Spring Boot Important Questions and Answers

1. What is Spring Boot?

Spring Boot is an open-source Java-based framework used to create stand-alone, production-ready Spring applications
with minimal configuration. It simplifies the development process by providing default configurations, embedded servers,
and various dependencies.

2. How does Spring Boot differ from Spring Framework?

Feature Spring Framework Spring Boot

Requires XML or Java-based configuration

Configuration Auto-configured with default settings

Embedded Comes with embedded servers (Tomcat,

Not included, requires setup
Server Jetty, Undertow)
Dependency
Manually managed Uses Spring Boot Starter dependencies
Management
Microservices
Requires manual setup Provides built-in support
Support

3. What are the key features of Spring Boot?

• Auto-Configuration: Automatically configures Spring applications based on dependencies.

• Spring Boot Starters: Pre-defined set of dependencies for different applications.

• Embedded Server: Includes Tomcat, Jetty, or Undertow without needing external setup.

• Actuator: Provides monitoring and management capabilities.

• Spring Boot CLI: Allows running Spring Boot applications from the command line.

4. What is Spring Boot Starter?

Spring Boot Starters are dependency descriptors that simplify the inclusion of related libraries in a project. Examples
include:

• spring-boot-starter-web - For web applications with Spring MVC.

• spring-boot-starter-data-jpa - For database interaction using JPA.

• spring-boot-starter-security - For authentication and authorization.

5. What is Spring Boot Auto-Configuration?

Spring Boot Auto-Configuration automatically configures components based on classpath dependencies. It reduces
manual configuration and provides ready-to-use beans.
6. What is the purpose of the application.properties or application.yml file?

These files are used to configure various aspects of a Spring Boot application, such as:

• Server port: server.port=8081

• Database connection: spring.datasource.url=jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/mydb • Logging level:

logging.level.org.springframework=DEBUG

7. What are Spring Boot Actuators?

Spring Boot Actuators provide production-ready features for monitoring and managing applications. Common actuator
endpoints include:

• /actuator/health - Application health status.

• /actuator/info - General application information.

• /actuator/metrics - Performance metrics.

8. What is Spring Boot DevTools?

Spring Boot DevTools is a module that enhances the development experience by enabling:

• Automatic application restart when code changes.

• LiveReload support for UI updates.

• Configurable properties to disable caching.

9. What is the difference between @RestController and @Controller?

Annotation Purpose

@Controller Used for MVC controllers to return view templates.

@RestController A combination of @Controller and @ResponseBody, used to return JSON responses.

10. How to handle exceptions in Spring Boot?

Spring Boot provides multiple ways to handle exceptions:

• Using @ExceptionHandler:
 • Using @ResponseStatus:

11. What is the difference between @SpringBootApplication and @EnableAutoConfiguration?

Annotation Description

Combines @Configuration, @EnableAutoConfiguration, and

@SpringBootApplication
@ComponentScan.

@EnableAutoConfiguration Enables Spring Boot's auto-configuration mechanism.

12. How does Spring Boot integrate with databases?

Spring Boot supports multiple databases using:

• JDBC (spring-boot-starter-jdbc)

• JPA (spring-boot-starter-data-jpa with Hibernate)

• Spring Data MongoDB (spring-boot-starter-data-mongodb)

13. What is Spring Boot’s default embedded server? How can we change it?

Spring Boot uses Tomcat as the default embedded server. It can be changed to Jetty or Undertow by excluding springboot-
starter-tomcat and adding dependencies like:
14. How do you create a Spring Boot application?

• Using Spring Initializr (https://start.spring.io/)

• Using Spring Boot CLI: spring init --dependencies=web myapp

• Manually creating a Maven/Gradle project with required dependencies.

15. What are Spring Profiles?

Spring Profiles allow setting environment-specific configurations. Example:

• application-dev.properties for development.

• application-prod.properties for production. Activate a profile using:

spring.profiles.active=dev

16. What is the purpose of @ConfigurationProperties?

It is used to map external properties to Java objects. Example:

17. What is Spring Boot Security?

Spring Boot Security provides authentication and authorization. By default, it secures all endpoints with a generated
password. To configure a custom username and password:

18. How to enable CORS in Spring Boot?

Using @CrossOrigin annotation:

19. How do you schedule tasks in Spring Boot?

Using @Scheduled annotation:

20. What are some common Spring Boot interview topics?

• Spring Boot vs. Spring Framework

• Microservices architecture

• Spring Boot Actuator

• Spring Boot Security

• Spring Boot REST APIs

• Exception handling

• Spring Boot caching

21. What is Spring Boot Actuator?

Spring Boot Actuator is a sub-project of Spring Boot that provides production-ready features

• Health checks.

• Metrics.

• Application info.

• Environment details.
It helps monitor and manage the application in production.
22. Explain the internal working of Spring Boot.

Spring Boot works by automatically setting up default configurations based on the tools our project uses. It includes
builtin servers like Tomcat to run our applications. Special starter packages make it easy to connect with other
technologies. We can customize settings with simple annotations and properties files. The Spring Application class starts
the app, and Spring Boot Actuator offers tools for monitoring and managing it.

23. What does the @SpringBootApplication annotation do internally?

The @SpringBootApplication annotation is a convenience annotation that combines @Configuration,

@EnableAutoConfiguration, and @ComponentScan. This triggers Spring's auto-configuration mechanism to automatically
configure the application based on its included dependencies, scans for Spring components, and sets up configuration
classes

24) Is it possible to change the port of the embedded Tomcat server in Spring Boot?

Yes, we can change the default port of the embedded Tomcat server in Spring Boot. This can be done by setting the
server.port property in the application.properties or application.yml file to the desired port number.

25) What is the default port of Tomcat in Spring Boot?

The default port for Tomcat in Spring Boot is 8080. This means when a Spring Boot application with an embedded Tomcat
server is run, it will, by default, listen for HTTP requests on port 8080 unless configured otherwise

26) What are Spring Boot Actuator endpoints?

Spring Boot Actuator is like a toolbox for monitoring and managing our Spring Boot application. It gives us endpoints
(think of them as special URLs) where we can check health, view configurations, gather metrics, and

more. It's super useful for keeping an eye on how your app is doing.

In a production environment (which is like the real world where your app is being used by people), these endpoints can
reveal sensitive information about your application. Imagine leaving our diary open in a public place – we wouldn't want
that, right? Similarly, we don't want just anyone peeking into the internals of your application.

27) How can we secure the actuator endpoints?

Limit Exposure: By default, not all actuator endpoints are exposed. We can control which ones are available over the web.
It's like choosing what parts of your diary are okay to share.

Use Spring Security: We can configure Spring Security to require authentication for accessing actuator endpoints.

Use HTTPS instead of HTTP.

Actuator Role: Create a specific role, like ACTUATOR_ADMIN, and assign it to users who should have access. This is like
giving a key to only trusted people.
28) What is Spring Profiles? How do you start an application with a certain profile?

Spring Profiles provide a way to segregate parts of our application configuration and make it only available in certain
environments. For example, we can define database configurations for development, testing, and production
environments without them interfering with each other. To start an application with a specific profile, we can use the
Dspring.profiles.active=profile_name parameter in our command line when launching the application, or set the
spring.profiles.active property in our application's configuration files.