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Mastering Advanced Spring Boot: A

Deep Dive into Modern
Development Practices
Vijayasankar Balasubramanian · Follow
3 min read · 23 hours ago

Spring Boot has revolutionized Java development, making it easier to build

robust, scalable, and production-ready applications. While many developers
are comfortable with the basics – like dependency injection, RESTful APIs,
and database interactions – truly mastering Spring Boot requires an
understanding of advanced concepts that enhance performance, scalability,
and maintainability.

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This follow-up dives deeper into recent advancements, best practices, and
real-world strategies to elevate your Spring Boot expertise.

1. Custom Spring Boot Starters: Scaling Enterprise Development

Custom Spring Boot starters provide a plug-and-play way to bundle
dependencies and configurations, simplifying development across multiple
projects.

Why It Matters
• Reduces redundancy across projects.

• Encourages code reuse and modularization.

• Enhances maintainability in enterprise applications.

New Best Practices

• Use @Conditional Annotations Wisely: Instead of enabling features blindly,
use @ConditionalOnProperty, @ConditionalOnClass, and
@ConditionalOnBean to ensure dependencies are properly loaded.

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• Leverage Spring Boot 3’s GraalVM Support: Optimize starters for native
image compatibility, reducing startup time and memory usage.

Example: Creating a starter for custom logging.

@Configuration
@ConditionalOnProperty(name = "custom.logging.enabled", havingValue = "true")
public class LoggingStarterConfig {
@Bean
public Logger customLogger() {
return LoggerFactory.getLogger("CustomLogger");
}
}

2. Evolution of Spring Boot Actuator for Observability

Spring Boot Actuator provides deep insights into application health,
performance, and logs.

What’s New in Spring Boot 3?

• Micrometer Tracing: Unified distributed tracing support (replacing Sleuth)
for better observability with OpenTelemetry.

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• GraphQL Integration: Monitor GraphQL APIs through Actuator endpoints.

• Securing Actuator Endpoints: Instead of exposing all endpoints, configure

granular security using management.endpoints.web.exposure.include.

Example: Exposing only health and metrics endpoints

management.endpoints.web.exposure.include=health,metrics

3. Spring Boot & Reactive Programming: Moving Beyond REST

APIs
Spring WebFlux enables asynchronous, non-blocking architectures,
essential for high-throughput applications.

Modern Trends in Reactive Development

• R2DBC (Reactive Relational Database Connectivity): Non-blocking database
operations.

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• Reactive Security with Spring Security 6: Handles authentication/

authorization in non-blocking flows.

• Backpressure Management: Optimize reactive streams with Flowable,

Buffer, and Window operators.

Example: Handling backpressure using .onBackpressureDrop()

Flux.range(1, 1000)
.onBackpressureDrop()
.subscribe(System.out::println);

4. Spring Cloud: The Modern Microservices Backbone

Microservices demand resilient architectures, and Spring Cloud provides
battle-tested tools for configuration, service discovery, and fault tolerance.

Key Enhancements in 2024

• Spring Cloud Gateway 3.1: More efficient API Gateway with built-in circuit
breakers.

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• Resilience4j Integration: Replaces Netflix Hystrix for better circuit breaker

support.

• Kubernetes Native Support: Spring Cloud now offers first-class support for
Kubernetes service discovery.

Example: Configuring a Circuit Breaker with Resilience4j

@Retry(name = "backendService", fallbackMethod = "fallbackResponse")

public String fetchData() {
// Call external service
}

public String fallbackResponse(Exception e) {

return "Fallback response due to failure";
}

5. Advanced Security with Spring Boot

Security is no longer an afterthought – it’s a fundamental pillar of modern
applications.

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Modern Security Best Practices

• OAuth2 & OpenID Connect Integration: Secure microservices with
Keycloak, Auth0, or AWS Cognito.

• JSON Web Token (JWT) Optimization: Reduce token size and improve
security with asymmetric encryption.

• Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) with @PreAuthorize: Restrict access

dynamically.

Example: Protecting APIs with RBAC

@PreAuthorize("hasRole('ADMIN')")
@GetMapping("/admin")
public String adminEndpoint() {
return "Admin Access Only";
}

6. Containerization & Deployment: The Spring Boot DevOps

Shift

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Deploying Spring Boot applications efficiently is just as important as writing

clean code.

What’s New?
• Buildpacks for Cloud-Native Images: Automatically generate optimized
Docker images.

• Kubernetes Readiness/Liveness Probes: Ensure microservices are healthy

and restartable.

• Serverless Support with AWS Lambda: Spring Boot 3 optimizes serverless

applications with native image compilation.

Example: Adding Readiness Probe in Kubernetes Deployment

livenessProbe:
httpGet:
path: /actuator/health
port: 8080

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7. Distributed Tracing: Making Sense of Microservices Chaos

As applications grow, tracing user journeys across services becomes
essential.

Latest Advancements
• OpenTelemetry Integration: Spring Boot now natively supports
OpenTelemetry for standardized tracing.

• Tracing with Grafana Loki + Prometheus: Aggregates logs and traces for
deep insights.

• Kafka Observability: Monitor event-driven architectures by tracing Kafka

messages.

Example: Enabling OpenTelemetry in Spring Boot

management.tracing.sampling.probability=1.0

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Final Thoughts: The Future of Spring Boot

Spring Boot continues to evolve, integrating modern development paradigms
while staying true to its mission – simplifying enterprise Java development.

As a Java developer, staying ahead means:

✅ Mastering Reactive & Asynchronous Programming

✅ Implementing Robust Security & Observability

✅ Optimizing Deployment with Kubernetes & Serverless

✅ Leveraging AI for Intelligent Code Generation (Spring AI is in its infancy!)

By embracing these advanced Spring Boot concepts, developers can build

resilient, scalable, and future-ready applications that align with modern
cloud-native architectures.

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Spring Boot Programming Spring Spring Framework

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Written by Vijayasankar Balasubramanian Follow

78 Followers · 135 Following

Java Solution Architect, Java Full Stack Engineer

No responses yet

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