SpringBoot : Learn By Example

A fast paced guide to learn SpringBoot

K Siva Prasad Reddy

This book is for sale at http://leanpub.com/springboot-learn-by-example

This version was published on 2016-07-30

This is a Leanpub book. Leanpub empowers authors and publishers with the Lean Publishing
process. Lean Publishing is the act of publishing an in-progress ebook using lightweight tools and
many iterations to get reader feedback, pivot until you have the right book and build traction once
you do.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported

License
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Contents

About This Book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . i

Who this book is for . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . i
What this book covers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . i
What you need to use this book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . i
Source Code . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ii
About Author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ii

Book Revision History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iii

Chapter 1: Introduction to SpringBoot . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

1.1. Overview of Spring framework . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.2. Developing Web Application using SpringMVC and JPA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.3. A Quick Taste of SpringBoot . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
1.4. Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

Chapter 2: Getting Started with SpringBoot . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

2.1. What is SpringBoot? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
2.2. Our First SpringBoot Application . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
2.3. Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

Chapter 3: SpringBoot Behind the scenes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

3.1. Exploring the power of @Conditional . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
3.2. How SpringBoot AutoConfiguration Works? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
3.3. Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44

Chapter 4: Creating Custom SpringBoot Starter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45

4.1. Create Parent Module spring-boot-starter-twitter4j . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
4.2. Create twitter4j-spring-boot-autoconfigure module . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
4.3. Create twitter4j-spring-boot-starter module . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
4.4. Create twitter4j-spring-boot-sample sample application . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
4.5. Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57

Appendix A : Resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
About This Book
The SpringBoot : Lean by Example book will help you to understand what is SpringBoot, how
SpringBoot helps you to build Spring based applications quickly and easily and the inner workings
of SpringBoot using easy to follow examples.

Who this book is for

This book is written for Java developers who are familiar with basics of Spring framework and want
to learn SpringBoot. This book is suitable for both beginners and experienced developers as the book
covers starting from the basics of SpringBoot to exploring how SpringBoot works behind the scenes.

What this book covers

The SpringBoot : Learn By Example book covers the following:

What is SpringBoot?
How SpringBoot increases developer productivity?
How SpringBoot AutoConfiguration works behind the scenes?
Working with Databases using JdbcTemplate, MyBatis, JOOQ, Spring Data JPA
Working with MongoDB NoSQL database
Developing web applications using SpringBoot and Thymeleaf
Developing REST API using SpringBoot and Consuming from AngularJS Application
Securing web applications using SpringBoot and SpringSecurity
Monitoring SpringBoot applications with SpringBoot Actuator
Testing SpringBoot applications

What you need to use this book

JDK 1.8
Your favourite IDE
Spring Tool Suite
http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/index.html
https://spring.io/tools/sts

i
About This Book ii

IntelliJ IDEA
NetBeans IDE
Build Tools
Maven
Gradle
Database Server
MySQL
PostgreSQL

Source Code
You can find the source code for this book at GitHub https://github.com/sivaprasadreddy/springboot-
learn-by-example

About Author
K. Siva Prasad Reddy is a Software Developer living in Hyderabad, India with more than 10
years of experience in developing enterprise applications using Java and JavaEE technologies. Siva
is a Sun Certified Java Programmer with deep expertise in building enterprise applications using
server-side technologies such as Java, JavaEE, Spring, Hibernate, MyBatis, JSF, PrimeFaces, and
WebServices (SOAP/REST).
Siva is also the author of Java Persistence with MyBatis 3 and PrimeFaces Beginners Guide
Packt Publishing books. He has worked with several Fortune 500 organizations and is passionate
about learning new technologies and their developments.
Siva shares the knowledge he has acquired on his blog at http://sivalabs.in. If you want to find out
more about his work, you can follow him on Twitter @sivalabs and GitHub https://github.com/sivaprasadreddy.
https://www.jetbrains.com/idea/
https://netbeans.org/
https://maven.apache.org/
http://gradle.org/
https://www.mysql.com/downloads/
http://www.postgresql.org/download/
https://github.com/sivaprasadreddy/springboot-learn-by-example
Book Revision History
08-July-2016 : Published First version.
16-July-2016 : Added following sections.
Added Section 9.3. Working with Multiple Databases
Added Sub-section Exposing JPA entities with bi-directional references through
RESTful services in Section 12.2. REST API using SpringMVC
30-July-2016 : Added new chapter. Chapter 16: Deploying SpringBoot Applications.
Running SpringBoot applications in production mode
Deploying SpringBoot application on Heroku
Running SpringBoot application on Docker

iii
Chapter 1: Introduction to SpringBoot
Spring is a very popular Java framework for building web and enterprise applications. Unlike
many other frameworks which focuses on only one area(web or persistence etc), Spring framework
provides a wide verity of features addressing the modern business needs via its portfolio projects.
Spring framework provides flexibility to configure beans in multiple ways such as XML, Annotations
and JavaConfig. With the number of features increased the complexity also gets increased and
configuring Spring applications becomes tedious and error-prone. Spring team created SpringBoot
to address the complexity of configuration.
But before diving into SpringBoot, we will take a quick look at Spring framework and see what kind
of problems SpringBoot is trying to address.
In this chapter we will cover:

Overview of Spring framework

Developing Web Application using SpringMVC and JPA
A Quick Taste of SpringBoot

1.1. Overview of Spring framework

If you are a Java developer then there is a high chance that you might have heard about Spring
framework and probably have used it in your projects. Spring framework was created primarily as
a Dependency Injection container but it is much more than that.
Spring is very popular because of several reasons:

Springs dependency injection approach encourages writing testable code

Easy to use and powerful database transaction management capabilities
Spring simplifies integration with other Java frameworks like JPA/Hibernate ORM, Struts/JSF
etc web frameworks
State of the art Web MVC framework for building web applications

Along with Spring framework there are many other Spring portfolio projects which helps to build
applications addressing modern business needs:

Spring Data: Simplifies data access from relational and NoSQL data stores.
Spring Batch: Provides powerful batch processing framework.

1
Chapter 1: Introduction to SpringBoot 2

Spring Security: Robust security framework to secure applications.

Spring Social: Supports integration with social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter,
LinkedIn, GitHub etc.
Spring Integration: An implementation of Enterprise Integration Patterns to facilitate in-
tegration with other enterprise applications using lightweight messaging and declarative
adapters.

There are many other interesting projects addressing various other modern application development
needs. For more information take a look at http://spring.io/projects.
In the initial days, Spring provides XML based approach for configuring beans. Later Spring
introduced XML based DSLs, Annotations and JavaConfig based approaches for configuring beans.
Let us take a quick look at how each of those configuration styles looks like.
XML based configuration

<bean id="userService" class="com.sivalabs.myapp.service.UserService">

<property name="userDao" ref="userDao"/>
</bean>

<bean id="userDao" class="com.sivalabs.myapp.dao.JdbcUserDao">

<property name="dataSource" ref="dataSource"/>
</bean>

<bean id="dataSource" class="org.apache.commons.dbcp.BasicDataSource"

destroy-method="close">
<property name="driverClassName" value="com.mysql.jdbc.Driver"/>
<property name="url" value="jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/test"/>
<property name="username" value="root"/>
<property name="password" value="secret"/>
</bean>

Annotation based configuration

Chapter 1: Introduction to SpringBoot 3

@Service
public class UserService
{
private UserDao userDao;

@Autowired
public UserService(UserDao dao){
this.userDao = dao;
}
...
...
}

@Repository
public class JdbcUserDao
{
private DataSource dataSource;

@Autowired
public JdbcUserDao(DataSource dataSource){
this.dataSource = dataSource;
}
...
...
}

JavaConfig based configuration

@Configuration
public class AppConfig
{
@Bean
public UserService userService(UserDao dao){
return new UserService(dao);
}

@Bean
public UserDao userDao(DataSource dataSource){
return new JdbcUserDao(dataSource);
}

@Bean
Chapter 1: Introduction to SpringBoot 4

public DataSource dataSource(){

BasicDataSource dataSource = new BasicDataSource();
dataSource.setDriverClassName("com.mysql.jdbc.Driver");
dataSource.setUrl("jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/test");
dataSource.setUsername("root");
dataSource.setPassword("secret");
return dataSource;
}
}

Spring provides many approaches for doing the same thing and we can even mix the approaches
as well like you can use both JavaConfig and Annotation based configuration styles in the same
application. That is a lot of flexibility and it is one way good and one way bad. People new to
Spring framework may gets confused about which approach to follow.

As of now the Spring team is suggesting to follow JavaConfig based approach as it gives
more flexibility. But there is no one-size fits all kind of solution. One has to choose the
approach based on their own application needs.

OK, now that you had a glimpse of how various styles of Spring bean configurations looks like.
Let us take a quick look at the configuration of a typical SpringMVC + JPA/Hibernate based web
application configuration looks like.

