some of the other Boot MVC
features. To add your own servlet and map it to the root resource just declare a @Bean of type Servlet
and give it the special bean name dispatcherServlet (You can also create a bean of a different
type with that name if you want to switch it off and not replace it).

65.7 Switch off the Default MVC configuration

The easiest way to take complete control over MVC configuration is to provide your own
@Configuration with the @EnableWebMvc annotation. This will leave all MVC configuration in your
hands.

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65.8 Customize ViewResolvers

A ViewResolver is a core component of Spring MVC, translating view names in @Controller
to actual View implementations. Note that ViewResolvers are mainly used in UI applications,
rather than REST-style services (a View is not used to render a @ResponseBody). There are many
implementations of ViewResolver to choose from, and Spring on its own is not opinionated about
which ones you should use. Spring Boot, on the other hand, installs one or two for you depending on
what it finds on the classpath and in the application context. The DispatcherServlet uses all the
resolvers it finds in the application context, trying each one in turn until it gets a result, so if you are
adding your own you have to be aware of the order and in which position your resolver is added.
WebMvcAutoConfiguration adds the following ViewResolvers to your context:
An InternalResourceViewResolver with bean id defaultViewResolver. This one locates
physical resources that can be rendered using the DefaultServlet (e.g. static resources and JSP
pages if you are using those). It applies a prefix and a suffix to the view name and then looks for
a physical resource with that path in the servlet context (defaults are both empty, but accessible for
external configuration via spring.view.prefix and spring.view.suffix). It can be overridden
by providing a bean of the same type.
A BeanNameViewResolver with id beanNameViewResolver. This is a useful member of the view
resolver chain and will pick up any beans with the same name as the View being resolved. It shouldnt
be necessary to override or replace it.
A ContentNegotiatingViewResolver with id viewResolver is only added if there are
actually beans of type View present. This is a master resolver, delegating to all the others
and attempting to find a match to the Accept HTTP header sent by the client. There is a
useful blog about ContentNegotiatingViewResolver that you might like to study to learn
more, and also look at the source code for detail. You can switch off the auto-configured
ContentNegotiatingViewResolver by defining a bean named viewResolver.
If you use Thymeleaf you will also have a ThymeleafViewResolver with id
thymeleafViewResolver. It looks for resources by surrounding the view name with a prefix and
suffix (externalized to spring.thymeleaf.prefix and spring.thymeleaf.suffix, defaults
classpath:/templates/ and .html respectively). It can be overridden by providing a bean of the same
name.
If you use FreeMarker you will also have a FreeMarkerViewResolver with id
freeMarkerViewResolver. It looks for resources in a loader path (externalized to
spring.freemarker.templateLoaderPath, default classpath:/templates/) by surrounding
the view name with a prefix and suffix (externalized to spring.freemarker.prefix and
spring.freemarker.suffix, with empty and .ftl defaults respectively). It can be overridden by
providing a bean of the same name.
If you use Groovy templates (actually if groovy-templates is on your classpath) you will
also have a GroovyMarkupViewResolver with id groovyMarkupViewResolver. It looks for
resources in a loader path by surrounding the view name with a prefix and suffix (externalized
to spring.groovy.template.prefix and spring.groovy.template.suffix, defaults
classpath:/templates/ and .tpl respectively). It can be overriden by providing a bean of the same
name.
If you use Velocity you will also have a VelocityViewResolver with id velocityViewResolver. It
looks for resources in a loader path (externalized to spring.velocity.resourceLoaderPath,

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default classpath:/templates/) by surrounding the view name with a prefix and suffix (externalized
to spring.velocity.prefix and spring.velocity.suffix, with empty and .vm defaults
respectively). It can be overridden by providing a bean of the same name.
Check
out
WebMvcAutoConfiguration,
ThymeleafAutoConfiguration,
FreeMarkerAutoConfiguration,
GroovyTemplateAutoConfiguration
and
VelocityAutoConfiguration

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66. Logging
Spring Boot has no mandatory logging dependence, except for the commons-logging API, of which
there are many implementations to choose from. To use Logback you need to include it, and some
bindings for commons-logging on the classpath. The simplest way to do that is through the starter
poms which all depend on spring-boot-starter-logging. For a web application you only need
spring-boot-starter-web since it depends transitively on the logging starter. For example, using
Maven:
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-boot-starter-web</artifactId>
</dependency>

Spring Boot has a LoggingSystem abstraction that attempts to configure logging based on the content
of the classpath. If Logback is available it is the first choice.
If the only change you need to make to logging is to set the levels of various loggers then you can do
that in application.properties using the "logging.level" prefix, e.g.
logging.level.org.springframework.web=DEBUG
logging.level.org.hibernate=ERROR

You can also set the location of a file to log to (in addition to the console) using "logging.file".
To configure the more fine-grained settings of a logging system you need to use the native configuration
format supported by the LoggingSystem in question. By default Spring Boot picks up the native
configuration from its default location for the system (e.g. classpath:logback.xml for Logback), but
you can set the location of the config file using the "logging.config" property.

66.1 Configure Logback for logging

If you put a logback.xml in the root of your classpath it will be picked up from there. Spring Boot
provides a default base configuration that you can include if you just want to set levels, e.g.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<configuration>
<include resource="org/springframework/boot/logging/logback/base.xml"/>
<logger name="org.springframework.web" level="DEBUG"/>
</configuration>

If you look at the default logback.xml in the spring-boot jar you will see that it uses some useful
System properties which the LoggingSystem takes care of creating for you. These are:
${PID} the current process ID.
${LOG_FILE} if logging.file was set in Boots external configuration.
${LOG_PATH} if logging.path was set (representing a directory for log files to live in).
Spring Boot also provides some nice ANSI colour terminal output on a console (but not in a log file)
using a custom Logback converter. See the default base.xml configuration for details.
If Groovy is on the classpath you should be able to configure Logback with logback.groovy as well
(it will be given preference if present).

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66.2 Configure Log4j for logging

Spring Boot also supports either Log4j or Log4j 2 for logging configuration, but only if one of them is on
the classpath. If you are using the starter poms for assembling dependencies that means you have to
exclude Logback and then include your chosen version of Log4j instead. If you arent using the starter
poms then you need to provide commons-logging (at least) in addition to your chosen version of Log4j.
The simplest path is probably through the starter poms, even though it requires some jiggling with
excludes, .e.g. in Maven:
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-boot-starter-web</artifactId>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-boot-starter</artifactId>
<exclusions>
<exclusion>
<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-boot-starter-logging</artifactId>
</exclusion>
</exclusions>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-boot-starter-log4j</artifactId>
</dependency>

To use Log4j 2, simply depend on spring-boot-starter-log4j2 rather than spring-bootstarter-log4j.

Note
The use of one of the Log4j starters gathers together the dependencies for common logging
requirements (e.g. including having Tomcat use java.util.logging but configuring the output
using Log4j or Log4j 2). See the Actuator Log4j or Log4j 2 samples for more detail and to see
it in action.

Use YAML or JSON to configure Log4j 2

In addition to its default XML configuration format, Log4j 2 also supports YAML and JSON
configuration files. To configure Log4j 2 to use an alternative configuration file format all you need
to do is add an appropriate dependency to the classpath. To use YAML, add a dependency on
com.fasterxml.jackson.dataformat:jackson-dataformat-yaml and Log4j 2 will look for
configuration files names log4j2.yaml or log4j2.yml. To use JSON, add a dependency on
com.fasterxml.jackson.core:jackson-databind and Log4j 2 will look for configuration files
named log4j2.json or log4j2.jsn

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67. Data Access

67.1 Configure a DataSource
To override the default settings just define a @Bean of your own of type DataSource. Spring Boot
provides a utility builder class DataSourceBuilder that can be used to create one of the standard
ones (if it is on the classpath), or you can just create your own, and bind it to a set of Environment
properties as explained in the section called Third-party configuration, e.g.
@Bean
@ConfigurationProperties(prefix="datasource.mine")
public DataSource dataSource() {
return new FancyDataSource();
}

datasource.mine.jdbcUrl=jdbc:h2:mem:mydb
datasource.mine.user=sa
datasource.mine.poolSize=30

See Section 28.1, Configure a DataSource in the Spring Boot features section and the
DataSourceAutoConfiguration class for more details.

67.2 Configure Two DataSources

Creating more than one data source works the same as creating the first one. You might want to mark
one of them as @Primary if you are using the default auto-configuration for JDBC or JPA (then that
one will be picked up by any @Autowired injections).
@Bean
@Primary
@ConfigurationProperties(prefix="datasource.primary")
public DataSource primaryDataSource() {
return DataSourceBuilder.create().build();
}
@Bean
@ConfigurationProperties(prefix="datasource.secondary")
public DataSource secondaryDataSource() {
return DataSourceBuilder.create().build();
}

67.3 Use Spring Data repositories

Spring Data can create implementations for you of @Repository interfaces of various flavors. Spring
Boot will handle all of that for you as long as those @Repositories are included in the same package
(or a sub-package) of your @EnableAutoConfiguration class.
For many applications all you will need is to put the right Spring Data dependencies on your classpath
(there is a spring-boot-starter-data-jpa for JPA and a spring-boot-starter-datamongodb for Mongodb), create some repository interfaces to handle your @Entity objects. Examples
are in the JPA sample or the Mongodb sample.
Spring Boot tries to guess the location of your @Repository definitions, based on the
@EnableAutoConfiguration it finds. To get more control, use the @EnableJpaRepositories
annotation (from Spring Data JPA).

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67.4 Separate @Entity definitions from Spring configuration

Spring Boot tries to guess the location of your @Entity definitions, based on the
@EnableAutoConfiguration it finds. To get more control, you can use the @EntityScan
annotation, e.g.
@Configuration
@EnableAutoConfiguration
@EntityScan(basePackageClasses=City.class)
public class Application {
//...
}

67.5 Configure JPA properties

Spring Data JPA already provides some vendor-independent configuration options (e.g. for SQL
logging) and Spring Boot exposes those, and a few more for hibernate as external configuration
properties. The most common options to set are:
spring.jpa.hibernate.ddl-auto: create-drop
spring.jpa.hibernate.naming_strategy: org.hibernate.cfg.ImprovedNamingStrategy
spring.jpa.database: H2
spring.jpa.show-sql: true

(Because of relaxed data binding hyphens or underscores should work equally well as property
keys.) The ddl-auto setting is a special case in that it has different defaults depending on whether
you are using an embedded database (create-drop) or not (none). In addition all properties in
spring.jpa.properties.* are passed through as normal JPA properties (with the prefix stripped)
when the local EntityManagerFactory is created.
See HibernateJpaAutoConfiguration and JpaBaseConfiguration for more details.

67.6 Use a custom EntityManagerFactory

To take full control of the configuration of the EntityManagerFactory, you need to add a @Bean
named entityManagerFactory. Spring Boot auto-configuration switches off its entity manager based on
the presence of a bean of that type.

67.7 Use Two EntityManagers

Even if the default EntityManagerFactory works fine, you will need to define a new one because
otherwise the presence of the second bean of that type will switch off the default. To make it easy to do
that you can use the convenient EntityManagerBuilder provided by Spring Boot, or if you prefer
you can just use the LocalContainerEntityManagerFactoryBean directly from Spring ORM.
Example:
// add two data sources configured as above
@Bean
public LocalContainerEntityManagerFactoryBean customerEntityManagerFactory(
EntityManagerFactoryBuilder builder) {
return builder
.dataSource(customerDataSource())
.packages(Customer.class)

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.persistenceUnit("customers")
.build();
}
@Bean
public LocalContainerEntityManagerFactoryBean orderEntityManagerFactory(
EntityManagerFactoryBuilder builder) {
return builder
.dataSource(orderDataSource())
.packages(Order.class)
.persistenceUnit("orders")
.build();
}

The configuration above almost works on its own. To complete the picture you need to configure
TransactionManagers for the two EntityManagers as well. One of them could be picked up by the
default JpaTransactionManager in Spring Boot if you mark it as @Primary. The other would have
to be explicitly injected into a new instance. Or you might be able to use a JTA transaction manager
spanning both.

67.8 Use a traditional persistence.xml

Spring doesnt require the use of XML to configure the JPA provider, and Spring Boot assumes you
want to take advantage of that feature. If you prefer to use persistence.xml then you need to define
your own @Bean of type LocalEntityManagerFactoryBean (with id entityManagerFactory, and
set the persistence unit name there.
See JpaBaseConfiguration for the default settings.

67.9 Use Spring Data JPA and Mongo repositories

Spring Data JPA and Spring Data Mongo can both create Repository implementations for you
automatically. If they are both present on the classpath, you might have to do some extra configuration
to tell Spring Boot which one (or both) you want to create repositories for you. The most explicit way
to do that is to use the standard Spring Data @Enable*Repositories and tell it the location of your
Repository interfaces (where * is Jpa or Mongo or both).
There are also flags spring.data.*.repositories.enabled that you can use to switch the autoconfigured repositories on and off in external configuration. This is useful for instance in case you want
to switch off the Mongo repositories and still use the auto-configured MongoTemplate.
The same obstacle and the same features exist for other auto-configured Spring Data repository types
(Elasticsearch, Solr). Just change the names of the annotations and flags respectively.

67.10 Expose Spring Data repositories as REST endpoint

Spring Data REST can expose the Repository implementations as REST endpoints for you as long
as Spring MVC has been enabled for the application.
Spring Boot exposes as set of useful properties from the spring.data.rest
namespace that customize the RepositoryRestConfiguration. If you need to provide
additional customization, you can create a @Configuration class that extends
SpringBootRepositoryRestMvcConfiguration. This class supports the same functionality as
RepositoryRestMvcConfiguration, but allows you to continue using spring.data.rest.*
properties.

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68. Database initialization

An SQL database can be initialized in different ways depending on what your stack is. Or of course you
can do it manually as long as the database is a separate process.

68.1 Initialize a database using JPA

JPA has features for DDL generation, and these can be set up to run on startup against the database.
This is controlled through two external properties:
spring.jpa.generate-ddl (boolean) switches the feature on and off and is vendor independent.
spring.jpa.hibernate.ddl-auto (enum) is a Hibernate feature that controls the behavior in a
more fine-grained way. See below for more detail.

