14. Structuring your code

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

14.1 Using the “default” package

When a class doesn’t include a package declaration it is considered to be in the “default package”. The use of the “default package” is generally discouraged, and should be avoided. It can cause particular problems for Spring Boot applications that use @ComponentScan, @EntityScan or @SpringBootApplication annotations, since every class from every jar, will be read.

[Tip]Tip

We recommend that you follow Java’s recommended package naming conventions and use a reversed domain name (for example, com.example.project).

14.2 Locating the main application class

We generally recommend that you locate your main application class in a root package above other classes. The @SpringBootApplication annotation is often placed on your main class, and it implicitly defines a base “search package” for certain items. For example, if you are writing a JPA application, the package of the @SpringBootApplication annotated class will be used to search for @Entity items. Using a root package also allows component scan to apply only on your project.

[Tip]Tip

If you don’t want to use @SpringBootApplication, the @EnableAutoConfiguration and @ComponentScan annotations that it imports defines that behaviour so you can also use that instead.

Here is a typical layout:

com
 +- example
     +- myproject
         +- Application.java
         |
         +- domain
         |   +- Customer.java
         |   +- CustomerRepository.java
         |
         +- service
         |   +- CustomerService.java
         |
         +- web
             +- CustomerController.java

The Application.java file would declare the main method, along with the basic @SpringBootApplication.

package com.example.myproject;

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

@SpringBootApplication
public class Application {

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

}