Download Book Sample Code from GitHub

You will be seeing lots of code samples through out the book. To keep focus on the key
parts of the code I may omit some snippets such as CSS styles, import statements, optional
jar dependency configurations.
I would strongly recommend you to download the source code for
quick reference. You can find the source code for this book at GitHub
https://github.com/sivaprasadreddy/springboot-learn-by-example

1.2. Developing Web Application using SpringMVC and

JPA
Before getting to know what is SpringBoot and what kind of features it provides, let us take a look
at how a typical Spring web application configuration looks like, what are the pain points and then
we will discuss about how SpringBoot addresses those problems.
https://github.com/sivaprasadreddy/springboot-learn-by-example
Chapter 1: Introduction to SpringBoot 5

Step 1: Configure Maven Dependencies

First thing we need to do is configure all the dependencies required in our 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/maven-v4_0_0.xsd">
<modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
<groupId>com.sivalabs</groupId>
<artifactId>springmvc-jpa-demo</artifactId>
<packaging>war</packaging>
<version>1.0-SNAPSHOT</version>
<name>springmvc-jpa-demo</name>

<properties>
<project.build.sourceEncoding>UTF-8</project.build.sourceEncoding>
<maven.compiler.source>1.8</maven.compiler.source>
<maven.compiler.target>1.8</maven.compiler.target>
<failOnMissingWebXml>false</failOnMissingWebXml>
</properties>

<dependencies>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-webmvc</artifactId>
<version>4.2.4.RELEASE</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework.data</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-data-jpa</artifactId>
<version>1.9.2.RELEASE</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.slf4j</groupId>
<artifactId>jcl-over-slf4j</artifactId>
<version>1.7.13</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.slf4j</groupId>
<artifactId>slf4j-api</artifactId>
<version>1.7.13</version>
Chapter 1: Introduction to SpringBoot 6

</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.slf4j</groupId>
<artifactId>slf4j-log4j12</artifactId>
<version>1.7.13</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>log4j</groupId>
<artifactId>log4j</artifactId>
<version>1.2.17</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>com.h2database</groupId>
<artifactId>h2</artifactId>
<version>1.4.190</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>commons-dbcp</groupId>
<artifactId>commons-dbcp</artifactId>
<version>1.4</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>mysql</groupId>
<artifactId>mysql-connector-java</artifactId>
<version>5.1.38</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.hibernate</groupId>
<artifactId>hibernate-entitymanager</artifactId>
<version>4.3.11.Final</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>javax.servlet</groupId>
<artifactId>javax.servlet-api</artifactId>
<version>3.1.0</version>
<scope>provided</scope>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.thymeleaf</groupId>
<artifactId>thymeleaf-spring4</artifactId>
<version>2.1.4.RELEASE</version>
</dependency>
Chapter 1: Introduction to SpringBoot 7

</dependencies>
</project>

We have configured all our Maven jar dependencies to include Spring MVC, Spring Data JPA,
JPA/Hibernate, Thymeleaf and Log4j.
Step 2: Configure Service/DAO layer beans using JavaConfig.

@Configuration
@EnableTransactionManagement
@EnableJpaRepositories(basePackages="com.sivalabs.demo")
@PropertySource(value = { "classpath:application.properties" })
public class AppConfig {

@Autowired
private Environment env;

@Bean
public static PropertySourcesPlaceholderConfigurer placeHolderConfigurer()
{
return new PropertySourcesPlaceholderConfigurer();
}

@Value("${init-db:false}")
private String initDatabase;

@Bean
public PlatformTransactionManager transactionManager()
{
EntityManagerFactory factory = entityManagerFactory().getObject();
return new JpaTransactionManager(factory);
}

@Bean
public LocalContainerEntityManagerFactoryBean entityManagerFactory()
{
LocalContainerEntityManagerFactoryBean factory =
new LocalContainerEntityManagerFactoryBean();
HibernateJpaVendorAdapter vendorAdapter =
new HibernateJpaVendorAdapter();
vendorAdapter.setGenerateDdl(Boolean.TRUE);
vendorAdapter.setShowSql(Boolean.TRUE);
Chapter 1: Introduction to SpringBoot 8

factory.setDataSource(dataSource());
factory.setJpaVendorAdapter(vendorAdapter);
factory.setPackagesToScan(env.getProperty("packages-to-scan"));

Properties jpaProperties = new Properties();

jpaProperties.put("hibernate.hbm2ddl.auto",
env.getProperty("hibernate.hbm2ddl.auto"));
factory.setJpaProperties(jpaProperties);

factory.afterPropertiesSet();
factory.setLoadTimeWeaver(new InstrumentationLoadTimeWeaver());
return factory;
}

@Bean
public HibernateExceptionTranslator hibernateExceptionTranslator()
{
return new HibernateExceptionTranslator();
}

@Bean
public DataSource dataSource()
{
BasicDataSource dataSource = new BasicDataSource();
dataSource.setDriverClassName(env.getProperty("jdbc.driverClassName"));
dataSource.setUrl(env.getProperty("jdbc.url"));
dataSource.setUsername(env.getProperty("jdbc.username"));
dataSource.setPassword(env.getProperty("jdbc.password"));
return dataSource;
}

@Bean
public DataSourceInitializer dataSourceInitializer(DataSource dataSource)
{
DataSourceInitializer dsInitializer = new DataSourceInitializer();
dsInitializer.setDataSource(dataSource);
ResourceDatabasePopulator dbPopulator = new ResourceDatabasePopulator();
dbPopulator.addScript(new ClassPathResource("data.sql"));
dsInitializer.setDatabasePopulator(dbPopulator);
dsInitializer.setEnabled(Boolean.parseBoolean(initDatabase));
return dsInitializer;
}
Chapter 1: Introduction to SpringBoot 9

In our AppConfig.java configuration class we have done the following:

Marked it as a Spring Configuration class using @Configuration annotation.

Enabled Annotation based transaction management using @EnableTransactionManage-
ment
Configured @EnableJpaRepositories to indicate where to look for Spring Data JPA reposi-
tories
Configured PropertyPlaceHolder bean using @PropertySource annotation and Proper-
tySourcesPlaceholderConfigurer bean definition which loads properties from applica-
tion.properties file.
Defined beans for DataSource, JPA EntityManagerFactory, JpaTransactionManager.
Configured DataSourceInitializer bean to initialize the database by executing data.sql script
on application start up.

we can configure property placeholder values in application.properties as follows:

jdbc.driverClassName=com.mysql.jdbc.Driver
jdbc.url=jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/test
jdbc.username=root
jdbc.password=admin
init-db=true
hibernate.dialect=org.hibernate.dialect.MySQLDialect
hibernate.show_sql=true
hibernate.hbm2ddl.auto=update

Create a simple sql script data.sql to populate sample data into USER table.

delete from user;

insert into user(id, name) values(1,'Siva');

insert into user(id, name) values(2,'Prasad');
insert into user(id, name) values(3,'Reddy');

Create log4j.properties file with basic configuration as follows:

Chapter 1: Introduction to SpringBoot 10

log4j.rootCategory=INFO, stdout

log4j.appender.stdout=org.apache.log4j.ConsoleAppender
log4j.appender.stdout.layout=org.apache.log4j.PatternLayout
log4j.appender.stdout.layout.ConversionPattern=%5p %t %c{2}:%L - %m%n

log4j.category.com.sivalabs=DEBUG
log4j.category.org.springframework=INFO

Step 3: Configure Spring MVC web layer beans

We will have to configure Thymeleaf ViewResolver, static ResourceHandlers, MessageSource for
i18n etc.

@Configuration
@ComponentScan(basePackages = { "com.sivalabs.demo"})
@EnableWebMvc
public class WebMvcConfig extends WebMvcConfigurerAdapter
{
@Bean
public TemplateResolver templateResolver() {
TemplateResolver templateResolver = new ServletContextTemplateResolver();
templateResolver.setPrefix("/WEB-INF/views/");
templateResolver.setSuffix(".html");
templateResolver.setTemplateMode("HTML5");
templateResolver.setCacheable(false);
return templateResolver;
}

@Bean
public SpringTemplateEngine templateEngine() {
SpringTemplateEngine templateEngine = new SpringTemplateEngine();
templateEngine.setTemplateResolver(templateResolver());
return templateEngine;
}

@Bean
public ThymeleafViewResolver viewResolver() {
ThymeleafViewResolver thymeleafViewResolver =
new ThymeleafViewResolver();
thymeleafViewResolver.setTemplateEngine(templateEngine());
thymeleafViewResolver.setCharacterEncoding("UTF-8");
return thymeleafViewResolver;
Chapter 1: Introduction to SpringBoot 11

@Override
public void addResourceHandlers(ResourceHandlerRegistry registry)
{
registry.addResourceHandler("/resources/**")
.addResourceLocations("/resources/");
}

@Bean(name = "messageSource")
public MessageSource configureMessageSource()
{
ReloadableResourceBundleMessageSource messageSource =
new ReloadableResourceBundleMessageSource();
messageSource.setBasename("classpath:messages");
messageSource.setCacheSeconds(5);
messageSource.setDefaultEncoding("UTF-8");
return messageSource;
}
}

In our WebMvcConfig.java configuration class we have done the following:

Marked it as as a Spring Configuration class using @Configuration annotation.