68.2 Initialize a database using Hibernate

You can set spring.jpa.hibernate.ddl-auto explicitly and the standard Hibernate property
values are none, validate, update, create-drop. Spring Boot chooses a default value for you
based on whether it thinks your database is embedded (default create-drop) or not (default none).
An embedded database is detected by looking at the Connection type: hsqldb, h2 and derby are
embedded, the rest are not. Be careful when switching from in-memory to a real database that you
dont make assumptions about the existence of the tables and data in the new platform. You either have
to set ddl-auto explicitly, or use one of the other mechanisms to initialize the database.
In addition, a file named import.sql in the root of the classpath will be executed on startup. This can
be useful for demos and for testing if you are careful, but probably not something you want to be on the
classpath in production. It is a Hibernate feature (nothing to do with Spring).

68.3 Initialize a database using Spring JDBC

Spring JDBC has a DataSource initializer feature. Spring Boot enables it by default and loads
SQL from the standard locations schema.sql and data.sql (in the root of the classpath). In
addition Spring Boot will load the schema-${platform}.sql and data-${platform}.sql files
(if present), where platform is the value of spring.datasource.platform, e.g. you might
choose to set it to the vendor name of the database (hsqldb, h2, oracle, mysql, postgresql
etc.). Spring Boot enables the failfast feature of the Spring JDBC initializer by default, so if the
scripts cause exceptions the application will fail to start. The script locations can be changed by
setting spring.datasource.schema and spring.datasource.data, and neither location will be
processed if spring.datasource.initialize=false.
To disable the failfast you can set spring.datasource.continueOnError=true. This can be
useful once an application has matured and been deployed a few times, since the scripts can act as
poor mans migrations inserts that fail mean that the data is already there, so there would be no
need to prevent the application from running, for instance.
If you want to use the schema.sql initialization in a JPA app (with Hibernate) then ddlauto=create-drop will lead to errors if Hibernate tries to create the same tables. To avoid those
errors set ddl-auto explicitly to "" (preferable) or "none". Whether or not you use ddl-auto=createdrop you can always use data.sql to initialize new data.

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68.4 Initialize a Spring Batch database

If you are using Spring Batch then it comes pre-packaged with SQL initialization scripts for most popular
database platforms. Spring Boot will detect your database type, and execute those scripts by default,
and in this case will switch the fail fast setting to false (errors are logged but do not prevent the application
from starting). This is because the scripts are known to be reliable and generally do not contain bugs, so
errors are ignorable, and ignoring them makes the scripts idempotent. You can switch off the initialization
explicitly using spring.batch.initializer.enabled=false.

68.5 Use a higher level database migration tool

Spring Boot works fine with higher level migration tools Flyway (SQL-based) and Liquibase (XML). In
general we prefer Flyway because it is easier on the eyes, and it isnt very common to need platform
independence: usually only one or at most couple of platforms is needed.

Execute Flyway database migrations on startup

To automatically run Flyway database migrations on startup, add the org.flywaydb:flyway-core
to your classpath.
The migrations are scripts in the form V<VERSION>__<NAME>.sql (with <VERSION> an underscoreseparated version, e.g. 1 or 2_1). By default they live in a folder classpath:db/migration but you
can modify that using flyway.locations (a list). See the Flyway class from flyway-core for details
of available settings like schemas etc. In addition Spring Boot provides a small set of properties in
FlywayProperties that can be used to disable the migrations, or switch off the location checking.
By default Flyway will autowire the (@Primary) DataSource in your context and use that for
migrations. If you like to use a different DataSource you can create one and mark its @Bean as
@FlywayDataSource - if you do that remember to create another one and mark it as @Primary
if you want two data sources. Or you can use Flyways native DataSource by setting flyway.
[url,user,password] in external properties.
There is a Flyway sample so you can see how to set things up.

Execute Liquibase database migrations on startup

To
automatically
run
Liquibase
database
migrations
org.liquibase:liquibase-core to your classpath.

on

startup,

add

the

The master change log is by default read from db/changelog/db.changelog-master.yaml but

can be set using liquibase.change-log. See LiquibaseProperties for details of available
settings like contexts, default schema etc.
There is a Liquibase sample so you can see how to set things up.

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69. Batch applications

69.1 Execute Spring Batch jobs on startup
Spring Batch auto configuration is enabled by adding @EnableBatchProcessing (from Spring Batch)
somewhere in your context.
By default it executes all Jobs in the application context on startup (see
JobLauncherCommandLineRunner for details). You can narrow down to a specific job or jobs by
specifying spring.batch.job.names (comma-separated job name patterns).
If the application context includes a JobRegistry then the jobs in spring.batch.job.names are
looked up in the registry instead of being autowired from the context. This is a common pattern with
more complex systems where multiple jobs are defined in child contexts and registered centrally.
See BatchAutoConfiguration and @EnableBatchProcessing for more details.

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70. Actuator
70.1 Change the HTTP port or address of the actuator
endpoints
In a standalone application the Actuator HTTP port defaults to the same as the main HTTP port. To
make the application listen on a different port set the external property management.port. To listen
on a completely different network address (e.g. if you have an internal network for management and
an external one for user applications) you can also set management.address to a valid IP address
that the server is able to bind to.
For more detail look at the ManagementServerProperties source code and Section 41.3,
Customizing the management server port in the Production-ready features section.

70.2 Customize the whitelabel error page

Spring Boot installs a whitelabel error page that you will see in browser client if you encounter a server
error (machine clients consuming JSON and other media types should see a sensible response with
the right error code). To switch it off you can set error.whitelabel.enabled=false, but normally
in addition or alternatively to that you will want to add your own error page replacing the whitelabel one.
Exactly how you do this depends on the templating technology that you are using. For example, if you
are using Thymeleaf you would add an error.html template and if you are using FreeMarker you
would add an error.ftl template. In general what you need is a View that resolves with a name
of error, and/or a @Controller that handles the /error path. Unless you replaced some of the
default configuration you should find a BeanNameViewResolver in your ApplicationContext so
a @Bean with id error would be a simple way of doing that. Look at ErrorMvcAutoConfiguration
for more options.
See also the section on Error Handling for details of how to register handlers in the servlet container.

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71. Security
71.1 Switch off the Spring Boot security configuration
If you define a @Configuration with @EnableWebSecurity anywhere in your application it will
switch off the default webapp security settings in Spring Boot. To tweak the defaults try setting properties
in security.* (see SecurityProperties for details of available settings) and SECURITY section
of Common application properties.

71.2 Change the AuthenticationManager and add user

accounts
If you provide a @Bean of type AuthenticationManager the default one will not be created, so you
have the full feature set of Spring Security available (e.g. various authentication options).
Spring Security also provides a convenient AuthenticationManagerBuilder which can be used
to build an AuthenticationManager with common options. The recommended way to use this in a
webapp is to inject it into a void method in a WebSecurityConfigurerAdapter, e.g.
@Configuration
public class SecurityConfiguration extends WebSecurityConfigurerAdapter {
@Autowired
public void configureGlobal(AuthenticationManagerBuilder auth) throws Exception {
auth.inMemoryAuthentication()
.withUser("barry").password("password").roles("USER"); // ... etc.
}
// ... other stuff for application security
}

You will get the best results if you put this in a nested class, or a standalone class (i.e. not mixed in
with a lot of other @Beans that might be allowed to influence the order of instantiation). The secure web
sample is a useful template to follow.
If you experience instantiation issues (e.g. using JDBC or JPA for the user detail
store) it might be worth extracting the AuthenticationManagerBuilder callback into a
GlobalAuthenticationConfigurerAdapter (in the init() method so it happens before the
authentication manager is needed elsewhere), e.g.
@Configuration
public class AuthenticationManagerConfiguration extends
GlobalAuthenticationConfigurerAdapter {
@Override
public void init(AuthenticationManagerBuilder auth) {
auth.inMemoryAuthentication() // ... etc.
}
}

71.3 Enable HTTPS when running behind a proxy server

Ensuring that all your main endpoints are only available over HTTPS is an important chore for any
application. If you are using Tomcat as a servlet container, then Spring Boot will add Tomcats own

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RemoteIpValve automatically if it detects some environment settings, and you should be able to
rely on the HttpServletRequest to report whether it is secure or not (even downstream of a proxy
server that handles the real SSL termination). The standard behavior is determined by the presence or
absence of certain request headers (x-forwarded-for and x-forwarded-proto), whose names
are conventional, so it should work with most front end proxies. You can switch on the valve by adding
some entries to application.properties, e.g.
server.tomcat.remote_ip_header=x-forwarded-for
server.tomcat.protocol_header=x-forwarded-proto

(The presence of either of those properties will switch on the valve. Or you can add the RemoteIpValve
yourself by adding a TomcatEmbeddedServletContainerFactory bean.)
Spring Security can also be configured to require a secure channel for all (or some requests). To
switch that on in a Spring Boot application you just need to set security.require_ssl to true in
application.properties.

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72. Hot swapping

72.1 Reload static content
There are several options for hot reloading. Running in an IDE (especially with debugging on) is a
good way to do development (all modern IDEs allow reloading of static resources and usually also
hot-swapping of Java class changes). The Maven and Gradle plugins also support running from the
command line with reloading of static files. You can use that with an external css/js compiler process
if you are writing that code with higher level tools.

72.2 Reload Thymeleaf templates without restarting the

container
If you are using Thymeleaf, then set spring.thymeleaf.cache
ThymeleafAutoConfiguration for other Thymeleaf customization options.

to

false.

See

72.3 Reload FreeMarker templates without restarting the

container
If you are using FreeMarker, then set spring.freemarker.cache
FreeMarkerAutoConfiguration for other FreeMarker customization options.

to

false.

See

72.4 Reload Groovy templates without restarting the container

If you are using Groovy templates, then set spring.groovy.template.cache to false. See
GroovyTemplateAutoConfiguration for other Groovy customization options.

72.5 Reload Velocity templates without restarting the container

If you are using Velocity, then set spring.velocity.cache
VelocityAutoConfiguration for other Velocity customization options.

to

false.

See

72.6 Reload Java classes without restarting the container

Modern IDEs (Eclipse, IDEA, etc.) all support hot swapping of bytecode, so if you make a change that
doesnt affect class or method signatures it should reload cleanly with no side effects.
Spring Loaded goes a little further in that it can reload class definitions with changes in the method
signatures. With some customization it can force an ApplicationContext to refresh itself (but there
is no general mechanism to ensure that would be safe for a running application anyway, so it would
only ever be a development time trick probably).

Configuring Spring Loaded for use with Maven

To use Spring Loaded with the Maven command line, just add it as a dependency in the Spring Boot
plugin declaration, e.g.
<plugin>
<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-boot-maven-plugin</artifactId>
<dependencies>

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<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
<artifactId>springloaded</artifactId>
<version>1.2.0.RELEASE</version>
</dependency>
</dependencies>
</plugin>

This normally works pretty well with Eclipse and IntelliJ as long as they have their build configuration
aligned with the Maven defaults (Eclipse m2e does this out of the box).

Configuring Spring Loaded for use with Gradle and IntelliJ

You need to jump through a few hoops if you want to use Spring Loaded in combination with Gradle
and IntelliJ. By default, IntelliJ will compile classes into a different location than Gradle, causing Spring
Loaded monitoring to fail.
To configure IntelliJ correctly you can use the idea Gradle plugin:
buildscript {
repositories { jcenter() }
dependencies {
classpath "org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-gradle-plugin:1.2.5.RELEASE"
classpath 'org.springframework:springloaded:1.2.0.RELEASE'
}
}
apply plugin: 'idea'
idea {
module {
inheritOutputDirs = false
outputDir = file("$buildDir/classes/main/")
}
}
// ...

Note
IntelliJ must be configured to use the same Java version as the command line Gradle task and
springloaded must be included as a buildscript dependency.
You can also additionally enable Make Project Automatically inside Intellij to automatically compile your
code whenever a file is saved.

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73. Build
73.1 Customize dependency versions with Maven
If you use a Maven build that inherits directly or indirectly from spring-boot-dependencies (for
instance spring-boot-starter-parent) but you want to override a specific third-party dependency
you can add appropriate <properties> elements. Browse the spring-boot-dependencies POM
for a complete list of properties. For example, to pick a different slf4j version you would add the
following:
<properties>
<slf4j.version>1.7.5<slf4j.version>
</properties>

Note
This only works if your Maven project inherits (directly or indirectly) from springboot-dependencies. If you have added spring-boot-dependencies in your own
dependencyManagement section with <scope>import</scope> you have to redefine the
artifact yourself instead of overriding the property .
Warning
Each Spring Boot release is designed and tested against a specific set of third-party
dependencies. Overriding versions may cause compatibility issues.

73.2 Create an executable JAR with Maven

The spring-boot-maven-plugin can be used to create an executable fat JAR. If you are using
the spring-boot-starter-parent POM you can simply declare the plugin and your jars will be
repackaged:
<build>
<plugins>
<plugin>
<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-boot-maven-plugin</artifactId>
</plugin>
</plugins>
</build>

If you are not using the parent POM you can still use the plugin, however, you must additionally add
an <executions> section:
<build>
<plugins>
<plugin>
<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-boot-maven-plugin</artifactId>
<version>1.2.5.RELEASE</version>
<executions>
<execution>
<goals>
<goal>repackage</goal>
</goals>
</execution>
</executions>

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</plugin>
</plugins>
</build>

See the plugin documentation for full usage details.

73.3 Create an additional executable JAR

If you want to use your project as a library jar for other projects to depend on, and in addition have an
executable (e.g. demo) version of it, you will want to configure the build in a slightly different way.
For Maven the normal JAR plugin and the Spring Boot plugin both have a classifier configuration that
you can add to create an additional JAR. Example (using the Spring Boot Starter Parent to manage the
plugin versions and other configuration defaults):
<build>
<plugins>
<plugin>
<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-boot-maven-plugin</artifactId>
<configuration>
<classifier>exec</classifier>
</configuration>
</plugin>
</plugins>
</build>

Two jars are produced, the default one, and an executable one using the Boot plugin with classifier
exec.
For Gradle users the steps are similar. Example:
bootRepackage {
classifier = 'exec'
}

73.4 Extract specific libraries when an executable jar runs

Most nested libraries in an executable jar do not need to be unpacked in order to run, however, certain
libraries can have problems. For example, JRuby includes its own nested jar support which assumes
that the jruby-complete.jar is always directly available as a file in its own right.
To deal with any problematic libraries, you can flag that specific nested jars should be automatically
unpacked to the temp folder when the executable jar first runs.
For example, to indicate that JRuby should be flagged for unpack using the Maven Plugin you would
add the following configuration:
<build>
<plugins>
<plugin>
<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-boot-maven-plugin</artifactId>
<configuration>
<requiresUnpack>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.jruby</groupId>
<artifactId>jruby-complete</artifactId>
</dependency>
</requiresUnpack>

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</configuration>
</plugin>
</plugins>
</build>

And to do that same with Gradle:

springBoot {
requiresUnpack = ['org.jruby:jruby-complete']
}

73.5 Create a non-executable JAR with exclusions

Often if you have an executable and a non-executable jar as build products, the executable version
will have additional configuration files that are not needed in a library jar. E.g. the application.yml
configuration file might excluded from the non-executable JAR.
Heres how to do that in Maven:
<build>
<plugins>
<plugin>
<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-boot-maven-plugin</artifactId>
<configuration>
<classifier>exec</classifier>
</configuration>
</plugin>
<plugin>
<artifactId>maven-jar-plugin</artifactId>
<executions>
<execution>
<id>exec</id>
<phase>package</phase>
<goals>
<goal>jar</goal>
</goals>
<configuration>
<classifier>exec</classifier>
</configuration>
</execution>
<execution>
<phase>package</phase>
<goals>
<goal>jar</goal>
</goals>
<configuration>
<!-- Need this to ensure application.yml is excluded -->
<forceCreation>true</forceCreation>
<excludes>
<exclude>application.yml</exclude>
</excludes>
</configuration>
</execution>
</executions>
</plugin>
</plugins>
</build>

In Gradle you can create a new JAR archive with standard task DSL features, and then have the
bootRepackage task depend on that one using its withJarTask property:
jar {
baseName = 'spring-boot-sample-profile'
version = '0.0.0'

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excludes = ['**/application.yml']
}
task('execJar', type:Jar, dependsOn: 'jar') {
baseName = 'spring-boot-sample-profile'
version = '0.0.0'
classifier = 'exec'
from sourceSets.main.output
}
bootRepackage {
withJarTask = tasks['execJar']
}

73.6 Remote debug a Spring Boot application started with

Maven
To attach a remote debugger to a Spring Boot application started with Maven you can use the
jvmArguments property of the maven plugin.
Check this example for more details.

73.7 Remote debug a Spring Boot application started with

Gradle
To attach a remote debugger to a Spring Boot application started with Gradle you can use the
applicationDefaultJvmArgs in build.gradle or --debug-jvm command line option.
build.gradle:
applicationDefaultJvmArgs = [
"-agentlib:jdwp=transport=dt_socket,server=y,suspend=y,address=5005"
]

Command line:
$ gradle run --debug-jvm

Check Gradle Application Plugin for more details.

73.8 Build an executable archive with Ant

To build with Ant you need to grab dependencies, compile and then create a jar or war archive as
normal. To make it executable:
1. Use the appropriate launcher as a Main-Class, e.g. JarLauncher for a jar file, and specify the
other properties it needs as manifest entries, principally a Start-Class.
2. Add the runtime dependencies in a nested lib directory (for a jar) and the provided (embedded
container) dependencies in a nested lib-provided directory. Remember not to compress the
entries in the archive.
3. Add the spring-boot-loader classes at the root of the archive (so the Main-Class is available).
Example:

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<target name="build" depends="compile">

<copy todir="target/classes/lib">
<fileset dir="lib/runtime" />
</copy>
<jar destfile="target/spring-boot-sample-actuator-${spring-boot.version}.jar" compress="false">
<fileset dir="target/classes" />
<fileset dir="src/main/resources" />
<zipfileset src="lib/loader/spring-boot-loader-jar-${spring-boot.version}.jar" />
<manifest>
<attribute name="Main-Class" value="org.springframework.boot.loader.JarLauncher" />
<attribute name="Start-Class" value="${start-class}" />
</manifest>
</jar>
</target>

The Actuator Sample has a build.xml that should work if you run it with
$ ant -lib <path_to>/ivy-2.2.jar

after which you can run the application with

$ java -jar target/*.jar

73.9 How to use Java 6

If you want to use Spring Boot with Java 6 there are a small number of configuration changes that you
will have to make. The exact changes depend on your applications functionality.

Embedded servlet container compatibility

If you are using one of Boots embedded Servlet containers you will have to use a Java 6-compatible
container. Both Tomcat 7 and Jetty 8 are Java 6 compatible. See Section 64.15, Use Tomcat 7 and
Section 64.16, Use Jetty 8 for details.

JTA API compatibility

While the Java Transaction API itself doesnt require Java 7 the official API jar contains classes that
have been built to require Java 7. If you are using JTA then you will need to replace the official JTA 1.2
API jar with one that has been built to work on Java 6. To do so, exclude any transitive dependencies
on javax.transaction:javax.transaction-api and replace them with a dependency on
org.jboss.spec.javax.transaction:jboss-transaction-api_1.2_spec:1.0.0.Final

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74. Traditional deployment

74.1 Create a deployable war file
The first step in producing a deployable war file is to provide a SpringBootServletInitializer
subclass and override its configure method. This makes use of Spring Frameworks Servlet 3.0
support and allows you to configure your application when its launched by the servlet container.
Typically, you update your applications main class to extend SpringBootServletInitializer:
@SpringBootApplication
public class Application extends SpringBootServletInitializer {
@Override
protected SpringApplicationBuilder configure(SpringApplicationBuilder application) {
return application.sources(Application.class);
}
public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
SpringApplication.run(Application.class, args);
}
}

The next step is to update your build configuration so that your project produces a war file rather than a
jar file. If youre using Maven and using spring-boot-starter-parent (which configures Mavens
war plugin for you) all you need to do is modify pom.xml to change the packaging to war:
<packaging>war</packaging>

If youre using Gradle, you need to modify build.gradle to apply the war plugin to the project:
apply plugin: 'war'

The final step in the process is to ensure that the embedded servlet container doesnt interfere with
the servlet container to which the war file will be deployed. To do so, you need to mark the embedded
servlet container dependency as provided.
If youre using Maven:
<dependencies>
<!-- -->
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-boot-starter-tomcat</artifactId>
<scope>provided</scope>
</dependency>
<!-- -->
</dependencies>

And if youre using Gradle:

dependencies {
//
providedRuntime 'org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-tomcat'
//
}

If youre using the Spring Boot build tools, marking the embedded servlet container dependency as
provided will produce an executable war file with the provided dependencies packaged in a lib-

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provided directory. This means that, in addition to being deployable to a servlet container, you can
also run your application using java -jar on the command line.
Tip
Take a look at Spring Boots sample applications for a Maven-based example of the abovedescribed configuration.

74.2 Create a deployable war file for older servlet containers

Older Servlet containers dont have support for the ServletContextInitializer bootstrap process
used in Servlet 3.0. You can still use Spring and Spring Boot in these containers but you are going to
need to add a web.xml to your application and configure it to load an ApplicationContext via a
DispatcherServlet.

74.3 Convert an existing application to Spring Boot

For a non-web application it should be easy (throw away the code that creates
your ApplicationContext and replace it with calls to SpringApplication or
SpringApplicationBuilder). Spring MVC web applications are generally amenable to first creating
a deployable war application, and then migrating it later to an executable war and/or jar. Useful reading
is in the Getting Started Guide on Converting a jar to a war.
Create a deployable war by extending SpringBootServletInitializer (e.g. in a class called
Application), and add the Spring Boot @EnableAutoConfiguration annotation. Example:
@Configuration
@EnableAutoConfiguration
@ComponentScan
public class Application extends SpringBootServletInitializer {
@Override
protected SpringApplicationBuilder configure(SpringApplicationBuilder application) {
// Customize the application or call application.sources(...) to add sources
// Since our example is itself a @Configuration class we actually don't
// need to override this method.
return application;
}
}

Remember that whatever you put in the sources is just a Spring ApplicationContext and normally
anything that already works should work here. There might be some beans you can remove later and let
Spring Boot provide its own defaults for them, but it should be possible to get something working first.
Static resources can be moved to /public (or /static or /resources or /META-INF/resources)
in the classpath root. Same for messages.properties (Spring Boot detects this automatically in the
root of the classpath).
Vanilla usage of Spring DispatcherServlet and Spring Security should require no further changes. If
you have other features in your application, using other servlets or filters for instance, then you may need
to add some configuration to your Application context, replacing those elements from the web.xml
as follows:
A @Bean of type Servlet or ServletRegistrationBean installs that bean in the container as if
it was a <servlet/> and <servlet-mapping/> in web.xml.

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A @Bean of type Filter or FilterRegistrationBean behaves similarly (like a <filter/> and

<filter-mapping/>.
An ApplicationContext in an XML file can be added to an @Import in your Application. Or
simple cases where annotation configuration is heavily used already can be recreated in a few lines
as @Bean definitions.
Once the war is working we make it executable by adding a main method to our Application, e.g.
public static void main(String[] args) {
SpringApplication.run(Application.class, args);
}

Applications can fall into more than one category:

Servlet 3.0+ applications with no web.xml.
Applications with a web.xml.
Applications with a context hierarchy.
Applications without a context hierarchy.
All of these should be amenable to translation, but each might require slightly different tricks.
Servlet 3.0+ applications might translate pretty easily if they already use the Spring Servlet 3.0+
initializer support classes. Normally all the code from an existing WebApplicationInitializer
can be moved into a SpringBootServletInitializer. If your existing application has more than
one ApplicationContext (e.g. if it uses AbstractDispatcherServletInitializer) then you
might be able to squash all your context sources into a single SpringApplication. The main
complication you might encounter is if that doesnt work and you need to maintain the context hierarchy.
See the entry on building a hierarchy for examples. An existing parent context that contains web-specific
features will usually need to be broken up so that all the ServletContextAware components are in
the child context.
Applications that are not already Spring applications might be convertible to a Spring Boot application,
and the guidance above might help, but your mileage may vary.

74.4 Deploying a WAR to Weblogic

To deploy a Spring Boot application to Weblogic you must ensure that your servlet initializer directly
implements WebApplicationInitializer (even if you extend from a base class that already
implements it).
A typical initializer for Weblogic would be something like this:
import org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.SpringBootApplication;
import org.springframework.boot.context.web.SpringBootServletInitializer;
import org.springframework.web.WebApplicationInitializer;
@SpringBootApplication
public class MyApplication extends SpringBootServletInitializer implements WebApplicationInitializer {
}

If you use logback, you will also need to tell Weblogic to prefer the packaged version rather than the
version that pre-installed with the server. You can do this by adding a WEB-INF/weblogic.xml file
with the following contents:

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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<wls:weblogic-web-app
xmlns:wls="http://xmlns.oracle.com/weblogic/weblogic-web-app"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee
http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee/ejb-jar_3_0.xsd
http://xmlns.oracle.com/weblogic/weblogic-web-app
http://xmlns.oracle.com/weblogic/weblogic-web-app/1.4/weblogic-web-app.xsd">
<wls:container-descriptor>
<wls:prefer-application-packages>
<wls:package-name>org.slf4j</wls:package-name>
</wls:prefer-application-packages>
</wls:container-descriptor>
</wls:weblogic-web-app>

74.5 Deploying a WAR in an Old (Servlet 2.5) Container

Spring Boot uses Servlet 3.0 APIs to initialize the ServletContext (register Servlets etc.) so
you cant use the same application out of the box in a Servlet 2.5 container. It is however possible
to run a Spring Boot application on an older container with some special tools. If you include
org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-legacy as a dependency (maintained separately to
the core of Spring Boot and currently available at 1.0.0.RELEASE), all you should need to do is create
a web.xml and declare a context listener to create the application context and your filters and servlets.
The context listener is a special purpose one for Spring Boot, but the rest of it is normal for a Spring
application in Servlet 2.5. Example:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<web-app version="2.5" xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee/webapp_2_5.xsd">
<context-param>
<param-name>contextConfigLocation</param-name>
<param-value>demo.Application</param-value>
</context-param>
<listener>
<listener-class>org.springframework.boot.legacy.context.web.SpringBootContextLoaderListener</
listener-class>
</listener>
<filter>
<filter-name>metricFilter</filter-name>
<filter-class>org.springframework.web.filter.DelegatingFilterProxy</filter-class>
</filter>
<filter-mapping>
<filter-name>metricFilter</filter-name>
<url-pattern>/*</url-pattern>
</filter-mapping>
<servlet>
<servlet-name>appServlet</servlet-name>
<servlet-class>org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet</servlet-class>
<init-param>
<param-name>contextAttribute</param-name>
<param-value>org.springframework.web.context.WebApplicationContext.ROOT</param-value>
</init-param>
<load-on-startup>1</load-on-startup>
</servlet>
<servlet-mapping>
<servlet-name>appServlet</servlet-name>
<url-pattern>/</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>

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</web-app>

In this example we are using a single application context (the one created by the context listener)
and attaching it to the DispatcherServlet using an init parameter. This is normal in a Spring Boot
application (you normally only have one application context).