Enabled Annotation based Spring MVC configuration using @EnableWebMvc
Configured Thymeleaf ViewResolver by registering TemplateResolver, SpringTemplateEngine,
ThymeleafViewResolver beans.
Registered ResourceHandlers bean to indicate requests for static resources with URI /re-
sources/** will be served from the location /resources/ directory.
Configured MessageSource bean to load i18n messages from ResourceBundle messages_-
{country-code}.properties from classpath.

Create messages.properties file in src/main/resources folder and add the following property.
app.title=SpringMVC JPA Demo (Without SpringBoot)
Step 4: Register Spring MVC FrontController servlet DispatcherServlet.
Prior to Servlet 3.x specification we have to register Servlets/Filters in web.xml. Since Servlet 3.x
specification we can register Servlets/Filters programatically using ServletContainerInitializer.
Spring MVC provides a convenient class AbstractAnnotationConfigDispatcherServletInitializer
to register DispatcherServlet.
Chapter 1: Introduction to SpringBoot 12

public class SpringWebAppInitializer

extends AbstractAnnotationConfigDispatcherServletInitializer
{
@Override
protected Class<?>[] getRootConfigClasses()
{
return new Class<?>[] { AppConfig.class};
}

@Override
protected Class<?>[] getServletConfigClasses()
{
return new Class<?>[] { WebMvcConfig.class };
}

@Override
protected String[] getServletMappings()
{
return new String[] { "/" };
}

@Override
protected Filter[] getServletFilters() {
return new Filter[]{ new OpenEntityManagerInViewFilter() };
}
}

In our SpringWebAppInitializer.java configuration class we have done the following:

We have configured AppConfig.class as RootConfirationClasses which will become the

parent ApplicationContext that contains bean definitions shared by all child (DispatcherServlet)
contexts.
We have configured WebMvcConfig.class as ServletConfigClasses which is child Applica-
tionContext that contains WebMvc bean definitions.
We have configured / as ServletMapping means all the requests will be handled by
DispatcherServlet.
We have registered OpenEntityManagerInViewFilter as a Servlet Filter so that we can lazy
load the JPA Entity lazy collections while rendering the view.

Step 5: Create a JPA Entity and Spring Data JPA Repository

Create a JPA entity User.java and a Spring Data JPA repository for User entity.
Chapter 1: Introduction to SpringBoot 13

@Entity
public class User
{
@Id @GeneratedValue(strategy=GenerationType.AUTO)
private Integer id;
private String name;

public User()
{
}

public User(Integer id, String name)

{
this.id = id;
this.name = name;
}

//setters and getters

}

public interface UserRepository extends JpaRepository<User, Integer>

{

If you dont understand what is JpaRepository dont worry. We will learn more about Spring Data
JPA in Chapter 9: Working With JPA in detail.
Step 6: Create a SpringMVC Controller
Create a SpringMVC controller to handle URL / and render list of users.

@Controller
public class HomeController
{
@Autowired UserRepository userRepo;

@RequestMapping("/")
public String home(Model model)
{
model.addAttribute("users", userRepo.findAll());
return "index";
}
}
Chapter 1: Introduction to SpringBoot 14

Step 7: Create a thymeleaf view /WEB-INF/views/index.html to render list of Users.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"
xmlns:th="http://www.thymeleaf.org">
<head>
<meta charset="utf-8"/>
<title>Home</title>
</head>
<body>
<h2 th:text="#{app.title}">App Title</h2>
<table>
<thead>
<tr>
<th>Id</th>
<th>Name</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr th:each="user : ${users}">
<td th:text="${user.id}">Id</td>
<td th:text="${user.name}">Name</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
</body>
</html>

We are all set now to run the application. But before that we need to download and configure the
server like Tomcat or Jetty or Wildfly etc in your IDE. You can download Tomcat 8 and configure in
your favourite IDE, run the application and point your browser to http://localhost:8080/springmvc-
jpa-demo. You should see the list of users details in a table.
Chapter 1: Introduction to SpringBoot 15

Users List

YayWe did it. But wait..Isnt it too much work to just show a list of user details pulled from a
database table?
Let us be honest and fair. All this configuration is not just for this one use-case. This configuration is
basis for rest of the application also. But again, this is too much of work to do if you want to quickly
get up and running. Another problem with it is, assume you want to develop another SpringMVC
application with similar technical stack? Well, you copy-paste the configuration and tweak it. Right?
But remember one thing: if you have to do the same thing again and again, you should find an
automated way to do it.
Apart from writing the same configuration again and again, do you see any other problems
here?
Well, let me list our what are the problems I am seeing here.

1. You need to hunt for all the compatible libraries for the specific Spring version and configure
them.
2. 95% of the times we configure the DataSource, EntitymanagerFactory, TransactionManager
etc beans in the same way. Wouldnt it be great if Spring can do it for me automatically.
3. Similarly we configure SpringMVC beans like ViewResolver, MessageSource etc in the same
way most of the times. If Spring can automatically do it for me that would be awesome.

Imagine, what if Spring is capable of configuring beans automatically? What if you can customize
the automatic configuration using simple customizable properties? For example, instead of mapping
DispatcherServlet url-pattern to / you want to map it to /app/. Instead of putting thymeleaf views
in /WEB-INF/views folder you may want to place them in /WEB-INF/templates/ folder.
So basically you want Spring to do things automatically but provide the flexibility to override the
default configuration in a simpler way?
Chapter 1: Introduction to SpringBoot 16

Well, you are about to enter into the world of SpringBoot where your dreams come true!!!

1.3. A Quick Taste of SpringBoot

Welcome to SpringBoot!. SpringBoot do what exactly you are looking for. It will do things
automatically for you but allows you to override the defaults if you want to.
Instead of explaining in theory I prefer to explain by example. So let us implement the same
application that we built earlier but this time using SpringBoot.
Step 1: Create a Maven based SpringBoot Project
Create a Maven project and configure the dependencies as follows:

<?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/maven-v4_0_0.xsd">
<modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
<groupId>com.sivalabs</groupId>
<artifactId>hello-springboot</artifactId>
<packaging>jar</packaging>
<version>1.0-SNAPSHOT</version>
<name>hello-springboot</name>

<parent>
<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-boot-starter-parent</artifactId>
<version>1.3.6.RELEASE</version>
</parent>

<properties>
<project.build.sourceEncoding>UTF-8</project.build.sourceEncoding>
<java.version>1.8</java.version>
</properties>

<dependencies>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-boot-starter-data-jpa</artifactId>
</dependency>
<dependency>
Chapter 1: Introduction to SpringBoot 17

<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-boot-starter-web</artifactId>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-boot-starter-thymeleaf</artifactId>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>mysql</groupId>
<artifactId>mysql-connector-java</artifactId>
</dependency>
</dependencies>
</project>

Wow our pom.xml suddenly become so small!!.

Dont worry if any of this configuration doesnt make sense at this point of time. We have plenty of
explanation on all of this in coming chapters.
Step 2: Configure datasource/JPA properties in src/main/resources/application.properties as
follows.

spring.datasource.driver-class-name=com.mysql.jdbc.Driver
spring.datasource.url=jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/test
spring.datasource.username=root
spring.datasource.password=admin
spring.datasource.initialize=true
spring.jpa.hibernate.ddl-auto=update
spring.jpa.show-sql=true

you can copy the same data.sql file into src/main/resources folder.
Step 3: Create a JPA Entity and Spring Data JPA Repository Interface for the entity.
Create User.java, UserRepository.java and HomeController.java same as in springmvc-jpa-demo
application.
Step 4: Create Thymeleaf view to show list of users
Copy /WEB-INF/views/index.html that we created in springmvc-jpa-demo application into src/-
main/resources/templates folder in our new project.
Step 5: Create SpringBoot EntryPoint Class.
Create a Java class Application.java with main method as follows:
Chapter 1: Introduction to SpringBoot 18

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

Now run Application.java as a Java Application and point your browser to http://localhost:8080/.
You should see the list of users in table format.
Ok ok, I hear you are shouting What is going on???.

Let me explain what just happened

1. Easy dependency Management

First thing to observe is we are using some dependencies named like spring-boot-starter-*.
Remember I said 95% of the times I use same configuration. So when you add spring-
boot-starter-web dependency by default it will pull all the commonly used libraries while
developing Spring MVC applications such as spring-webmvc, jackson-json, validation-api
and tomcat.
We have added spring-boot-starter-data-jpa dependency. This pulls all the spring-data-
jpa dependencies and also adds Hibernate libraries because majority of the applications use
Hibernate as JPA implementation.