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Appendix A. Common application

properties
Various properties can be specified inside your application.properties/application.yml file
or as command line switches. This section provides a list common Spring Boot properties and references
to the underlying classes that consume them.
Note
Property contributions can come from additional jar files on your classpath so you should not
consider this an exhaustive list. It is also perfectly legit to define your own properties.
Warning
This sample file is meant as a guide only. Do not copy/paste the entire content into your
application; rather pick only the properties that you need.
#
#
#
#
#
#

===================================================================
COMMON SPRING BOOT PROPERTIES
This sample file is provided as a guideline. Do NOT copy it in its
entirety to your own application.
^^^
===================================================================

# ---------------------------------------# CORE PROPERTIES

# ---------------------------------------# SPRING CONFIG (ConfigFileApplicationListener)
spring.config.name= # config file name (default to 'application')
spring.config.location= # location of config file
# PROFILES
spring.profiles.active= # comma list of active profiles
spring.profiles.include= # unconditionally activate the specified comma separated profiles
# APPLICATION SETTINGS (SpringApplication)
spring.main.sources=
spring.main.web-environment= # detect by default
spring.main.show-banner=true
spring.main....= # see class for all properties
# LOGGING
logging.path=/var/log
logging.file=myapp.log
logging.config= # location of config file (default classpath:logback.xml for logback)
logging.level.*= # levels for loggers, e.g. "logging.level.org.springframework=DEBUG" (TRACE, DEBUG,
INFO, WARN, ERROR, FATAL, OFF)
# IDENTITY (ContextIdApplicationContextInitializer)
spring.application.name=
spring.application.index=
# EMBEDDED SERVER CONFIGURATION (ServerProperties)
server.port=8080
server.address= # bind to a specific NIC
server.session-timeout= # session timeout in seconds
server.context-parameters.*= # Servlet context init parameters, e.g. server.context-parameters.a=alpha
server.context-path= # the context path, defaults to '/'
server.servlet-path= # the servlet path, defaults to '/'
server.ssl.enabled=true # if SSL support is enabled

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server.ssl.client-auth= # want or need

server.ssl.key-alias=
server.ssl.ciphers= # supported SSL ciphers
server.ssl.key-password=
server.ssl.key-store=
server.ssl.key-store-password=
server.ssl.key-store-provider=
server.ssl.key-store-type=
server.ssl.protocol=TLS
server.ssl.trust-store=
server.ssl.trust-store-password=
server.ssl.trust-store-provider=
server.ssl.trust-store-type=
server.tomcat.access-log-pattern= # log pattern of the access log
server.tomcat.access-log-enabled=false # is access logging enabled
server.tomcat.compression=off # is compression enabled (off, on, or an integer content length limit)
server.tomcat.compressable-mime-types=text/html,text/xml,text/plain # comma-separated list of mime types
that Tomcat will compress
server.tomcat.internal-proxies=10\\.\\d{1,3}\\.\\d{1,3}\\.\\d{1,3}|\\
192\\.168\\.\\d{1,3}\\.\\d{1,3}|\\
169\\.254\\.\\d{1,3}\\.\\d{1,3}|\\
127\\.\\d{1,3}\\.\\d{1,3}\\.\\d{1,3} # regular expression matching trusted IP addresses
server.tomcat.protocol-header=x-forwarded-proto # front end proxy forward header
server.tomcat.protocol-header-https-value=https # value of the protocol header that indicates that the
incoming request uses SSL
server.tomcat.port-header= # front end proxy port header
server.tomcat.remote-ip-header=x-forwarded-for
server.tomcat.basedir=/tmp # base dir (usually not needed, defaults to tmp)
server.tomcat.background-processor-delay=30; # in seconds
server.tomcat.max-http-header-size= # maximum size in bytes of the HTTP message header
server.tomcat.max-threads = 0 # number of threads in protocol handler
server.tomcat.uri-encoding = UTF-8 # character encoding to use for URL decoding
# SPRING MVC (WebMvcProperties)
spring.mvc.locale= # set fixed locale, e.g. en_UK
spring.mvc.date-format= # set fixed date format, e.g. dd/MM/yyyy
spring.mvc.favicon.enabled=true
spring.mvc.message-codes-resolver-format= # PREFIX_ERROR_CODE / POSTFIX_ERROR_CODE
spring.mvc.ignore-default-model-on-redirect=true # If the the content of the "default" model should be
ignored redirects
spring.view.prefix= # MVC view prefix
spring.view.suffix= # ... and suffix
# SPRING RESOURCES HANDLING (ResourceProperties)
spring.resources.cache-period= # cache timeouts in headers sent to browser
spring.resources.add-mappings=true # if default mappings should be added
# MULTIPART (MultipartProperties)
multipart.enabled=true
multipart.file-size-threshold=0 # Threshold after which files will be written to disk.
multipart.location= # Intermediate location of uploaded files.
multipart.max-file-size=1Mb # Max file size.
multipart.max-request-size=10Mb # Max request size.
# SPRING HATEOAS (HateoasProperties)
spring.hateoas.apply-to-primary-object-mapper=true # if the primary mapper should also be configured
# HTTP encoding (HttpEncodingProperties)
spring.http.encoding.charset=UTF-8 # the encoding of HTTP requests/responses
spring.http.encoding.enabled=true # enable http encoding support
spring.http.encoding.force=true # force the configured encoding
# HTTP message conversion
spring.http.converters.preferred-json-mapper= # the preferred JSON mapper to use for HTTP message
conversion. Set to "gson" to force the use of Gson when both it and Jackson are on the classpath.
# HTTP response compression (GzipFilterProperties)
spring.http.gzip.buffer-size= # size of the output buffer in bytes
spring.http.gzip.deflate-compression-level= # the level used for deflate compression (0-9)
spring.http.gzip.deflate-no-wrap= # noWrap setting for deflate compression (true or false)
spring.http.gzip.enabled=true # enable gzip filter support

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spring.http.gzip.excluded-agents= # comma-separated list of user agents to exclude from compression

spring.http.gzip.exclude-agent-patterns= # comma-separated list of regular expression patterns to
control user agents excluded from compression
spring.http.gzip.exclude-paths= # comma-separated list of paths to exclude from compression
spring.http.gzip.exclude-path-patterns= # comma-separated list of regular expression patterns to control
the paths that are excluded from compression
spring.http.gzip.methods= # comma-separated list of HTTP methods for which compression is enabled
spring.http.gzip.mime-types= # comma-separated list of MIME types which should be compressed
spring.http.gzip.excluded-mime-types= # comma-separated list of MIME types to exclude from compression
spring.http.gzip.min-gzip-size= # minimum content length required for compression to occur
spring.http.gzip.vary= # Vary header to be sent on responses that may be compressed
# JACKSON (JacksonProperties)
spring.jackson.date-format= # Date format string (e.g. yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss), or a fully-qualified date
format class name (e.g. com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.util.ISO8601DateFormat)
spring.jackson.property-naming-strategy= # One of the constants on Jackson's PropertyNamingStrategy
(e.g. CAMEL_CASE_TO_LOWER_CASE_WITH_UNDERSCORES) or the fully-qualified class name of a
PropertyNamingStrategy subclass
spring.jackson.deserialization.*= # see Jackson's DeserializationFeature
spring.jackson.generator.*= # see Jackson's JsonGenerator.Feature
spring.jackson.mapper.*= # see Jackson's MapperFeature
spring.jackson.parser.*= # see Jackson's JsonParser.Feature
spring.jackson.serialization.*= # see Jackson's SerializationFeature
# THYMELEAF (ThymeleafAutoConfiguration)
spring.thymeleaf.check-template-location=true
spring.thymeleaf.prefix=classpath:/templates/
spring.thymeleaf.excluded-view-names= # comma-separated list of view names that should be excluded from
resolution
spring.thymeleaf.view-names= # comma-separated list of view names that can be resolved
spring.thymeleaf.suffix=.html
spring.thymeleaf.mode=HTML5
spring.thymeleaf.encoding=UTF-8
spring.thymeleaf.content-type=text/html # ;charset=<encoding> is added
spring.thymeleaf.cache=true # set to false for hot refresh
# FREEMARKER (FreeMarkerAutoConfiguration)
spring.freemarker.allow-request-override=false
spring.freemarker.cache=true
spring.freemarker.check-template-location=true
spring.freemarker.charset=UTF-8
spring.freemarker.content-type=text/html
spring.freemarker.expose-request-attributes=false
spring.freemarker.expose-session-attributes=false
spring.freemarker.expose-spring-macro-helpers=false
spring.freemarker.prefix=
spring.freemarker.request-context-attribute=
spring.freemarker.settings.*=
spring.freemarker.suffix=.ftl
spring.freemarker.template-loader-path=classpath:/templates/ # comma-separated list
spring.freemarker.view-names= # whitelist of view names that can be resolved
# GROOVY TEMPLATES (GroovyTemplateAutoConfiguration)
spring.groovy.template.cache=true
spring.groovy.template.charset=UTF-8
spring.groovy.template.configuration.*= # See Groovy's TemplateConfiguration
spring.groovy.template.content-type=text/html
spring.groovy.template.prefix=classpath:/templates/
spring.groovy.template.suffix=.tpl
spring.groovy.template.view-names= # whitelist of view names that can be resolved
# VELOCITY TEMPLATES (VelocityAutoConfiguration)
spring.velocity.allow-request-override=false
spring.velocity.cache=true
spring.velocity.check-template-location=true
spring.velocity.charset=UTF-8
spring.velocity.content-type=text/html
spring.velocity.date-tool-attribute=
spring.velocity.expose-request-attributes=false
spring.velocity.expose-session-attributes=false
spring.velocity.expose-spring-macro-helpers=false

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spring.velocity.number-tool-attribute=
spring.velocity.prefer-file-system-access=true # prefer file system access for template loading
spring.velocity.prefix=
spring.velocity.properties.*=
spring.velocity.request-context-attribute=
spring.velocity.resource-loader-path=classpath:/templates/
spring.velocity.suffix=.vm
spring.velocity.toolbox-config-location= # velocity Toolbox config location, for example "/WEB-INF/
toolbox.xml"
spring.velocity.view-names= # whitelist of view names that can be resolved
# MUSTACHE TEMPLATES (MustacheAutoConfiguration)
spring.mustache.cache=true
spring.mustache.charset=UTF-8
spring.mustache.check-template-location=true
spring.mustache.content-type=UTF-8
spring.mustache.enabled=true # enable MVC view resolution
spring.mustache.prefix=
spring.mustache.suffix=.html
spring.mustache.view-names= # whitelist of view names that can be resolved
# JERSEY (JerseyProperties)
spring.jersey.type=servlet # servlet or filter
spring.jersey.init= # init params
spring.jersey.filter.order=
# INTERNATIONALIZATION (MessageSourceAutoConfiguration)
spring.messages.basename=messages
spring.messages.cache-seconds=-1
spring.messages.encoding=UTF-8

# SECURITY (SecurityProperties)
security.user.name=user # login username
security.user.password= # login password
security.user.role=USER # role assigned to the user
security.require-ssl=false # advanced settings ...
security.enable-csrf=false
security.basic.enabled=true
security.basic.realm=Spring
security.basic.path= # /**
security.basic.authorize-mode= # ROLE, AUTHENTICATED, NONE
security.filter-order=0
security.headers.xss=false
security.headers.cache=false
security.headers.frame=false
security.headers.content-type=false
security.headers.hsts=all # none / domain / all
security.sessions=stateless # always / never / if_required / stateless
security.ignored= # Comma-separated list of paths to exclude from the default secured paths
# DATASOURCE (DataSourceAutoConfiguration & DataSourceProperties)
spring.datasource.name= # name of the data source
spring.datasource.initialize=true # populate using data.sql
spring.datasource.schema= # a schema (DDL) script resource reference
spring.datasource.data= # a data (DML) script resource reference
spring.datasource.sql-script-encoding= # a charset for reading SQL scripts
spring.datasource.platform= # the platform to use in the schema resource (schema-${platform}.sql)
spring.datasource.continue-on-error=false # continue even if can't be initialized
spring.datasource.separator=; # statement separator in SQL initialization scripts
spring.datasource.driver-class-name= # JDBC Settings...
spring.datasource.url=
spring.datasource.username=
spring.datasource.password=
spring.datasource.jndi-name= # For JNDI lookup (class, url, username & password are ignored when set)
spring.datasource.max-active=100 # Advanced configuration...
spring.datasource.max-idle=8
spring.datasource.min-idle=8
spring.datasource.initial-size=10
spring.datasource.validation-query=
spring.datasource.test-on-borrow=false

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spring.datasource.test-on-return=false
spring.datasource.test-while-idle=
spring.datasource.time-between-eviction-runs-millis=
spring.datasource.min-evictable-idle-time-millis=
spring.datasource.max-wait=
spring.datasource.jmx-enabled=false # Export JMX MBeans (if supported)
# DAO (PersistenceExceptionTranslationAutoConfiguration)
spring.dao.exceptiontranslation.enabled=true
# MONGODB (MongoProperties)
spring.data.mongodb.host= # the db host
spring.data.mongodb.port=27017 # the connection port (defaults to 27107)
spring.data.mongodb.uri=mongodb://localhost/test # connection URL
spring.data.mongodb.database=
spring.data.mongodb.authentication-database=
spring.data.mongodb.grid-fs-database=
spring.data.mongodb.username=
spring.data.mongodb.password=
spring.data.mongodb.repositories.enabled=true # if spring data repository support is enabled
# JPA (JpaBaseConfiguration, HibernateJpaAutoConfiguration)
spring.jpa.properties.*= # properties to set on the JPA connection
spring.jpa.open-in-view=true
spring.jpa.show-sql=true
spring.jpa.database-platform=
spring.jpa.database=
spring.jpa.generate-ddl=false # ignored by Hibernate, might be useful for other vendors
spring.jpa.hibernate.naming-strategy= # naming classname
spring.jpa.hibernate.ddl-auto= # defaults to create-drop for embedded dbs
spring.data.jpa.repositories.enabled=true # if spring data repository support is enabled
# JTA (JtaAutoConfiguration)
spring.jta.log-dir= # transaction log dir
spring.jta.*= # technology specific configuration
# ATOMIKOS
spring.jta.atomikos.connectionfactory.borrow-connection-timeout=30 # Timeout, in seconds, for borrowing
connections from the pool
spring.jta.atomikos.connectionfactory.ignore-session-transacted-flag=true # Whether or not to ignore the
transacted flag when creating session
spring.jta.atomikos.connectionfactory.local-transaction-mode=false # Whether or not local transactions
are desired
spring.jta.atomikos.connectionfactory.maintenance-interval=60 # The time, in seconds, between runs of
the pool's maintenance thread
spring.jta.atomikos.connectionfactory.max-idle-time=60 # The time, in seconds, after which connections
are cleaned up from the pool
spring.jta.atomikos.connectionfactory.max-lifetime=0 # The time, in seconds, that a connection can be
pooled for before being destroyed. 0 denotes no limit.
spring.jta.atomikos.connectionfactory.max-pool-size=1 # The maximum size of the pool
spring.jta.atomikos.connectionfactory.min-pool-size=1 # The minimum size of the pool
spring.jta.atomikos.connectionfactory.reap-timeout=0 # The reap timeout, in seconds, for borrowed
connections. 0 denotes no limit.
spring.jta.atomikos.connectionfactory.unique-resource-name=jmsConnectionFactory # The unique name used
to identify the resource during recovery
spring.jta.atomikos.datasource.borrow-connection-timeout=30 # Timeout, in seconds, for borrowing
connections from the pool
spring.jta.atomikos.datasource.default-isolation-level= # Default isolation level of connections
provided by the pool
spring.jta.atomikos.datasource.login-timeout= # Timeout, in seconds, for establishing a database
connection
spring.jta.atomikos.datasource.maintenance-interval=60 # The time, in seconds, between runs of the
pool's maintenance thread
spring.jta.atomikos.datasource.max-idle-time=60 # The time, in seconds, after which connections are
cleaned up from the pool
spring.jta.atomikos.datasource.max-lifetime=0 # The time, in seconds, that a connection can be pooled
for before being destroyed. 0 denotes no limit.
spring.jta.atomikos.datasource.max-pool-size=1 # The maximum size of the pool
spring.jta.atomikos.datasource.min-pool-size=1 # The minimum size of the pool
spring.jta.atomikos.datasource.reap-timeout=0 # The reap timeout, in seconds, for borrowed connections.
0 denotes no limit.

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spring.jta.atomikos.datasource.test-query= # SQL query or statement used to validate a connection before

returning it
spring.jta.atomikos.datasource.unique-resource-name=dataSource # The unique name used to identify the
resource during recovery
# BITRONIX
spring.jta.bitronix.connectionfactory.acquire-increment=1 # Number of connections to create when growing
the pool
spring.jta.bitronix.connectionfactory.acquisition-interval=1 # Time, in seconds, to wait before trying
to acquire a connection again after an invalid connection was acquired
spring.jta.bitronix.connectionfactory.acquisition-timeout=30 # Timeout, in seconds, for acquiring
connections from the pool
spring.jta.bitronix.connectionfactory.allow-local-transactions=true # Whether or not the transaction
manager should allow mixing XA and non-XA transactions
spring.jta.bitronix.connectionfactory.apply-transaction-timeout=false # Whether or not the transaction
timeout should be set on the XAResource when it is enlisted
spring.jta.bitronix.connectionfactory.automatic-enlisting-enabled=true # Whether or not resources should
be enlisted and delisted automatically
spring.jta.bitronix.connectionfactory.cache-producers-consumers=true # Whether or not produces and
consumers should be cached
spring.jta.bitronix.connectionfactory.defer-connection-release=true # Whether or not the provider can
run many transactions on the same connection and supports transaction interleaving
spring.jta.bitronix.connectionfactory.ignore-recovery-failures=false # Whether or not recovery failures
should be ignored
spring.jta.bitronix.connectionfactory.max-idle-time=60 # The time, in seconds, after which connections
are cleaned up from the pool
spring.jta.bitronix.connectionfactory.max-pool-size=10 # The maximum size of the pool. 0 denotes no
limit
spring.jta.bitronix.connectionfactory.min-pool-size=0 # The minimum size of the pool
spring.jta.bitronix.connectionfactory.password= # The password to use to connect to the JMS provider
spring.jta.bitronix.connectionfactory.share-transaction-connections=false # Whether or not connections
in the ACCESSIBLE state can be shared within the context of a transaction
spring.jta.bitronix.connectionfactory.test-connections=true # Whether or not connections should be
tested when acquired from the pool
spring.jta.bitronix.connectionfactory.two-pc-ordering-position=1 # The postion that this resource should
take during two-phase commit (always first is Integer.MIN_VALUE, always last is Integer.MAX_VALUE)
spring.jta.bitronix.connectionfactory.unique-name=jmsConnectionFactory # The unique name used to
identify the resource during recovery
spring.jta.bitronix.connectionfactory.use-tm-join=true Whether or not TMJOIN should be used when
starting XAResources
spring.jta.bitronix.connectionfactory.user= # The user to use to connect to the JMS provider
spring.jta.bitronix.datasource.acquire-increment=1 # Number of connections to create when growing the
pool
spring.jta.bitronix.datasource.acquisition-interval=1 # Time, in seconds, to wait before trying to
acquire a connection again after an invalid connection was acquired
spring.jta.bitronix.datasource.acquisition-timeout=30 # Timeout, in seconds, for acquiring connections
from the pool
spring.jta.bitronix.datasource.allow-local-transactions=true # Whether or not the transaction manager
should allow mixing XA and non-XA transactions
spring.jta.bitronix.datasource.apply-transaction-timeout=false # Whether or not the transaction timeout
should be set on the XAResource when it is enlisted
spring.jta.bitronix.datasource.automatic-enlisting-enabled=true # Whether or not resources should be
enlisted and delisted automatically
spring.jta.bitronix.datasource.cursor-holdability= # The default cursor holdability for connections
spring.jta.bitronix.datasource.defer-connection-release=true # Whether or not the database can run many
transactions on the same connection and supports transaction interleaving
spring.jta.bitronix.datasource.enable-jdbc4-connection-test # Whether or not Connection.isValid() is
called when acquiring a connection from the pool
spring.jta.bitronix.datasource.ignore-recovery-failures=false # Whether or not recovery failures should
be ignored
spring.jta.bitronix.datasource.isolation-level= # The default isolation level for connections
spring.jta.bitronix.datasource.local-auto-commit # The default auto-commit mode for local transactions
spring.jta.bitronix.datasource.login-timeout= # Timeout, in seconds, for establishing a database
connection
spring.jta.bitronix.datasource.max-idle-time=60 # The time, in seconds, after which connections are
cleaned up from the pool
spring.jta.bitronix.datasource.max-pool-size=10 # The maximum size of the pool. 0 denotes no limit
spring.jta.bitronix.datasource.min-pool-size=0 # The minimum size of the pool
spring.jta.bitronix.datasource.prepared-statement-cache-size=0 # The target size of the prepared
statement cache. 0 disables the cache

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spring.jta.bitronix.datasource.share-transaction-connections=false # Whether or not connections in the

ACCESSIBLE state can be shared within the context of a transaction
spring.jta.bitronix.datasource.test-query # SQL query or statement used to validate a connection before
returning it
spring.jta.bitronix.datasource.two-pc-ordering-position=1 # The postion that this resource should take
during two-phase commit (always first is Integer.MIN_VALUE, always last is Integer.MAX_VALUE)
spring.jta.bitronix.datasource.unique-name=dataSource # The unique name used to identify the resource
during recovery
spring.jta.bitronix.datasource.use-tm-join=true Whether or not TMJOIN should be used when starting
XAResources
# SOLR (SolrProperties)
spring.data.solr.host=http://127.0.0.1:8983/solr
spring.data.solr.zk-host=
spring.data.solr.repositories.enabled=true # if spring data repository support is enabled
# ELASTICSEARCH (ElasticsearchProperties)
spring.data.elasticsearch.cluster-name= # The cluster name (defaults to elasticsearch)
spring.data.elasticsearch.cluster-nodes= # The address(es) of the server node (comma-separated; if not
specified starts a client node)
spring.data.elasticsearch.properties.*= # Additional properties used to configure the client
spring.data.elasticsearch.repositories.enabled=true # if spring data repository support is enabled
# DATA REST (RepositoryRestConfiguration)
spring.data.rest.base-uri= # base URI against which the exporter should calculate its links
# FLYWAY (FlywayProperties)
flyway.check-location=false # check that migration scripts location exists
flyway.locations=classpath:db/migration # locations of migrations scripts
flyway.schemas= # schemas to update
flyway.init-version= 1 # version to start migration
flyway.init-sqls= # SQL statements to execute to initialize a connection immediately after obtaining it
flyway.sql-migration-prefix=V
flyway.sql-migration-suffix=.sql
flyway.enabled=true
flyway.url= # JDBC url if you want Flyway to create its own DataSource
flyway.user= # JDBC username if you want Flyway to create its own DataSource
flyway.password= # JDBC password if you want Flyway to create its own DataSource
# LIQUIBASE (LiquibaseProperties)
liquibase.change-log=classpath:/db/changelog/db.changelog-master.yaml
liquibase.check-change-log-location=true # check the change log location exists
liquibase.contexts= # runtime contexts to use
liquibase.default-schema= # default database schema to use
liquibase.drop-first=false
liquibase.enabled=true
liquibase.url= # specific JDBC url (if not set the default datasource is used)
liquibase.user= # user name for liquibase.url
liquibase.password= # password for liquibase.url
# JMX
spring.jmx.enabled=true # Expose MBeans from Spring
# RABBIT (RabbitProperties)
spring.rabbitmq.host= # connection host
spring.rabbitmq.port= # connection port
spring.rabbitmq.addresses= # connection addresses (e.g. myhost:9999,otherhost:1111)
spring.rabbitmq.username= # login user
spring.rabbitmq.password= # login password
spring.rabbitmq.virtual-host=
spring.rabbitmq.dynamic=
# REDIS (RedisProperties)
spring.redis.database= # database name
spring.redis.host=localhost # server host
spring.redis.password= # server password
spring.redis.port=6379 # connection port
spring.redis.pool.max-idle=8 # pool settings ...
spring.redis.pool.min-idle=0
spring.redis.pool.max-active=8
spring.redis.pool.max-wait=-1

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spring.redis.sentinel.master= # name of Redis server

spring.redis.sentinel.nodes= # comma-separated list of host:port pairs
# ACTIVEMQ (ActiveMQProperties)
spring.activemq.broker-url=tcp://localhost:61616 # connection URL
spring.activemq.user=
spring.activemq.password=
spring.activemq.in-memory=true # broker kind to create if no broker-url is specified
spring.activemq.pooled=false
# HornetQ (HornetQProperties)
spring.hornetq.mode= # connection mode (native, embedded)
spring.hornetq.host=localhost # hornetQ host (native mode)
spring.hornetq.port=5445 # hornetQ port (native mode)
spring.hornetq.embedded.enabled=true # if the embedded server is enabled (needs hornetq-jms-server.jar)
spring.hornetq.embedded.server-id= # auto-generated id of the embedded server (integer)
spring.hornetq.embedded.persistent=false # message persistence
spring.hornetq.embedded.data-directory= # location of data content (when persistence is enabled)
spring.hornetq.embedded.queues= # comma-separated queues to create on startup
spring.hornetq.embedded.topics= # comma-separated topics to create on startup
spring.hornetq.embedded.cluster-password= # customer password (randomly generated by default)
# JMS (JmsProperties)
spring.jms.jndi-name= # JNDI location of a JMS ConnectionFactory
spring.jms.pub-sub-domain= # false for queue (default), true for topic
# Email (MailProperties)
spring.mail.host=smtp.acme.org # mail server host
spring.mail.port= # mail server port
spring.mail.username=
spring.mail.password=
spring.mail.default-encoding=UTF-8 # encoding to use for MimeMessages
spring.mail.properties.*= # properties to set on the JavaMail session
# SPRING BATCH (BatchDatabaseInitializer)
spring.batch.job.names=job1,job2
spring.batch.job.enabled=true
spring.batch.initializer.enabled=true
spring.batch.schema= # batch schema to load
# AOP
spring.aop.auto=
spring.aop.proxy-target-class=
# FILE ENCODING (FileEncodingApplicationListener)
spring.mandatory-file-encoding=false
# SPRING SOCIAL (SocialWebAutoConfiguration)
spring.social.auto-connection-views=true # Set to true for default connection views or false if you
provide your own
# SPRING SOCIAL FACEBOOK (FacebookAutoConfiguration)
spring.social.facebook.app-id= # your application's Facebook App ID
spring.social.facebook.app-secret= # your application's Facebook App Secret
# SPRING SOCIAL LINKEDIN (LinkedInAutoConfiguration)
spring.social.linkedin.app-id= # your application's LinkedIn App ID
spring.social.linkedin.app-secret= # your application's LinkedIn App Secret
# SPRING SOCIAL TWITTER (TwitterAutoConfiguration)
spring.social.twitter.app-id= # your application's Twitter App ID
spring.social.twitter.app-secret= # your application's Twitter App Secret
# SPRING MOBILE SITE PREFERENCE (SitePreferenceAutoConfiguration)
spring.mobile.sitepreference.enabled=true # enabled by default
# SPRING MOBILE DEVICE VIEWS (DeviceDelegatingViewResolverAutoConfiguration)
spring.mobile.devicedelegatingviewresolver.enabled=true # disabled by default
spring.mobile.devicedelegatingviewresolver.normal-prefix=
spring.mobile.devicedelegatingviewresolver.normal-suffix=
spring.mobile.devicedelegatingviewresolver.mobile-prefix=mobile/

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spring.mobile.devicedelegatingviewresolver.mobile-suffix=
spring.mobile.devicedelegatingviewresolver.tablet-prefix=tablet/
spring.mobile.devicedelegatingviewresolver.tablet-suffix=
# ---------------------------------------# ACTUATOR PROPERTIES
# ---------------------------------------# MANAGEMENT HTTP SERVER (ManagementServerProperties)
management.port= # defaults to 'server.port'
management.address= # bind to a specific NIC
management.context-path= # default to '/'
management.add-application-context-header= # default to true
management.security.enabled=true # enable security
management.security.role=ADMIN # role required to access the management endpoint
management.security.sessions=stateless # session creating policy to use (always, never, if_required,
stateless)
# PID FILE (ApplicationPidFileWriter)
spring.pidfile= # Location of the PID file to write
# ENDPOINTS (AbstractEndpoint subclasses)
endpoints.autoconfig.id=autoconfig
endpoints.autoconfig.sensitive=true
endpoints.autoconfig.enabled=true
endpoints.beans.id=beans
endpoints.beans.sensitive=true
endpoints.beans.enabled=true
endpoints.configprops.id=configprops
endpoints.configprops.sensitive=true
endpoints.configprops.enabled=true
endpoints.configprops.keys-to-sanitize=password,secret,key # suffix or regex
endpoints.dump.id=dump
endpoints.dump.sensitive=true
endpoints.dump.enabled=true
endpoints.env.id=env
endpoints.env.sensitive=true
endpoints.env.enabled=true
endpoints.env.keys-to-sanitize=password,secret,key # suffix or regex
endpoints.health.id=health
endpoints.health.sensitive=true
endpoints.health.enabled=true
endpoints.health.mapping.*= # mapping of health statuses to HttpStatus codes
endpoints.health.time-to-live=1000
endpoints.info.id=info
endpoints.info.sensitive=false
endpoints.info.enabled=true
endpoints.mappings.enabled=true
endpoints.mappings.id=mappings
endpoints.mappings.sensitive=true
endpoints.metrics.id=metrics
endpoints.metrics.sensitive=true
endpoints.metrics.enabled=true
endpoints.shutdown.id=shutdown
endpoints.shutdown.sensitive=true
endpoints.shutdown.enabled=false
endpoints.trace.id=trace
endpoints.trace.sensitive=true
endpoints.trace.enabled=true
# HEALTH INDICATORS (previously health.*)
management.health.db.enabled=true
management.health.diskspace.enabled=true
management.health.mongo.enabled=true
management.health.rabbit.enabled=true
management.health.redis.enabled=true
management.health.solr.enabled=true
management.health.diskspace.path=.
management.health.diskspace.threshold=10485760
management.health.status.order=DOWN, OUT_OF_SERVICE, UNKNOWN, UP