2. Auto Configuration

Not only the spring-boot-starter-web adds all these libraries but also configures the
commonly registered beans like DispatcherServlet, ResourceHandlers, MessageSource etc
beans with sensible defaults.
We also added spring-boot-starter-thymeleaf which not only adds the thymeleaf library
dependencies but also configures ThymeleafViewResolver beans as well automatically.
We havent defined any of the DataSource, EntityManagerFactory, TransactionManager
etc beans but they are automatically gets created. How?
If we have any in-memory database drivers like H2 or HSQL in our classpath then SpringBoot
will automatically creates an in-memory DataSource and then registers EntityManagerFac-
tory, TransactionManager beans automatically with sensible defaults.
But we are using MySQL, so we need to explicitly provide MySQL connection details. We
have configured those MySQL connection details in application.properties file and SpringBoot
creates a DataSource using these properties.
Chapter 1: Introduction to SpringBoot 19

3. Embedded Servlet Container Support

The most important and surprising thing is we have created a simple Java class annotated
with some magical annotation @SpringApplication having a main method and by running
that main we are able to run the application and access it at http://localhost:8080/.
Where is the servlet container comes from?
We have added spring-boot-starter-web which pull the spring-boot-starter-tomcat auto-
matically and when we run the main() method it started tomcat as an embedded container so
that we dont have to deploy our application on any externally installed tomcat server.
By the way have you observe that our packaging type in pom.xml is jar not war. Wonderful!
Ok, but what if I want to use Jetty server instead of tomcat? Simple, exclude spring-boot-
starter-tomcat from spring-boot-starter-web and include spring-boot-starter-jetty. Thats
it.

But, this looks all magical!!!

I can imagine what you are thinking. You are thinking like SpringBoot looks cool and it is doing lot
of things automatically for me. But still I am not fully understand how it is all really working
behind the scenes. Right?
I can understand. Watching magic show is fun normally, but not in Software Development. Dont
worry, we will be looking at each of those things and explain in-detail how things are happening
behind the scenes. But I dont want to overwhelm you by dumping everything on to your hear right
now in this chapter.

1.4. Summary
In this chapter we had a quick overview of various Spring configuration styles and understand the
complexity of configuring Spring applications. Also, we had a quick look at SpringBoot by creating
a simple web application.
In next chapter we will take a more detailed look at SpringBoot and how we can create SpringBoot
applications in different ways.
Chapter 2: Getting Started with
SpringBoot
In the previous chapter we had a quick look at how we can develop a typical SpringMVC +
JPA(Hibernate) based web application using plain SpringMVC and Spring ORM modules. We have
discussed about the complexity of configuring the Spring based applications. And then we took a
quick look at how to develop the same web application using SpringBoot in a much easier way. But
we didnt go in-detail about SpringBoot.
In this chapter we are going to take a more detailed look into SpringBoot and what are the features
SpringBoot offers.
In this chapter we will cover:

What is SpringBoot?
Creating SpringBoot application
IDE and Build Tools support
Fat jar using SpringBoot Maven Plugin

2.1. What is SpringBoot?

SpringBoot is an opinionated framework which helps to build Spring based applications quickly and
easily. The main goal of SpringBoot is to quickly create Spring based applications without requiring
the developers to write the same boilerplate configuration again and again.
The key SpringBoot features include:

SpringBoot starters
SpringBoot AutoConfiguration
Elegant Configuration Management
SpringBoot Actuator
Easy to use Embedded Servlet container support

and many more.

20
Chapter 2: Getting Started with SpringBoot 21

SpringBoot starters
SpringBoot offers many starter modules to get started quickly with many of the commonly used
technologies like SpringMVC, JPA, MongoDB, Spring Batch, SpringSecurity, Solr, ElasticSearch
etc. These starters are pre-configured with the most commonly used library dependencies so that
we dont have to search for the compatible library versions and configure them manually.
For ex: spring-boot-starter-data-jpa starter module includes all the dependencies required to use
Spring Data JPA along with Hibernate library dependencies as Hibernate is the most commonly
used JPA implementation.
You can find list of all the SpringBoot starters that comes out-of-the-box in official documentation
at Starter POMs

SpringBoot AutoConfiguration
SpringBoot addresses the Spring applications needs complex configuration problem by elimi-
nating the need to manually configuring the boilerplate configuration by using AutoConfiguration.
SpringBoot takes opinionated view of the application and configures various components automat-
ically by registering beans based on various criteria.
The criteria can be:

Availability of a particular class in classpath

Presence or Absence of a Spring Bean
Presence of a System Property
Absence of configuration file

etc.
For example:
If you have spring-webmvc dependency in your classpath SpringBoot assumes you are trying to
build a SpringMVC based web application and automatically tries to register DispatcherServlet if
it is not already registered by you.
If you have any Embedded database driver in classpath like H2 or HSQL and if you havent con-
figured any DataSource bean explicitly then SpringBoot will automatically register a DataSource
bean using in-memory database settings.
We will learn more about the AutoConfiguration in further chapters in detail.
http://docs.spring.io/spring-boot/docs/current/reference/htmlsingle/#using-boot-starter-poms
Chapter 2: Getting Started with SpringBoot 22

Elegant Configuration Management

Spring supports externalizing configurable properties using @PropertySource configuration. Spring-
Boot takes it even further by using the sensible defaults and powerful type-safe property binding
to bean properties. SpringBoot supports having separate configuration files for different profiles
without requiring much configuration.

SpringBoot Actuator
Being able to get the various details of an application running in production is very crucial to many
applications. SpringBoot Actuator provides a wide variety of such production ready features without
requiring to write much code.
Some of the Spring Actuator features are:

Can view the application bean configuration details

Can view the application URL Mappings, Environment details and configuration parameter
values
Can view the registered Health Check Metrics

and many more.

Easy to use Embedded Servlet container support

Traditionally while building web applications we used to create war type modules and then deploy
on external servers like tomcat, wildlfy etc. But by using SpringBoot we can create jar type module
and embed the servlet container within application itself very easily so that our application will be
a self-contained deployment unit. Also, during development we can easily run the SpringBoot jar
type module as a Java application from IDE or from command-line using build tool like Maven or
Gradle.
We will learn more about these features and how to use them effectively in next chapters.

2.2. Our First SpringBoot Application

There are many ways to create a SpringBoot application. The simplest way is to use Spring Initializer
http://start.spring.io/ which is an online SpringBoot application generator.
Chapter 2: Getting Started with SpringBoot 23

Using Spring Initializer

You can point your browser to http://start.spring.io/ and enter the project details as follows:

1. Click on Switch to the full version link

2. Select Maven Project and SpringBoot version (As of writing this book latest is 1.3.2)
3. Enter the maven project details as follows:
Group: com.sivalabs
Artifact : springboot-basic
Name: springboot-basic
Package Name: com.sivalabs.demo
Packaging: Jar
Java version: 1.8
Language: Java
4. Either you can search for the starters if you are already familiar with the names or click on
Switch to the full version link. to see all the available starter.
You can see many starter modules organized into various categories like Core, Web, Data etc.
Select Web checkbox from Web category
Click on Generate Project button.

Now you can extract the downloaded zip file and import into your favorite IDE.

Using Spring Tool Suite

Spring Tool Suite (STS https://spring.io/tools/sts) is an extension of Eclipse IDE with lot of Spring
framework related plugins.
You can easily create a SpringBoot application from STS as follows:

Select File -> New -> Other -> Spring -> Spring Starter Project -> Next
You will see the wizard which looks similar to Spring Initializer.
Chapter 2: Getting Started with SpringBoot 24

Spring Starter Project

Enter the project details, click Next and select the starters and click Finish.
Chapter 2: Getting Started with SpringBoot 25

Spring Boot Starters

The SpringBoot project will be created and automatically imported into STS IDE as well.

Using Intellij IDEA

Intellij IDEA is a powerful commercial IDE with great features including support for SpringBoot.
You can create a SpringBoot project from Intellij IDEA as follows:

Select File -> New -> Project -> Spring Initializer -> Next
Chapter 2: Getting Started with SpringBoot 26

Enter the project details, click Next and select the starters, click Next and enter Project Name
and click Finish.

Spring support comes out-of-the-box only in commercial Intellij IDEA Ultimate Edition,
but not in Community Edition which is free. But if you want to use Intellij IDEA
Community Edition then you can generate the project using Spring Initializer and import
into Intellij IDEA as Maven/Gradle project.

Using NetBeans IDE

NetBeans IDE is another popular IDE for developing Java applications. As of now there is no out-
of-the-box support for creating SpringBoot project in NetBeans IDE but the community built NB
SpringBoot Plugin which supports creating SpringBoot applications directly from IDE itself.

There are some other options to quickly start using SpringBoot by using Spring Boot CLI
and SDKMAN. You can find more details at Installing Spring Boot.