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# MVC ONLY ENDPOINTS

endpoints.jolokia.path=/jolokia
endpoints.jolokia.sensitive=true
endpoints.jolokia.enabled=true # when using Jolokia
# JMX ENDPOINT (EndpointMBeanExportProperties)
endpoints.jmx.enabled=true
endpoints.jmx.domain= # the JMX domain, defaults to 'org.springboot'
endpoints.jmx.unique-names=false
endpoints.jmx.static-names=
# JOLOKIA (JolokiaProperties)
jolokia.config.*= # See Jolokia manual
# REMOTE SHELL
shell.auth=simple # jaas, key, simple, spring
shell.command-refresh-interval=-1
shell.command-path-patterns= # classpath*:/commands/**, classpath*:/crash/commands/**
shell.config-path-patterns= # classpath*:/crash/*
shell.disabled-commands=jpa*,jdbc*,jndi* # comma-separated list of commands to disable
shell.disabled-plugins=false # don't expose plugins
shell.ssh.enabled= # ssh settings ...
shell.ssh.key-path=
shell.ssh.port=
shell.telnet.enabled= # telnet settings ...
shell.telnet.port=
shell.auth.jaas.domain= # authentication settings ...
shell.auth.key.path=
shell.auth.simple.user.name=
shell.auth.simple.user.password=
shell.auth.spring.roles=
# GIT INFO
spring.git.properties= # resource ref to generated git info properties file

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Appendix B. Configuration meta-data

Spring Boot jars are shipped with meta-data files that provide details of all supported configuration
properties. The files are designed to allow IDE developers to offer contextual help and code completion
as users are working with application.properties or application.yml files.
The majority of the meta-data file is generated automatically at compile time by processing all items
annotated with @ConfigurationProperties.

B.1 Meta-data format

Configuration meta-data files are located inside jars under META-INF/spring-configurationmetadata.json They use a simple JSON format with items categorized under either groups or
properties:
{"groups": [
{
"name": "server",
"type": "org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.web.ServerProperties",
"sourceType": "org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.web.ServerProperties"
}
...
],"properties": [
{
"name": "server.port",
"type": "java.lang.Integer",
"sourceType": "org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.web.ServerProperties"
},
{
"name": "server.servlet-path",
"type": "java.lang.String",
"sourceType": "org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.web.ServerProperties"
"defaultValue": "/"
}
...
]}

Each property is a configuration item that the user specifies with a given value. For example
server.port and server.servlet-path might be specified in application.properties as
follows:
server.port=9090
server.servlet-path=/home

The groups are higher level items that dont themselves specify a value, but instead provide a
contextual grouping for properties. For example the server.port and server.servlet-path
properties are part of the server group.
Note
It is not required that every property has a group, some properties might just exist in their own
right.

Group Attributes
The JSON object contained in the groups array can contain the following attributes:

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Name

Type

Purpose

name

String

The full name of the group. This attribute is mandatory.

type

String

The class name of the data type of the group. For

example, if the group was based on a class annotated with
@ConfigurationProperties the attribute would contain the
fully qualified name of that class. If it was based on a @Bean
method, it would be the return type of that method. The attribute
may be omitted if the type is not known.

description String

A short description of the group that can be displayed to users.

May be omitted if no description is available. It is recommended
that descriptions are a short paragraphs, with the first line
providing a concise summary. The last line in the description
should end with a period (.).

sourceType

String

sourceMethod String

The class name of the source that contributed this group. For
example, if the group was based on a @Bean method annotated
with @ConfigurationProperties this attribute would contain
the fully qualified name of the @Configuration class containing
the method. The attribute may be omitted if the source type is not
known.
The full name of the method (include parenthesis and argument
types) that contributed this group. For example, the name of a
@ConfigurationProperties annotated @Bean method. May
be omitted if the source method is not known.

Property Attributes
The JSON object contained in the properties array can contain the following attributes:
Name

Type

Purpose

name

String

The full name of the property. Names are in lowercase dashed

form (e.g. server.servlet-path). This attribute is mandatory.

type

String

The class name of the data type of the property. For example,
java.lang.String. This attribute can be used to guide the user
as to the types of values that they can enter. For consistency, the
type of a primitive is specified using its wrapper counterpart, i.e.
boolean becomes java.lang.Boolean. Note that this class
may be a complex type that gets converted from a String as values
are bound. May be omitted if the type is not known.

description String

sourceType

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String

A short description of the group that can be displayed to users.

May be omitted if no description is available. It is recommended
that descriptions are a short paragraphs, with the first line
providing a concise summary. The last line in the description
should end with a period (.).
The class name of the source that contributed this property.
For example, if the property was from a class annotated with

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Name

Type

Purpose
@ConfigurationProperties this attribute would contain the
fully qualified name of that class. May be omitted if the source type
is not known.

defaultValue Object

deprecated

boolean

The default value which will be used if the property is not specified.
Can also be an array of value(s) if the type of the property is an
array. May be omitted if the default value is not known.
Specify if the property is deprecated. May be omitted if the field is
not deprecated or if that information is not known.

Repeated meta-data items

It is perfectly acceptable for property and group objects with the same name to appear multiple times
within a meta-data file. For example, Spring Boot binds spring.datasource properties to Hikari,
Tomcat and DBCP classes, with each potentially offering overlap of property names. Consumers of
meta-data should take care to ensure that they support such scenarios.

B.2 Generating your own meta-data using the annotation

processor
You can easily generate your own configuration meta-data file from items annotated with
@ConfigurationProperties by using the spring-boot-configuration-processor jar. The
jar includes a Java annotation processor which is invoked as your project is compiled. To use the
processor, simply include spring-boot-configuration-processor as an optional dependency,
for example with Maven you would add:
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-boot-configuration-processor</artifactId>
<optional>true</optional>
</dependency>

With Gradle, you can use the propdeps-plugin and specify:

dependencies {
optional "org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-configuration-processor"
}
compileJava.dependsOn(processResources)
}

Note
You need to add compileJava.dependsOn(processResources) to your build to ensure
that resources are processed before code is compiled. Without this directive any additionalspring-configuration-metadata.json files will not be processed.
The processor will pickup both classes and methods that are annotated with
@ConfigurationProperties. The Javadoc for field values within configuration classes will be used
to populate the description attribute.

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Note
You should only use simple text with @ConfigurationProperties field Javadoc since they
are not processed before being added to the JSON.
Properties are discovered via the presence of standard getters and setters with special handling for
collection types (that will be detected even if only a getter is present). The annotation processor also
supports the use of the @Data, @Getter and @Setter lombok annotations.

Nested properties
The annotation processor will automatically consider inner classes as nested properties. For example,
the following class:
@ConfigurationProperties(prefix="server")
public class ServerProperties {
private String name;
private Host host;
// ... getter and setters
private static class Host {
private String ip;
private int port;
// ... getter and setters
}
}

Will produce meta-data information for server.name, server.host.ip and server.host.port

properties. You can use the @NestedConfigurationProperty annotation on a field to indicate that
a regular (non-inner) class should be treated as if it were nested.

Adding additional meta-data

Spring Boots configuration file handling is quite flexible; and it often the case that properties may exist
that are not bound to a @ConfigurationProperties bean. To support such cases, the annotation
processor will automatically merge items from META-INF/additional-spring-configurationmetadata.json into the main meta-data file.
The format of the additional-spring-configuration-metadata.json file is exactly the same
as the regular spring-configuration-metadata.json. The additional properties file is optional,
if you dont have any additional properties, simply dont add it.

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Appendix C. Auto-configuration
classes
Here is a list of all auto configuration classes provided by Spring Boot with links to documentation and
source code. Remember to also look at the autoconfig report in your application for more details of
which features are switched on. (start the app with --debug or -Ddebug, or in an Actuator application
use the autoconfig endpoint).

C.1 From the spring-boot-autoconfigure module

The following auto-configuration classes are from the spring-boot-autoconfigure module:
Configuration Class

Links

ActiveMQAutoConfiguration

javadoc

AopAutoConfiguration

javadoc

BatchAutoConfiguration

javadoc

CloudAutoConfiguration

javadoc

DataSourceAutoConfiguration

javadoc

DataSourceTransactionManagerAutoConfiguration

javadoc

DeviceDelegatingViewResolverAutoConfiguration

javadoc

DeviceResolverAutoConfiguration

javadoc

DispatcherServletAutoConfiguration

javadoc

ElasticsearchAutoConfiguration

javadoc

ElasticsearchDataAutoConfiguration

javadoc

ElasticsearchRepositoriesAutoConfiguration

javadoc

EmbeddedServletContainerAutoConfiguration

javadoc

ErrorMvcAutoConfiguration

javadoc

FacebookAutoConfiguration

javadoc

FallbackWebSecurityAutoConfiguration

javadoc

FlywayAutoConfiguration

javadoc

FreeMarkerAutoConfiguration

javadoc

GroovyTemplateAutoConfiguration

javadoc

GsonAutoConfiguration

javadoc

GzipFilterAutoConfiguration

javadoc

HibernateJpaAutoConfiguration

javadoc

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Configuration Class

Links

HornetQAutoConfiguration

javadoc

HttpEncodingAutoConfiguration

javadoc

HttpMessageConvertersAutoConfiguration

javadoc

HypermediaAutoConfiguration

javadoc

IntegrationAutoConfiguration

javadoc

JacksonAutoConfiguration

javadoc

JerseyAutoConfiguration

javadoc

JmsAutoConfiguration

javadoc

JmxAutoConfiguration

javadoc

JndiConnectionFactoryAutoConfiguration

javadoc

JndiDataSourceAutoConfiguration

javadoc

JpaRepositoriesAutoConfiguration

javadoc

JtaAutoConfiguration

javadoc

LinkedInAutoConfiguration

javadoc

LiquibaseAutoConfiguration

javadoc

MailSenderAutoConfiguration

javadoc

MessageSourceAutoConfiguration

javadoc

MongoAutoConfiguration

javadoc

MongoDataAutoConfiguration

javadoc

MongoRepositoriesAutoConfiguration

javadoc

MultipartAutoConfiguration

javadoc

MustacheAutoConfiguration

javadoc

PersistenceExceptionTranslationAutoConfiguration

javadoc

PropertyPlaceholderAutoConfiguration

javadoc

RabbitAutoConfiguration

javadoc

ReactorAutoConfiguration

javadoc

RedisAutoConfiguration

javadoc

RepositoryRestMvcAutoConfiguration

javadoc

SecurityAutoConfiguration

javadoc

ServerPropertiesAutoConfiguration

javadoc

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Configuration Class

Links

SitePreferenceAutoConfiguration

javadoc

SocialWebAutoConfiguration

javadoc

SolrAutoConfiguration

javadoc

SolrRepositoriesAutoConfiguration

javadoc

SpringDataWebAutoConfiguration

javadoc

ThymeleafAutoConfiguration

javadoc

TwitterAutoConfiguration

javadoc

VelocityAutoConfiguration

javadoc

WebMvcAutoConfiguration

javadoc

WebSocketAutoConfiguration

javadoc

XADataSourceAutoConfiguration

javadoc

C.2 From the spring-boot-actuator module

The following auto-configuration classes are from the spring-boot-actuator module:
Configuration Class

Links

AuditAutoConfiguration

javadoc

CrshAutoConfiguration

javadoc

EndpointAutoConfiguration

javadoc

EndpointMBeanExportAutoConfiguration

javadoc

EndpointWebMvcAutoConfiguration

javadoc

HealthIndicatorAutoConfiguration

javadoc

JolokiaAutoConfiguration

javadoc

ManagementSecurityAutoConfiguration

javadoc

ManagementServerPropertiesAutoConfiguration

javadoc

MetricFilterAutoConfiguration

javadoc

MetricRepositoryAutoConfiguration

javadoc

PublicMetricsAutoConfiguration

javadoc

TraceRepositoryAutoConfiguration

javadoc

TraceWebFilterAutoConfiguration

javadoc

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Appendix D. The executable jar

format
The spring-boot-loader modules allows Spring Boot to support executable jar and war files. If
youre using the Maven or Gradle plugin, executable jars are automatically generated and you generally
wont need to know the details of how they work.
If you need to create executable jars from a different build system, or if you are just curious about the
underlying technology, this section provides some background.

D.1 Nested JARs

Java does not provide any standard way to load nested jar files (i.e. jar files that are themselves
contained within a jar). This can be problematic if you are looking to distribute a self-contained application
that you can just run from the command line without unpacking.
To solve this problem, many developers use shaded jars. A shaded jar simply packages all classes,
from all jars, into a single 'uber jar'. The problem with shaded jars is that it becomes hard to see which
libraries you are actually using in your application. It can also be problematic if the the same filename
is used (but with different content) in multiple jars. Spring Boot takes a different approach and allows
you to actually nest jars directly.

The executable jar file structure

Spring Boot Loader compatible jar files should be structured in the following way:
example.jar
|
+-META-INF
| +-MANIFEST.MF
+-org
| +-springframework
|
+-boot
|
+-loader
|
+-<spring boot loader classes>
+-com
| +-mycompany
|
+ project
|
+-YouClasses.class
+-lib
+-dependency1.jar
+-dependency2.jar

Dependencies should be placed in a nested lib directory.