Now you have created a SpringBoot Maven based project with web starter.
Let us explore what is contained in the generated application.
Step 1: First, let us take a look at 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/maven-v4_0_0.xsd">
<modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>

<groupId>com.sivalabs</groupId>
<artifactId>springboot-basic</artifactId>
<packaging>jar</packaging>
<version>1.0-SNAPSHOT</version>
<name>springboot-basic</name>

<parent>
<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>

https://github.com/AlexFalappa/nb-springboot
http://docs.spring.io/spring-boot/docs/current/reference/htmlsingle/#getting-started-installing-spring-boot
Chapter 2: Getting Started with SpringBoot 27

<artifactId>spring-boot-starter-parent</artifactId>
<version>1.3.6.RELEASE</version>
</parent>

<properties>
<project.build.sourceEncoding>UTF-8</project.build.sourceEncoding>
<java.version>1.8</java.version>
</properties>

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

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

</project>

1. First thing to note here is our springboot-basic maven module is inheriting from spring-
boot-starter-parent module.
By inheriting from spring-boot-starter-parent module we will automatically get the follow-
ing benefits:
We only need to specify the springboot version once in parent module configuration. We
dont need to specify the version for all the starter dependencies and other supporting
libraries.
To see all the list of supporting libraries see the pom.xml of org.springframework.boot:spring-
boot-dependencies:1.3.6.RELEASE maven module.
The parent module spring-boot-starter-parent already included the most commonly used
Chapter 2: Getting Started with SpringBoot 28

plugin such as maven-jar-plugin, maven-surefire-plugin, maven-war-plugin, exec-

maven-plugin, maven-resources-plugin with sensible defaults.
In addition to the above mentioned plugins, module spring-boot-starter-parent module
also configured the spring-boot-maven-plugin which will be used to build fat jar.
We will look into spring-boot-maven-plugin in more details in further sections in this
chapter.
2. We have selected only web starter but test starter also be included by default.
3. We have selected 1.8 as the Java Version, hence the property <java.version>1.8</java.version>
is included. This java.version value will be used to configure the JDK version for maven
compiler in spring-boot-starter-parent module.
<maven.compiler.source>${java.version}</maven.compiler.source>
<maven.compiler.target>${java.version}</maven.compiler.target>
4. Application EntryPoint class SpringbootBasicApplication.java
A SpringBoot jar type module will have an application entry point Java class with public
static void main(String[] args) method which you can run to start the application.

package com.sivalabs.demo;

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

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

Here SpringbootBasicApplication class is annotated with @SpringBootApplication annotation

which is a composed annotation.
Chapter 2: Getting Started with SpringBoot 29

@Target(ElementType.TYPE)
@Retention(RetentionPolicy.RUNTIME)
@Documented
@Inherited
@Configuration
@EnableAutoConfiguration
@ComponentScan
public @interface SpringBootApplication {
....
....
}

Let me explain the meaning of these annotations.

@Configuration annotation indicates that this class is a Spring configuration class.

@ComponentScan annotation enables component scanning for Spring beans in the package
in which the current class is defined
@EnableAutoConfiguration annotation is the one which triggers all the SpringBoots auto
configuration mechanism.

We are bootstrapping the application by calling SpringApplication.run(SpringbootBasicApplication.class,

args) in our main() method. We can pass one or more Spring Configuration classes to SpringAp-
plication.run() method. But if we have our application entry-point class in root package then
it is sufficient to pass our application entry class only which takes care of scanning other Spring
Configuration classes with in all the sub-packages.
Step 2: Now create a simple SpringMVC controller, HomeController, as follows:

package com.sivalabs.demo;

import org.springframework.stereotype.Controller;
import org.springframework.ui.Model;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RequestMapping;

@Controller
public class HomeController
{
@RequestMapping("/")
public String home(Model model) {
return "index.html";
}
}
Chapter 2: Getting Started with SpringBoot 30

This is a simple SpringMVC controller with one request handler method for URL / which returns
the view name index.html.
Step 3: Create a HTML view index.html
By default SpringBoot serves the static content from src/main/public/ and src/main/static/ direc-
tories. So create index.html in src/main/public/ as follows:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="utf-8"/>
<title>Home</title>
</head>
<body>
<h2>Hello World!!</h2>
</body>
</html>

Now from your IDE run the SpringbootBasicApplication.java main() method as stand-alone
Java class which will start the embedded tomcat server on port 8080 and point your browser to
http://localhost:8080/.
You should be able to see the response Hello World!!.
You can also run the SpringBoot application using spring-boot-maven-plugin goal as follows:
mvn spring-boot:run

Fat jar using SpringBoot Maven Plugin

We can run our application directly from our IDE or using Maven goal spring-boot:run but
ultimately we need to create a deployment unit which can be run in our production environment
without any IDE support.
We can use spring-boot-maven-plugin to create a single deployment unit (fat jar) by executing the
following Maven goals.
mvn clean package

Now you can see two interesting files in target directory, springboot-basic-1.0-SNAPSHOT.jar and
springboot-basic-1.0-SNAPSHOT.jar.original.
The springboot-basic-1.0-SNAPSHOT.jar.original will contain only the compiled classes and
classpath resources.
But if you look into springboot-basic-1.0-SNAPSHOT.jar you can find the following:
Chapter 2: Getting Started with SpringBoot 31

Compiled classes of our own source code in src/main/java

Static resources from src/main/resources
All the dependent jars in lib directory
Classes in org.springframework.boot.loader package which does SpringBoot magic of
running SpringBoot application.

We can create self contained deployment unit for jar type modules using plugins like
maven-shade-plugin which packages all the dependent jars classes into single jar file.
But Spring Boot follows a different approach which allows to nest jars directly with in
our SpringBoot application jar file. You can read more about it here The executable jar
format

Now you can run the application using the following command:
java -jar springboot-basic-1.0-SNAPSHOT.jar

SpringBoot using Gradle

Gradle is another popular build tool based on Groovy DSL. You can use Gradle instead of Maven to
build SpringBoot applications. Gradle also follows the similar project structure as Maven like main
java source resides in src/main/java, main resources resides in src/main/resources etc.
You can create a gradle based SpringBoot project with build.gradle as follows:

buildscript {
repositories {
jcenter()
}

dependencies {
classpath("org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-gradle-plugin:1.3.6.RELE\
ASE")
}
}

apply plugin: 'java'

apply plugin: 'spring-boot'

repositories {
jcenter()

http://docs.spring.io/spring-boot/docs/current/reference/htmlsingle/#executable-jar
Chapter 2: Getting Started with SpringBoot 32

dependencies {
compile("org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-web")
testCompile("org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-test")
}

Now you can run the application using gradle bootRun or you can use gradle build command
which generates the fat jar in build/libs directory.

Maven or Gradle?
In Java world Maven and Gradle are two most popular build tools. Maven was released
in 2004 and is being used widely by lot of developers. Gradle was released in 2012 which is
more powerful and easy to customize for the modern projects complex build process needs.
As Maven is still the most commonly used build tool we will be using Maven through
out the book. However you can find the Gradle build scripts in the book sample code for
each of the modules.
So, you can use either Maven or Gradle. Choice is yours!!

2.3. Summary
Now that you know how to create a simple SpringBoot application and run it. But you want to
understand the magic behind the SpringBoots AutoConfiguration. But before that you should know
about Springs @Conditional feature based on which all the SpringBoots AutoConfiguration magic
depends.
https://github.com/sivaprasadreddy/springboot-learn-by-example
Chapter 3: SpringBoot Behind the
scenes
In the previous chapter we have learned how to create a SpringBoot application in various
ways. SpringBoot makes developing Spring based applications very easily using its powerful
AutoConfiguration mechanism. But it may not be still clear how SpringBoot is actually working
behind the scenes.
In this chapter we will cover:

Exploring the power of @Conditional

How SpringBoot AutoConfiguration Works?

3.1. Exploring the power of @Conditional

While developing Spring based applications we may come across of a need to register beans
conditionally.
For example, you may want to register a DataSource bean pointing to DEV Database while running
application locally and point to a different PRODUCTION Database while running in production.
You can externalize the database connection parameters into properties files and use the file
appropriate for the environment. But you need to change the configuration whenever you need
to point to a different environment and build the application.
To address this problem Spring 3.1 introduced the concept of Profiles. You can register multiple
beans of the same type and associate them to one or more profiles. When you run the application
you can activate the desired profiles and beans associated with the activated profiles only will be
registered.

33
Chapter 3: SpringBoot Behind the scenes 34

@Configuration
public class AppConfig
{
@Bean
@Profile("DEV")
public DataSource devDataSource() {
...
}

@Bean
@Profile("PROD")
public DataSource prodDataSource() {
...
}
}

Then you can specify the active profile using System Property -Dspring.profiles.active=DEV
This approach works for simple cases like enable or disable bean registrations based on activated
profiles. But if you want to register beans based on some conditional logic then the Profiles approach
itself is not sufficient.
To provide much more flexibility for registering Spring beans conditionally, Spring 4 introduced the
concept of @Conditional. By using @Conditional approach you can register a bean conditionally
based on any arbitrary condition.
For example, you may want to register a bean when:

A specific class is present in classpath

A Spring bean of certain type doesnt already registered in ApplicationContext
A specific file exists on a location
A specific property value is configured in a configuration file
A specific system property is present/absent

These are just a few examples only and you can have any condition you want.
Let us take a look at how Springs @Conditional works.

Using @Conditional based on System Property

Suppose we have a UserDAO interface with methods to get data from a data store. We have two
implements of UserDAO interface namely JdbcUserDAO which talks to MySQL database and
MongoUserDAO which talks to MongoDB.
Chapter 3: SpringBoot Behind the scenes 35

We may want to enable only one of JdbcUserDAO and MongoUserDAO based on a System
Property say dbType.
If the application is started using java -jar myapp.jar -DdbType=MySQL then we want to enable
JdbcUserDAO, otherwise if the application is started using java -jar myapp.jar -DdbType=MONGO
we want to enable MongoUserDAO.
Suppose we have UserDAO interface and JdbcUserDAO, MongoUserDAO implementations as
follows:

public interface UserDAO

{
List<String> getAllUserNames();
}

public class JdbcUserDAO implements UserDAO

{
@Override
public List<String> getAllUserNames()
{
System.out.println("**** Getting usernames from RDBMS *****");
return Arrays.asList("Siva","Prasad","Reddy");
}
}

public class MongoUserDAO implements UserDAO

{
@Override
public List<String> getAllUserNames()
{
System.out.println("**** Getting usernames from MongoDB *****");
return Arrays.asList("Bond","James","Bond");
}
}

We can implement the Condition MySQLDatabaseTypeCondition to check whether the System

Property dbType is MYSQL as follows:
Chapter 3: SpringBoot Behind the scenes 36

public class MySQLDatabaseTypeCondition implements Condition

{
@Override
public boolean matches(ConditionContext conditionContext,
AnnotatedTypeMetadata metadata)
{
String enabledDBType = System.getProperty("dbType");
return (enabledDBType != null &&
enabledDBType.equalsIgnoreCase("MYSQL"));
}
}

We can implement the Condition MongoDBDatabaseTypeCondition to check whether the System

Property dbType is MONGODB as follows:

public class MongoDBDatabaseTypeCondition implements Condition

{
@Override
public boolean matches(ConditionContext conditionContext,
AnnotatedTypeMetadata metadata)
{
String enabledDBType = System.getProperty("dbType");
return (enabledDBType != null
&& enabledDBType.equalsIgnoreCase("MONGODB"));
}
}

Now we can configure both JdbcUserDAO and MongoUserDAO beans conditionally using
@Conditional as follows:

@Configuration
public class AppConfig
{
@Bean
@Conditional(MySQLDatabaseTypeCondition.class)
public UserDAO jdbcUserDAO(){
return new JdbcUserDAO();
}

@Bean
@Conditional(MongoDBDatabaseTypeCondition.class)
public UserDAO mongoUserDAO(){
Chapter 3: SpringBoot Behind the scenes 37

return new MongoUserDAO();

}
}

Now if we run the application like java -jar myapp.jar -DdbType=MYSQL then only JdbcUser-
DAO bean will be registered.
But if you set the System property like -DdbType=MONGODB then only MongoUserDAO bean
will be registered.
Now that we have seen how to conditionally register a bean based on System Property.

Using @Conditional based on Presence/Absence of a Java Class

Suppose we want to register MongoUserDAO bean only when MongoDB java driver class
com.mongodb.Server is available on classpath, if not we want to register JdbcUserDAO bean.
To accomplish that we can create Conditions to check the presence or absence of MongoDB driver
class com.mongodb.Server as follows:

public class MongoDriverPresentsCondition implements Condition

{
@Override
public boolean matches(ConditionContext conditionContext,
AnnotatedTypeMetadata metadata)
{
try {
Class.forName("com.mongodb.Server");
return true;
} catch (ClassNotFoundException e) {
return false;
}
}
}

public class MongoDriverNotPresentsCondition implements Condition

{
@Override
public boolean matches(ConditionContext conditionContext,
AnnotatedTypeMetadata metadata)
{
try {
Class.forName("com.mongodb.Server");
return false;
Chapter 3: SpringBoot Behind the scenes 38

} catch (ClassNotFoundException e) {
return true;
}
}
}

We just have seen how to register beans conditionally based on presence/absence of a class in
classpath.

Using @Conditional based on Configured Spring Beans

What if we want to register MongoUserDAO bean only if no other Spring bean of type UserDAO
is already registered.
We can create a Condition to check if there is any existing bean of a certain type as follows:

public class UserDAOBeanNotPresentsCondition implements Condition

{
@Override
public boolean matches(ConditionContext conditionContext,
AnnotatedTypeMetadata metadata)
{
UserDAO userDAO = conditionContext.getBeanFactory().getBean(UserDAO.clas\
s);
return (userDAO == null);
}
}

Using @Conditional based on Properties Configuration

What if we want to register MongoUserDAO bean only if property app.dbType=MONGO is set in
properties placeholder configuration file?
We can implement that Condition as follows:
Chapter 3: SpringBoot Behind the scenes 39

public class MongoDbTypePropertyCondition implements Condition

{
@Override
public boolean matches(ConditionContext conditionContext,
AnnotatedTypeMetadata metadata)
{
String dbType = conditionContext.getEnvironment()
.getProperty("app.dbType");
return "MONGO".equalsIgnoreCase(dbType);
}
}

We have just seen how to implement various types of Conditions.

But there is even more elegant way to implement Conditions using Annotations.
Instead of creating a Condition implementation for both MYSQL and MongoDB, we can create a
DatabaseType annotation as follows:

@Target({ ElementType.TYPE, ElementType.METHOD })

@Retention(RetentionPolicy.RUNTIME)
@Conditional(DatabaseTypeCondition.class)
public @interface DatabaseType
{
String value();
}

Then we can implement DatabaseTypeCondition to use the DatabaseType value to determine

whether to enable or disable bean registration as follows:

public class DatabaseTypeCondition implements Condition

{
@Override
public boolean matches(ConditionContext conditionContext,
AnnotatedTypeMetadata metadata)
{
Map<String, Object> attributes = metadata.
getAnnotationAttributes(DatabaseType.class.getName());
String type = (String) attributes.get("value");
String enabledDBType = System.getProperty("dbType","MYSQL");
return (enabledDBType != null && type != null
&& enabledDBType.equalsIgnoreCase(type));
}
}
Chapter 3: SpringBoot Behind the scenes 40

Now we can use the @DatabaseType annotation on our bean definitions as follows:

@Configuration
@ComponentScan
public class AppConfig
{
@DatabaseType("MYSQL")
public UserDAO jdbcUserDAO(){
return new JdbcUserDAO();
}

@Bean
@DatabaseType("MONGO")
public UserDAO mongoUserDAO(){
return new MongoUserDAO();
}
}

Here we are getting the metadata from DatabaseType annotation and checking against the System
Property dbType value to determine whether to enable or disable the bean registration.
We have seen good number of examples to understand how we can register beans conditionally
using @Conditional annotation.
SpringBoot extensively uses @Conditional feature to register beans conditionally based on various
criteria. You can find various Condition implementations that SpringBoot uses in org.springframework.boot.autoc
package of spring-boot-autoconfigure-{version}.jar.
Now that we come to know about how SpringBoot uses @Conditional feature to conditionally
check whether to register a bean or not.
But what exactly triggers the auto-configuration mechanism? This is what we are going to look at
in next section.

3.2. How SpringBoot AutoConfiguration Works?

The key to the SpringBoots auto-configuration magic is @EnableAutoConfiguration annotation.
Typically we annotate our Application entry point class with either @SpringBootApplication or
if we want to customize the defaults we can use the following annotations:
Chapter 3: SpringBoot Behind the scenes 41

@Configuration
@EnableAutoConfiguration
@ComponentScan
public class Application
{

The @EnableAutoConfiguration annotation enables the auto-configuration of Spring Application-

Context by scanning the classpath components and registers the beans that are matching various
Conditions.
SpringBoot provides various AutoConfiguration classes in spring-boot-autoconfigure-{version}.jar
which are responsible for registering various components.
Typically AutoConfiguration classes are annotated with @Configuration to mark it as a Spring
configuration class and annotated with @EnableConfigurationProperties to bind the customiza-
tion properties and one or more Conditional bean registration methods.
For example consider org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.jdbc.DataSourceAutoConfiguration
class.

@Configuration
@ConditionalOnClass({ DataSource.class, EmbeddedDatabaseType.class })
@EnableConfigurationProperties(DataSourceProperties.class)
@Import({ Registrar.class, DataSourcePoolMetadataProvidersConfiguration.class })
public class DataSourceAutoConfiguration {
...
...