The executable war file structure

Spring Boot Loader compatible war files should be structured in the following way:
example.jar
|
+-META-INF
| +-MANIFEST.MF
+-org
| +-springframework
|
+-boot

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|
+-loader
|
+-<spring boot loader classes>
+-WEB-INF
+-classes
| +-com
|
+-mycompany
|
+-project
|
+-YouClasses.class
+-lib
| +-dependency1.jar
| +-dependency2.jar
+-lib-provided
+-servlet-api.jar
+-dependency3.jar

Dependencies should be placed in a nested WEB-INF/lib directory. Any dependencies that are
required when running embedded but are not required when deploying to a traditional web container
should be placed in WEB-INF/lib-provided.

D.2 Spring Boots JarFile class

The
core
class
used
to
support
loading
nested
jars
is
org.springframework.boot.loader.jar.JarFile. It allows you load jar content from a
standard jar file, or from nested child jar data. When first loaded, the location of each JarEntry is
mapped to a physical file offset of the outer jar:
myapp.jar
+---------+---------------------+
|
| /lib/mylib.jar
|
| A.class |+---------+---------+|
|
|| B.class | B.class ||
|
|+---------+---------+|
+---------+---------------------+
^
^
^
0063
3452
3980

The example above shows how A.class can be found in myapp.jar position 0063. B.class from
the nested jar can actually be found in myapp.jar position 3452 and B.class is at position 3980.
Armed with this information, we can load specific nested entries by simply seeking to appropriate part if
the outer jar. We dont need to unpack the archive and we dont need to read all entry data into memory.

Compatibility with the standard Java JarFile

Spring Boot Loader strives to remain compatible with existing code and libraries.
org.springframework.boot.loader.jar.JarFile extends from java.util.jar.JarFile
and should work as a drop-in replacement. The getURL() method will return a URL that
opens a java.net.JarURLConnection compatible connection and can be used with Javas
URLClassLoader.

D.3 Launching executable jars

The org.springframework.boot.loader.Launcher class is a special bootstrap class that is
used as an executable jars main entry point. It is the actual Main-Class in your jar file and its used to
setup an appropriate URLClassLoader and ultimately call your main() method.
There are 3 launcher subclasses (JarLauncher, WarLauncher and PropertiesLauncher). Their
purpose is to load resources (.class files etc.) from nested jar files or war files in directories (as
opposed to explicitly on the classpath). In the case of the [Jar|War]Launcher the nested paths

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are fixed (lib/*.jar and lib-provided/*.jar for the war case) so you just add extra jars in
those locations if you want more. The PropertiesLauncher looks in lib/ in your application archive
by default, but you can add additional locations by setting an environment variable LOADER_PATH or
loader.path in application.properties (comma-separated list of directories or archives).

Launcher manifest
You need to specify an appropriate Launcher as the Main-Class attribute of META-INF/
MANIFEST.MF. The actual class that you want to launch (i.e. the class that you wrote that contains a
main method) should be specified in the Start-Class attribute.
For example, here is a typical MANIFEST.MF for an executable jar file:
Main-Class: org.springframework.boot.loader.JarLauncher
Start-Class: com.mycompany.project.MyApplication

For a war file, it would be:

Main-Class: org.springframework.boot.loader.WarLauncher
Start-Class: com.mycompany.project.MyApplication

Note
You do not need to specify Class-Path entries in your manifest file, the classpath will be deduced
from the nested jars.

Exploded archives
Certain PaaS implementations may choose to unpack archives before they run. For example, Cloud
Foundry operates in this way. You can run an unpacked archive by simply starting the appropriate
launcher:
$ unzip -q myapp.jar
$ java org.springframework.boot.loader.JarLauncher

D.4 PropertiesLauncher Features

PropertiesLauncher has a few special features that can be enabled with external properties (System
properties, environment variables, manifest entries or application.properties).
Key

Purpose

loader.path

Comma-separated Classpath, e.g. lib:${HOME}/app/lib.

loader.home

Location of additional properties file, e.g. /opt/app (defaults to

${user.dir})

loader.args

Default arguments for the main method (space separated)

loader.main

Name of main class to launch, e.g. com.app.Application.

loader.config.name

Name of properties file, e.g. loader (defaults to application).

loader.config.location

Path to properties file, e.g. classpath:loader.properties

(defaults to application.properties).

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Key

Purpose

loader.system

Boolean flag to indicate that all properties should be added to

System properties (defaults to false)

Manifest entry keys are formed by capitalizing initial letters of words and changing the separator to -
from . (e.g. Loader-Path). The exception is loader.main which is looked up as Start-Class in
the manifest for compatibility with JarLauncher).
Environment variables can be capitalized with underscore separators instead of periods.
loader.home is the directory location of an additional properties file (overriding the default) as long
as loader.config.location is not specified.
loader.path can contain directories (scanned recursively for jar and zip files), archive paths, or
wildcard patterns (for the default JVM behavior).
Placeholder replacement is done from System and environment variables plus the properties file itself
on all values before use.

D.5 Executable jar restrictions

There are a number of restrictions that you need to consider when working with a Spring Boot Loader
packaged application.

Zip entry compression

The ZipEntry for a nested jar must be saved using the ZipEntry.STORED method. This is required
so that we can seek directly to individual content within the nested jar. The content of the nested jar file
itself can still be compressed, as can any other entries in the outer jar.

System ClassLoader
Launched applications should use Thread.getContextClassLoader() when loading classes
(most libraries and frameworks will do this by default). Trying to load nested jar classes via
ClassLoader.getSystemClassLoader() will fail. Please be aware that java.util.Logging
always uses the system classloader, for this reason you should consider a different logging
implementation.

D.6 Alternative single jar solutions

If the above restrictions mean that you cannot use Spring Boot Loader the following alternatives could
be considered:
Maven Shade Plugin
JarClassLoader
OneJar

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Appendix E. Dependency versions

The table below provides details of all of the dependency versions that are provided by Spring Boot in
its CLI, Maven dependency management and Gradle plugin. When you declare a dependency on one
of these artifacts without declaring a version the version that is listed in the table will be used.
Group ID

Artifact ID

Version

antlr

antlr

2.7.7

ch.qos.logback

logback-classic

1.1.3

com.atomikos

transactions-jdbc

3.9.3

com.atomikos

transactions-jms

3.9.3

com.atomikos

transactions-jta

3.9.3

com.fasterxml.jackson.core
jackson-annotations

2.4.6

com.fasterxml.jackson.core
jackson-core

2.4.6

com.fasterxml.jackson.core
jackson-databind

2.4.6

com.fasterxml.jackson.dataformat
jackson-dataformat-xml

2.4.6

com.fasterxml.jackson.dataformat
jackson-dataformat-yaml

2.4.6

com.fasterxml.jackson.datatype
jackson-datatype-jdk8

2.4.6

com.fasterxml.jackson.datatype
jackson-datatype-joda

2.4.6

com.fasterxml.jackson.datatype
jackson-datatype-jsr310

2.4.6

com.gemstone.gemfire

7.0.2

gemfire

com.github.mxab.thymeleaf.extras
thymeleaf-extras-dataattribute

1.3

com.google.code.gson

gson

2.3.1

com.googlecode.jsonsimple

json-simple

1.1.1

com.h2database

h2

1.4.187

com.jayway.jsonpath

json-path

0.9.1

com.samskivert

jmustache

1.10

com.sun.mail

javax.mail

1.5.4

com.zaxxer

HikariCP

2.2.5

com.zaxxer

HikariCP-java6

2.2.5

commons-beanutils

commons-beanutils

1.9.2

commons-collections

commons-collections

3.2.1

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Group ID

Artifact ID

Version

commons-dbcp

commons-dbcp

1.4

commons-digester

commons-digester

2.1

commons-pool

commons-pool

1.6

io.dropwizard.metrics

metrics-core

3.1.2

io.dropwizard.metrics

metrics-ganglia

3.1.2

io.dropwizard.metrics

metrics-graphite

3.1.2

io.dropwizard.metrics

metrics-servlets

3.1.2

io.undertow

undertow-core

1.1.7.Final

io.undertow

undertow-servlet

1.1.7.Final

io.undertow

undertow-websockets-jsr

1.1.7.Final

javax.cache

cache-api

1.0.0

javax.jms

jms-api

1.1-rev-1

javax.mail

javax.mail-api

1.5.4

javax.servlet

javax.servlet-api

3.1.0

javax.servlet

jstl

1.2

javax.transaction

javax.transaction-api

1.2

jaxen

jaxen

1.1.6

joda-time

joda-time

2.5

junit

junit

4.12

log4j

log4j

1.2.17

mysql

mysql-connector-java

5.1.35

nz.net.ultraq.thymeleaf

thymeleaf-layoutdialect

1.2.9

org.apache.activemq

activemq-broker

5.10.2

org.apache.activemq

activemq-client

5.10.2

org.apache.activemq

activemq-jms-pool

5.10.2

org.apache.activemq

activemq-pool

5.10.2

org.apache.commons

commons-dbcp2

2.0.1

org.apache.commons

commons-pool2

2.2

org.apache.derby

derby

10.10.2.0

org.apache.httpcomponentshttpasyncclient

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Group ID

Artifact ID

Version

org.apache.httpcomponentshttpclient

4.3.6

org.apache.httpcomponentshttpmime

4.3.6

org.apache.logging.log4j log4j-api

2.1

org.apache.logging.log4j log4j-core

2.1

org.apache.logging.log4j log4j-slf4j-impl

2.1

org.apache.solr

solr-solrj

4.7.2

org.apache.tomcat

tomcat-jdbc

8.0.23

org.apache.tomcat

tomcat-jsp-api

8.0.23

org.apache.tomcat.embed

tomcat-embed-core

8.0.23

org.apache.tomcat.embed

tomcat-embed-el

8.0.23

org.apache.tomcat.embed

tomcat-embed-jasper

8.0.23

org.apache.tomcat.embed

tomcat-embed-loggingjuli

8.0.23

org.apache.tomcat.embed

tomcat-embed-websocket

8.0.23

org.apache.velocity

velocity

1.7

org.apache.velocity

velocity-tools

2.0

org.aspectj

aspectjrt

1.8.6

org.aspectj

aspectjtools

1.8.6

org.aspectj

aspectjweaver

1.8.6

org.codehaus.btm

btm

2.1.4

org.codehaus.groovy

groovy

2.3.11

org.codehaus.groovy

groovy-all

2.3.11

org.codehaus.groovy

groovy-ant

2.3.11

org.codehaus.groovy

groovy-bsf

2.3.11

org.codehaus.groovy

groovy-console

2.3.11

org.codehaus.groovy

groovy-docgenerator

2.3.11

org.codehaus.groovy

groovy-groovydoc

2.3.11

org.codehaus.groovy

groovy-groovysh

2.3.11

org.codehaus.groovy

groovy-jmx

2.3.11

org.codehaus.groovy

groovy-json

2.3.11

org.codehaus.groovy

groovy-jsr223

2.3.11

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Group ID

Artifact ID

Version

org.codehaus.groovy

groovy-nio

2.3.11

org.codehaus.groovy

groovy-servlet

2.3.11

org.codehaus.groovy

groovy-sql

2.3.11

org.codehaus.groovy

groovy-swing

2.3.11

org.codehaus.groovy

groovy-templates

2.3.11

org.codehaus.groovy

groovy-test

2.3.11

org.codehaus.groovy

groovy-testng

2.3.11

org.codehaus.groovy

groovy-xml

2.3.11

org.codehaus.janino

janino

2.6.1

org.crashub

crash.cli

1.3.1

org.crashub

crash.connectors.ssh

1.3.1

org.crashub

crash.connectors.telnet

1.3.1

org.crashub

crash.embed.spring

1.3.1

org.crashub

crash.plugins.cron

1.3.1

org.crashub

crash.plugins.mail

1.3.1

org.crashub

crash.shell

1.3.1

org.eclipse.jetty

jetty-annotations

9.2.11.v20150529

org.eclipse.jetty

jetty-continuation

9.2.11.v20150529

org.eclipse.jetty

jetty-deploy

9.2.11.v20150529

org.eclipse.jetty

jetty-http

9.2.11.v20150529

org.eclipse.jetty

jetty-io

9.2.11.v20150529

org.eclipse.jetty

jetty-jmx

9.2.11.v20150529

org.eclipse.jetty

jetty-jsp

9.2.11.v20150529

org.eclipse.jetty

jetty-plus

9.2.11.v20150529

org.eclipse.jetty

jetty-security

9.2.11.v20150529

org.eclipse.jetty

jetty-server

9.2.11.v20150529

org.eclipse.jetty

jetty-servlet

9.2.11.v20150529

org.eclipse.jetty

jetty-servlets

9.2.11.v20150529

org.eclipse.jetty

jetty-util

9.2.11.v20150529

org.eclipse.jetty

jetty-webapp

9.2.11.v20150529

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Group ID

Artifact ID

Version

org.eclipse.jetty

jetty-xml

9.2.11.v20150529

org.eclipse.jetty.orbit

javax.servlet.jsp

2.2.0.v201112011158

org.eclipse.jetty.websocket
javax-websocket-serverimpl

9.2.11.v20150529

org.eclipse.jetty.websocket
websocket-server

9.2.11.v20150529

org.flywaydb

flyway-core

3.1

org.freemarker

freemarker

2.3.22

org.glassfish

javax.el

3.0.0

org.glassfish.jersey.containers
jersey-containerservlet

2.14

org.glassfish.jersey.containers
jersey-containerservlet-core

2.14

org.glassfish.jersey.corejersey-server

2.14

org.glassfish.jersey.ext jersey-bean-validation

2.14

org.glassfish.jersey.ext jersey-spring3

2.14

org.glassfish.jersey.media
jersey-media-jsonjackson

2.14

org.hamcrest

hamcrest-core

1.3

org.hamcrest

hamcrest-library

1.3

org.hibernate

hibernate-ehcache

4.3.10.Final

org.hibernate

hibernate-entitymanager

4.3.10.Final

org.hibernate

hibernate-envers

4.3.10.Final

org.hibernate

hibernate-jpamodelgen

4.3.10.Final

org.hibernate

hibernate-validator

5.1.3.Final

org.hornetq

hornetq-jms-client

2.4.7.Final

org.hornetq

hornetq-jms-server

2.4.7.Final

org.hsqldb

hsqldb

2.3.3

org.javassist

javassist

3.18.1-GA

org.jdom

jdom2

2.0.6

org.jolokia

jolokia-core

1.2.3

org.liquibase

liquibase-core

3.3.5

org.mockito

mockito-core

1.10.19

1.2.5.RELEASE

Spring Boot

212

Spring Boot Reference Guide

Group ID

Artifact ID

Version

org.mongodb

mongo-java-driver

2.12.5

org.projectreactor

reactor-core

1.1.6.RELEASE

org.projectreactor

reactor-groovy

1.1.6.RELEASE

org.projectreactor

reactor-groovyextensions

1.1.6.RELEASE

org.projectreactor

reactor-logback

1.1.6.RELEASE

org.projectreactor

reactor-net

1.1.6.RELEASE

org.projectreactor.springreactor-spring-context

1.1.3.RELEASE

org.projectreactor.springreactor-spring-core

1.1.3.RELEASE

org.projectreactor.springreactor-springmessaging

1.1.3.RELEASE

org.projectreactor.springreactor-spring-webmvc

1.1.3.RELEASE

org.slf4j

jcl-over-slf4j

1.7.12

org.slf4j

jul-to-slf4j

1.7.12

org.slf4j

log4j-over-slf4j

1.7.12

org.slf4j

slf4j-api

1.7.12

org.slf4j

slf4j-jdk14

1.7.12

org.slf4j

slf4j-log4j12

1.7.12

org.spockframework

spock-core

0.7-groovy-2.0

org.spockframework

spock-spring

0.7-groovy-2.0

org.springframework

spring-aop

4.1.7.RELEASE

org.springframework

spring-aspects

4.1.7.RELEASE

org.springframework

spring-beans

4.1.7.RELEASE

org.springframework

spring-context

4.1.7.RELEASE

org.springframework

spring-context-support

4.1.7.RELEASE

org.springframework

spring-core

4.1.7.RELEASE

org.springframework

spring-expression

4.1.7.RELEASE

org.springframework

spring-instrument

4.1.7.RELEASE

org.springframework

spring-instrumenttomcat

4.1.7.RELEASE

org.springframework

spring-jdbc

4.1.7.RELEASE

1.2.5.RELEASE

Spring Boot

213

Spring Boot Reference Guide

Group ID

Artifact ID

Version

org.springframework

spring-jms

4.1.7.RELEASE

org.springframework

springloaded

1.2.3.RELEASE

org.springframework

spring-messaging

4.1.7.RELEASE

org.springframework

spring-orm

4.1.7.RELEASE

org.springframework

spring-oxm

4.1.7.RELEASE

org.springframework

spring-test

4.1.7.RELEASE

org.springframework

spring-tx

4.1.7.RELEASE

org.springframework

spring-web

4.1.7.RELEASE

org.springframework

spring-webmvc

4.1.7.RELEASE

org.springframework

spring-webmvc-portlet

4.1.7.RELEASE

org.springframework

spring-websocket

4.1.7.RELEASE

org.springframework.amqp spring-amqp

1.4.5.RELEASE

org.springframework.amqp spring-erlang

1.4.5.RELEASE

org.springframework.amqp spring-rabbit

1.4.5.RELEASE

org.springframework.batchspring-batch-core

3.0.4.RELEASE

org.springframework.batchspring-batchinfrastructure

3.0.4.RELEASE

org.springframework.batchspring-batchintegration

3.0.4.RELEASE

org.springframework.batchspring-batch-test

3.0.4.RELEASE

org.springframework.boot spring-boot

1.2.5.RELEASE

org.springframework.boot spring-boot

1.2.5.RELEASE

org.springframework.boot spring-boot-actuator

1.2.5.RELEASE

org.springframework.boot spring-bootautoconfigure

1.2.5.RELEASE

org.springframework.boot spring-bootconfiguration-processor

1.2.5.RELEASE

org.springframework.boot spring-boot-dependencytools

1.2.5.RELEASE

org.springframework.boot spring-boot-loader

1.2.5.RELEASE

org.springframework.boot spring-boot-loadertools

1.2.5.RELEASE

1.2.5.RELEASE

Spring Boot

214

Spring Boot Reference Guide

Group ID

Artifact ID

Version

org.springframework.boot spring-boot-starter

1.2.5.RELEASE

org.springframework.boot spring-boot-starteractuator

1.2.5.RELEASE

org.springframework.boot spring-boot-starteramqp

1.2.5.RELEASE

org.springframework.boot spring-boot-starter-aop

1.2.5.RELEASE

org.springframework.boot spring-boot-starterbatch

1.2.5.RELEASE

org.springframework.boot spring-boot-startercloud-connectors

1.2.5.RELEASE

org.springframework.boot spring-boot-starterdata-elasticsearch

1.2.5.RELEASE

org.springframework.boot spring-boot-starterdata-gemfire

1.2.5.RELEASE

org.springframework.boot spring-boot-starterdata-jpa

1.2.5.RELEASE

org.springframework.boot spring-boot-starterdata-mongodb

1.2.5.RELEASE

org.springframework.boot spring-boot-starterdata-rest

1.2.5.RELEASE

org.springframework.boot spring-boot-starterdata-solr

1.2.5.RELEASE

org.springframework.boot spring-boot-starterfreemarker

1.2.5.RELEASE

org.springframework.boot spring-boot-startergroovy-templates

1.2.5.RELEASE

org.springframework.boot spring-boot-starterhateoas

1.2.5.RELEASE

org.springframework.boot spring-boot-starterhornetq

1.2.5.RELEASE

org.springframework.boot spring-boot-starterintegration

1.2.5.RELEASE

org.springframework.boot spring-boot-starterjdbc

1.2.5.RELEASE

org.springframework.boot spring-boot-starterjersey

1.2.5.RELEASE

1.2.5.RELEASE

Spring Boot

215

Spring Boot Reference Guide

Group ID

Artifact ID

Version

org.springframework.boot spring-boot-starterjetty

1.2.5.RELEASE

org.springframework.boot spring-boot-starterjta-atomikos

1.2.5.RELEASE

org.springframework.boot spring-boot-starterjta-bitronix

1.2.5.RELEASE

org.springframework.boot spring-boot-starterlog4j

1.2.5.RELEASE

org.springframework.boot spring-boot-starterlog4j2

1.2.5.RELEASE

org.springframework.boot spring-boot-starterlogging

1.2.5.RELEASE

org.springframework.boot spring-boot-startermail

1.2.5.RELEASE

org.springframework.boot spring-boot-startermobile

1.2.5.RELEASE

org.springframework.boot spring-boot-startermustache

1.2.5.RELEASE

org.springframework.boot spring-boot-starterredis

1.2.5.RELEASE

org.springframework.boot spring-boot-starterremote-shell

1.2.5.RELEASE

org.springframework.boot spring-boot-startersecurity

1.2.5.RELEASE

org.springframework.boot spring-boot-startersocial-facebook

1.2.5.RELEASE

org.springframework.boot spring-boot-startersocial-linkedin

1.2.5.RELEASE

org.springframework.boot spring-boot-startersocial-twitter

1.2.5.RELEASE

org.springframework.boot spring-boot-startertest

1.2.5.RELEASE

org.springframework.boot spring-boot-starterthymeleaf

1.2.5.RELEASE

org.springframework.boot spring-boot-startertomcat

1.2.5.RELEASE

1.2.5.RELEASE

Spring Boot

216

Spring Boot Reference Guide

Group ID

Artifact ID

Version

org.springframework.boot spring-boot-starterundertow

1.2.5.RELEASE

org.springframework.boot spring-boot-startervelocity

1.2.5.RELEASE

org.springframework.boot spring-boot-starter-web

1.2.5.RELEASE

org.springframework.boot spring-boot-starterwebsocket

1.2.5.RELEASE

org.springframework.boot spring-boot-starter-ws

1.2.5.RELEASE

org.springframework.cloudspring-cloudcloudfoundry-connector

1.1.1.RELEASE

org.springframework.cloudspring-cloud-core

1.1.1.RELEASE

org.springframework.cloudspring-cloud-herokuconnector

1.1.1.RELEASE

org.springframework.cloudspring-cloudlocalconfig-connector

1.1.1.RELEASE

org.springframework.cloudspring-cloud-springservice-connector

1.1.1.RELEASE

org.springframework.data spring-cql

1.1.3.RELEASE

org.springframework.data spring-data-cassandra

1.1.3.RELEASE

org.springframework.data spring-data-commons

1.9.3.RELEASE

org.springframework.data spring-data-couchbase

1.2.3.RELEASE

org.springframework.data spring-dataelasticsearch

1.1.3.RELEASE

org.springframework.data spring-data-gemfire

1.5.3.RELEASE

org.springframework.data spring-data-jpa

1.7.3.RELEASE

org.springframework.data spring-data-mongodb

1.6.3.RELEASE

org.springframework.data spring-data-mongodbcross-store

1.6.3.RELEASE

org.springframework.data spring-data-mongodblog4j

1.6.3.RELEASE

org.springframework.data spring-data-neo4j

3.2.3.RELEASE

org.springframework.data spring-data-redis

1.4.3.RELEASE

org.springframework.data spring-data-rest-core

2.2.3.RELEASE

org.springframework.data spring-data-rest-webmvc

2.2.3.RELEASE

1.2.5.RELEASE

Spring Boot

217

Spring Boot Reference Guide

Group ID

Artifact ID

Version

org.springframework.data spring-data-solr

1.3.3.RELEASE

org.springframework.hateoas
spring-hateoas

0.16.0.RELEASE

org.springframework.integration
spring-integration-amqp

4.1.5.RELEASE

org.springframework.integration
spring-integration-core

4.1.5.RELEASE

org.springframework.integration
spring-integrationevent

4.1.5.RELEASE

org.springframework.integration
spring-integration-feed

4.1.5.RELEASE

org.springframework.integration
spring-integration-file

4.1.5.RELEASE

org.springframework.integration
spring-integration-ftp

4.1.5.RELEASE

org.springframework.integration
spring-integrationgemfire

4.1.5.RELEASE

org.springframework.integration
spring-integrationgroovy

4.1.5.RELEASE

org.springframework.integration
spring-integration-http

4.1.5.RELEASE

org.springframework.integration
spring-integration-ip

4.1.5.RELEASE

org.springframework.integration
spring-integration-jdbc

4.1.5.RELEASE

org.springframework.integration
spring-integration-jms

4.1.5.RELEASE

org.springframework.integration
spring-integration-jmx

4.1.5.RELEASE

org.springframework.integration
spring-integration-jpa

4.1.5.RELEASE

org.springframework.integration
spring-integration-mail

4.1.5.RELEASE

org.springframework.integration
spring-integrationmongodb

4.1.5.RELEASE

org.springframework.integration
spring-integration-mqtt

4.1.5.RELEASE

org.springframework.integration
spring-integrationredis

4.1.5.RELEASE

org.springframework.integration
spring-integration-rmi

4.1.5.RELEASE

org.springframework.integration
spring-integrationscripting

4.1.5.RELEASE

org.springframework.integration
spring-integrationsecurity

4.1.5.RELEASE

org.springframework.integration
spring-integration-sftp

4.1.5.RELEASE

org.springframework.integration
spring-integrationstream

4.1.5.RELEASE

1.2.5.RELEASE

Spring Boot

218

Spring Boot Reference Guide

Group ID

Artifact ID

Version

org.springframework.integration
spring-integrationsyslog

4.1.5.RELEASE

org.springframework.integration
spring-integration-test

4.1.5.RELEASE

org.springframework.integration
spring-integrationtwitter

4.1.5.RELEASE

org.springframework.integration
spring-integrationwebsocket

4.1.5.RELEASE

org.springframework.integration
spring-integration-ws

4.1.5.RELEASE

org.springframework.integration
spring-integration-xml

4.1.5.RELEASE

org.springframework.integration
spring-integration-xmpp

4.1.5.RELEASE

org.springframework.mobile
spring-mobile-device

1.1.4.RELEASE

org.springframework.plugin
spring-plugin-core

1.1.0.RELEASE

org.springframework.security
spring-security-acl

3.2.7.RELEASE

org.springframework.security
spring-security-aspects

3.2.7.RELEASE

org.springframework.security
spring-security-cas

3.2.7.RELEASE

org.springframework.security
spring-security-config

3.2.7.RELEASE

org.springframework.security
spring-security-core

3.2.7.RELEASE

org.springframework.security
spring-security-crypto

3.2.7.RELEASE

org.springframework.security
spring-security-jwt

1.0.3.RELEASE

org.springframework.security
spring-security-ldap

3.2.7.RELEASE

org.springframework.security
spring-security-openid

3.2.7.RELEASE

org.springframework.security
spring-securityremoting

3.2.7.RELEASE

org.springframework.security
spring-security-taglibs

3.2.7.RELEASE

org.springframework.security
spring-security-web

3.2.7.RELEASE

org.springframework.social
spring-social-config

1.1.2.RELEASE

org.springframework.social
spring-social-core

1.1.2.RELEASE

org.springframework.social
spring-social-facebook

2.0.1.RELEASE

org.springframework.social
spring-social-facebookweb

2.0.1.RELEASE

org.springframework.social
spring-social-linkedin

1.0.1.RELEASE

org.springframework.social
spring-social-security

1.1.2.RELEASE

1.2.5.RELEASE

Spring Boot

219

Spring Boot Reference Guide

Group ID

Artifact ID

Version

org.springframework.social
spring-social-twitter

1.1.0.RELEASE

org.springframework.social
spring-social-web

1.1.2.RELEASE

org.springframework.ws

spring-ws-core

2.2.1.RELEASE

org.springframework.ws

spring-ws-security

2.2.1.RELEASE

org.springframework.ws

spring-ws-support

2.2.1.RELEASE

org.springframework.ws

spring-ws-test

2.2.1.RELEASE

org.thymeleaf

thymeleaf

2.1.4.RELEASE

org.thymeleaf

thymeleaf-spring4

2.1.4.RELEASE

org.thymeleaf.extras

thymeleaf-extrasconditionalcomments

2.1.1.RELEASE

org.thymeleaf.extras

thymeleaf-extrasspringsecurity3

2.1.2.RELEASE

org.yaml

snakeyaml

1.14

redis.clients

jedis

2.5.2

wsdl4j

wsdl4j

1.6.3

1.2.5.RELEASE

Spring Boot

220