@Conditional(DataSourceAutoConfiguration.EmbeddedDataSourceCondition.class)
@ConditionalOnMissingBean({ DataSource.class, XADataSource.class })
@Import(EmbeddedDataSourceConfiguration.class)
protected static class EmbeddedConfiguration {

@Configuration
@ConditionalOnMissingBean(DataSourceInitializer.class)
protected static class DataSourceInitializerConfiguration {
@Bean
public DataSourceInitializer dataSourceInitializer() {
return new DataSourceInitializer();
}
Chapter 3: SpringBoot Behind the scenes 42

@Conditional(DataSourceAutoConfiguration.NonEmbeddedDataSourceCondition.clas\
s)
@ConditionalOnMissingBean({ DataSource.class, XADataSource.class })
protected static class NonEmbeddedConfiguration {
@Autowired
private DataSourceProperties properties;

@Bean
@ConfigurationProperties(prefix = DataSourceProperties.PREFIX)
public DataSource dataSource() {
DataSourceBuilder factory = DataSourceBuilder
.create(this.properties.getClassLoader())
.driverClassName(this.properties.getDriverClassName())
.url(this.properties.getUrl()).username(this.properties.getU\
sername())
.password(this.properties.getPassword());
if (this.properties.getType() != null) {
factory.type(this.properties.getType());
}
return factory.build();
}
}
...
...

@Configuration
@ConditionalOnProperty(prefix = "spring.datasource", name = "jmx-enabled")
@ConditionalOnClass(name = "org.apache.tomcat.jdbc.pool.DataSourceProxy")
@Conditional(DataSourceAutoConfiguration.DataSourceAvailableCondition.class)
@ConditionalOnMissingBean(name = "dataSourceMBean")
protected static class TomcatDataSourceJmxConfiguration {
@Bean
public Object dataSourceMBean(DataSource dataSource) {
....
....
}
}
...
...
}
Chapter 3: SpringBoot Behind the scenes 43

Here DataSourceAutoConfiguration is annotated with @ConditionalOnClass({ DataSource.class,

EmbeddedDatabaseType.class }) which means that Auto Configuration of beans within Data-
SourceAutoConfiguration will be considered only if DataSource.class and EmbeddedDatabase-
Type.class classes are available on classpath.
The class is also annotated with @EnableConfigurationProperties(DataSourceProperties.class)
which enables binding the properties in application.properties to the properties of DataSource-
Properties class automatically.

@ConfigurationProperties(prefix = DataSourceProperties.PREFIX)
public class DataSourceProperties
implements BeanClassLoaderAware, EnvironmentAware, InitializingBean {

public static final String PREFIX = "spring.datasource";

...
...
private String driverClassName;
private String url;
private String username;
private String password;
...
//setters and getters
}

With this configuration all the properties that starts with spring.datasource.* will be automatically
binds to DataSourceProperties object.

spring.datasource.url=jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/test
spring.datasource.username=root
spring.datasource.password=secret
spring.datasource.driver-class-name=com.mysql.jdbc.Driver

You can also see some inner classes and bean definition methods that are annotated with Spring-
Boots Conditional annotations such as @ConditionalOnMissingBean, @ConditionalOnClass
and @ConditionalOnProperty etc. These bean definitions will be registered in ApplicationContext
only if those conditions are matched.
You can also explore many other AutoConfiguration classes in spring-boot-autoconfigure-{version}.jar
such as

org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.web.DispatcherServletAutoConfiguration
org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.orm.jpa.HibernateJpaAutoConfiguration
Chapter 3: SpringBoot Behind the scenes 44

org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.data.jpa.JpaRepositoriesAutoConfiguration
org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.jackson.JacksonAutoConfiguration

etc.

3.3. Summary
Now that we have an understanding of how SpringBoot auto-configuration works by using various
AutoConfiguration classes along with @Conditional features.
In next chapter, we will look into how to create our own Custom SpringBoot Starter.
Chapter 4: Creating Custom
SpringBoot Starter
SpringBoot provides lot of starter modules to get up and running quickly. SpringBoots auto-
configure mechanism takes care of configuring SpringBeans on our behalf based on various criteria.
In addition to the springboot starters that comes out-of-the-box provided by Core Spring Team, we
can also create our own starter modules.
In this post we will look into how to create a custom SpringBoot starter. To demonstrate it we are
going to create twitter4j-spring-boot-starter which will auto-configure Twitter4J beans.
To accomplish this, we are going to create:

1. twitter4j-spring-boot-autoconfigure module which contains Twitter4J AutoConfiguration

bean definitions
2. twitter4j-spring-boot-starter module which pulls in twitter4j-spring-boot-autoconfigure
and twitter4j-core dependencies
3. Sample application which uses twitter4j-spring-boot-starter

4.1. Create Parent Module

spring-boot-starter-twitter4j
First we are going to create a parent pom type module to define dependency versions and sub-
modules.

<?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/maven-v4_0_0.xsd">
<modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>

<groupId>com.sivalabs</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-boot-starter-twitter4j</artifactId>
<packaging>pom</packaging>
<version>1.0-SNAPSHOT</version>

45
Chapter 4: Creating Custom SpringBoot Starter 46

<name>spring-boot-starter-twitter4j</name>

<properties>
<project.build.sourceEncoding>UTF-8</project.build.sourceEncoding>
<twitter4j.version>4.0.3</twitter4j.version>
<spring-boot.version>1.3.6.RELEASE</spring-boot.version>
</properties>

<modules>
<module>twitter4j-spring-boot-autoconfigure</module>
<module>twitter4j-spring-boot-starter</module>
<module>twitter4j-spring-boot-sample</module>
</modules>

<dependencyManagement>
<dependencies>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-boot-dependencies</artifactId>
<version>${spring-boot.version}</version>
<type>pom</type>
<scope>import</scope>
</dependency>

<dependency>
<groupId>org.twitter4j</groupId>
<artifactId>twitter4j-core</artifactId>
<version>${twitter4j.version}</version>
</dependency>
</dependencies>
</dependencyManagement>

</project>

In this pom.xml we are defining the SpringBoot and Twitter4j versions in section so that we dont
need to specify versions all over the places.

4.2. Create twitter4j-spring-boot-autoconfigure

module
Create a child module with name twitter4j-spring-boot-autoconfigure in our parent maven
module spring-boot-starter-twitter4j.
Chapter 4: Creating Custom SpringBoot Starter 47

Add the maven dependencies such as spring-boot, spring-boot-autoconfigure, twitter4j-core and

junit as follows:

<?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/maven-v4_0_0.xsd">
<modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
<groupId>com.sivalabs</groupId>
<artifactId>twitter4j-spring-boot-autoconfigure</artifactId>
<packaging>jar</packaging>
<version>1.0-SNAPSHOT</version>

<parent>
<groupId>com.sivalabs</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-boot-starter-twitter4j</artifactId>
<version>1.0-SNAPSHOT</version>
</parent>

<properties>
<project.build.sourceEncoding>UTF-8</project.build.sourceEncoding>
</properties>

<dependencies>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-boot</artifactId>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-boot-autoconfigure</artifactId>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-boot-configuration-processor</artifactId>
<optional>true</optional>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>junit</groupId>
<artifactId>junit</artifactId>
<scope>test</scope>
</dependency>
Chapter 4: Creating Custom SpringBoot Starter 48

<dependency>
<groupId>org.twitter4j</groupId>
<artifactId>twitter4j-core</artifactId>
<optional>true</optional>
</dependency>
</dependencies>
</project>

Note that we have specified twitter4j-core as optional dependency because twitter4j-core should
be added to the project only when twitter4j-spring-boot-starter is added to the project.

Create Twitter4jProperties to hold the Twitter4J config parameters

Create Twitter4jProperties.java to hold the Twitter4J OAuth config parameters.

package com.sivalabs.spring.boot.autoconfigure;

import org.springframework.boot.context.properties.ConfigurationProperties;
import org.springframework.boot.context.properties.NestedConfigurationProperty;

@ConfigurationProperties(prefix= Twitter4jProperties.TWITTER4J_PREFIX)
public class Twitter4jProperties {

public static final String TWITTER4J_PREFIX = "twitter4j";

private Boolean debug = false;

@NestedConfigurationProperty
private OAuth oauth = new OAuth();

public Boolean getDebug() {

return debug;
}

public void setDebug(Boolean debug) {

this.debug = debug;
}

public OAuth getOauth() {

return oauth;
}
Chapter 4: Creating Custom SpringBoot Starter 49

public void setOauth(OAuth oauth) {

this.oauth = oauth;
}

public static class OAuth {

private String consumerKey;

private String consumerSecret;
private String accessToken;
private String accessTokenSecret;

public String getConsumerKey() {

return consumerKey;
}
public void setConsumerKey(String consumerKey) {
this.consumerKey = consumerKey;
}
public String getConsumerSecret() {
return consumerSecret;
}
public void setConsumerSecret(String consumerSecret) {
this.consumerSecret = consumerSecret;
}
public String getAccessToken() {
return accessToken;
}
public void setAccessToken(String accessToken) {
this.accessToken = accessToken;
}
public String getAccessTokenSecret() {
return accessTokenSecret;
}
public void setAccessTokenSecret(String accessTokenSecret) {
this.accessTokenSecret = accessTokenSecret;
}
}
}

The @ConfigurationProperties annotation allows us to bind a set of properties with a common

prefix to a Java bean properties. With this configuration object we can configure the twitter4j
properties in application.properties as follows:
Chapter 4: Creating Custom SpringBoot Starter 50

twitter4j.debug=true
twitter4j.oauth.consumer-key=your-consumer-key-here
twitter4j.oauth.consumer-secret=your-consumer-secret-here
twitter4j.oauth.access-token=your-access-token-here
twitter4j.oauth.access-token-secret=your-access-token-secret-here

Create Twitter4jAutoConfiguration to auto-configure Twitter4J

Here comes the key part of our starter. Twitter4jAutoConfiguration configuration class contains
the bean definitions that will be automatically configured based on some criteria.
What is that criteria?

If twitter4j.TwitterFactory.class is on classpath
If TwitterFactory bean is not already defined explicitly

So, the Twitter4jAutoConfiguration goes like this.

package com.sivalabs.spring.boot.autoconfigure;

import org.apache.commons.logging.Log;
import org.apache.commons.logging.LogFactory;
import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Autowired;
import org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.condition.ConditionalOnClass;
import org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.condition.ConditionalOnMissingBean;
import org.springframework.boot.context.properties.EnableConfigurationProperties;
import org.springframework.context.annotation.Bean;
import org.springframework.context.annotation.Configuration;

import twitter4j.Twitter;
import twitter4j.TwitterFactory;
import twitter4j.conf.ConfigurationBuilder;

@Configuration
@ConditionalOnClass({ TwitterFactory.class})
@EnableConfigurationProperties(Twitter4jProperties.class)
public class Twitter4jAutoConfiguration {

private static Log log = LogFactory.getLog(Twitter4jAutoConfiguration.class);

@Autowired
private Twitter4jProperties properties;
Chapter 4: Creating Custom SpringBoot Starter 51

@Bean
@ConditionalOnMissingBean
public TwitterFactory twitterFactory(){

if (this.properties.getOauth().getConsumerKey() == null
|| this.properties.getOauth().getConsumerSecret() == null
|| this.properties.getOauth().getAccessToken() == null
|| this.properties.getOauth().getAccessTokenSecret() == null)
{
String msg = "Twitter4j properties not configured properly." +
" Please check twitter4j.* properties settings in confi\
guration file.";
log.error(msg);
throw new RuntimeException(msg);
}

ConfigurationBuilder cb = new ConfigurationBuilder();

cb.setDebugEnabled(properties.getDebug())
.setOAuthConsumerKey(properties.getOauth().getConsumerKey())
.setOAuthConsumerSecret(properties.getOauth().getConsumerSecret())
.setOAuthAccessToken(properties.getOauth().getAccessToken())
.setOAuthAccessTokenSecret(properties.getOauth().getAccessTokenSecret(\
));
TwitterFactory tf = new TwitterFactory(cb.build());
return tf;
}

@Bean
@ConditionalOnMissingBean
public Twitter twitter(TwitterFactory twitterFactory){
return twitterFactory.getInstance();
}

We have used @ConditionalOnClass({ TwitterFactory.class}) to specify that this auto configura-

tion should take place only when TwitterFactory.class class is present.
We have also used @ConditionalOnMissingBean on bean definition methods to specify consider
this bean definition only if TwitterFactory/Twitter beans are not already defined explicitly.
Also note that we have annotated with @EnableConfigurationProperties(Twitter4jProperties.class)
to enable support for ConfigurationProperties and injected Twitter4jProperties bean.
Chapter 4: Creating Custom SpringBoot Starter 52

Now we need to configure our custom Twitter4jAutoConfiguration in src/main/resources/META-

INF/spring.factories file as follows:
org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.EnableAutoConfiguration=com.sivalabs.spring.boot.autoconfig

4.3. Create twitter4j-spring-boot-starter module

Create a child module with name twitter4j-spring-boot-starter in our parent maven module
spring-boot-starter-twitter4j.

<?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/maven-v4_0_0.xsd">
<modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
<groupId>com.sivalabs</groupId>
<artifactId>twitter4j-spring-boot-starter</artifactId>
<packaging>jar</packaging>
<version>1.0-SNAPSHOT</version>

<parent>
<groupId>com.sivalabs</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-boot-starter-twitter4j</artifactId>
<version>1.0-SNAPSHOT</version>
</parent>

<properties>
<project.build.sourceEncoding>UTF-8</project.build.sourceEncoding>
</properties>

<dependencies>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-boot-starter</artifactId>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>com.sivalabs</groupId>
<artifactId>twitter4j-spring-boot-autoconfigure</artifactId>
<version>${project.version}</version>
</dependency>
Chapter 4: Creating Custom SpringBoot Starter 53

<dependency>
<groupId>org.twitter4j</groupId>
<artifactId>twitter4j-core</artifactId>
</dependency>

</dependencies>

</project>

Note that in this maven module we are actually pulling in twitter4j-core dependency.
We dont need to add any code in this module, but optionally we can specify what are
the dependencies we are going to provide through this starter in src/main/resources/META-
INF/spring.provides file as follows:
provides: twitter4j-core

Thats all for our starter.

Let us create a sample using our brand new starter twitter4j-spring-boot-starter.

4.4. Create twitter4j-spring-boot-sample sample

application
Let us create a simple SpringBoot application and add our twitter4j-spring-boot-starter depen-
dency.

<?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/maven-v4_0_0.xsd">
<modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
<groupId>com.sivalabs</groupId>
<artifactId>twitter4j-spring-boot-sample</artifactId>
<packaging>jar</packaging>
<version>1.0-SNAPSHOT</version>

<parent>
<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-boot-starter-parent</artifactId>
<version>1.3.6.RELEASE</version>
Chapter 4: Creating Custom SpringBoot Starter 54

</parent>

<properties>
<project.build.sourceEncoding>UTF-8</project.build.sourceEncoding>
<java.version>1.8</java.version>
</properties>

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

<dependencies>

<dependency>
<groupId>com.sivalabs</groupId>
<artifactId>twitter4j-spring-boot-starter</artifactId>
<version>1.0-SNAPSHOT</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-boot-starter-test</artifactId>
<scope>test</scope>
</dependency>
</dependencies>

</project>

Create the entry-point class SpringbootTwitter4jDemoApplication as follows:

Chapter 4: Creating Custom SpringBoot Starter 55

package com.sivalabs.demo;

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

@SpringBootApplication
public class SpringbootTwitter4jDemoApplication {

public static void main(String[] args) {

SpringApplication.run(SpringbootTwitter4jDemoApplication.class, args);
}
}

Create TweetService as follows:

package com.sivalabs.demo;

import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.List;

import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Autowired;
import org.springframework.stereotype.Service;

import twitter4j.ResponseList;
import twitter4j.Status;
import twitter4j.Twitter;
import twitter4j.TwitterException;

@Service
public class TweetService {

@Autowired
private Twitter twitter;

public List<String> getLatestTweets(){

List<String> tweets = new ArrayList<>();
try {
ResponseList<Status> homeTimeline = twitter.getHomeTimeline();
for (Status status : homeTimeline) {
tweets.add(status.getText());
}
} catch (TwitterException e) {
Chapter 4: Creating Custom SpringBoot Starter 56

throw new RuntimeException(e);

}
return tweets;
}
}

Now create a Test to verify our Twitter4j AutoConfigutation.

Before that make sure you have set your twitter4j oauth configuration parameter to your actual
values. You can get them from https://apps.twitter.com/

package com.sivalabs.demo;

import java.util.List;

import org.junit.Test;
import org.junit.runner.RunWith;
import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Autowired;
import org.springframework.boot.test.SpringApplicationConfiguration;
import org.springframework.test.context.junit4.SpringJUnit4ClassRunner;

import twitter4j.TwitterException;

@RunWith(SpringJUnit4ClassRunner.class)
@SpringApplicationConfiguration(SpringbootTwitter4jDemoApplication.class)
public class SpringbootTwitter4jDemoApplicationTest {

@Autowired
private TweetService tweetService;

@Test
public void testGetTweets() throws TwitterException {
List<String> tweets = tweetService.getLatestTweets();
for (String tweet : tweets) {
System.err.println(tweet);
}
}

Now when you run this JUnit test you should be able to see the latest tweets on your console output.
Chapter 4: Creating Custom SpringBoot Starter 57

To learn more about creating custom AutoConfiguration classes or starters take a look at Creating
your own auto-configuration

4.5. Summary
In this chapter, we learned about how to create our own AutoConfiguration classes and our own
SpringBoot Starter. In next chapter, we will look into various SpringBoot features which we will be
using commonly in Spring based applications.

http://docs.spring.io/spring-boot/docs/current/reference/htmlsingle/#boot-features-developing-auto-configuration
Appendix A : Resources
You can find the useful information about SpringBoot at the following URLs:

Spring project site

SpringBoot project site
SpringBoot official documentation
SpringBoot quick start guides
SpringBoot GitHub repository

http://spring.io/
http://projects.spring.io/spring-boot/
http://docs.spring.io/spring-boot/docs/current/reference/htmlsingle/
http://spring.io/guides
https://github.com/spring-projects/spring-boot

58