This section dives into the details of Spring Boot. Here you can learn about the key features that you may want to use and customize. If you have not already done so, you might want to read the "getting-started.html" and "using-spring-boot.html" sections, so that you have a good grounding of the basics.

1. SpringApplication

The SpringApplication class provides a convenient way to bootstrap a Spring application that is started from a main() method. In many situations, you can delegate to the static SpringApplication.run method, as shown in the following example:

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

When your application starts, you should see something similar to the following output:

  .   ____          _            __ _ _
 /\\ / ___'_ __ _ _(_)_ __  __ _ \ \ \ \
( ( )\___ | '_ | '_| | '_ \/ _` | \ \ \ \
 \\/  ___)| |_)| | | | | || (_| |  ) ) ) )
  '  |____| .__|_| |_|_| |_\__, | / / / /
 =========|_|==============|___/=/_/_/_/
 :: Spring Boot ::   v2.3.2.RELEASE

2019-04-31 13:09:54.117  INFO 56603 --- [           main] o.s.b.s.app.SampleApplication            : Starting SampleApplication v0.1.0 on mycomputer with PID 56603 (/apps/myapp.jar started by pwebb)
2019-04-31 13:09:54.166  INFO 56603 --- [           main] ationConfigServletWebServerApplicationContext : Refreshing org.springframework.boot.web.servlet.context.AnnotationConfigServletWebServerApplicationContext@6e5a8246: startup date [Wed Jul 31 00:08:16 PDT 2013]; root of context hierarchy
2019-04-01 13:09:56.912  INFO 41370 --- [           main] .t.TomcatServletWebServerFactory : Server initialized with port: 8080
2019-04-01 13:09:57.501  INFO 41370 --- [           main] o.s.b.s.app.SampleApplication            : Started SampleApplication in 2.992 seconds (JVM running for 3.658)

By default, INFO logging messages are shown, including some relevant startup details, such as the user that launched the application. If you need a log level other than INFO, you can set it, as described in Log Levels. The application version is determined using the implementation version from the main application class’s package. Startup information logging can be turned off by setting spring.main.log-startup-info to false. This will also turn off logging of the application’s active profiles.

To add additional logging during startup, you can override logStartupInfo(boolean) in a subclass of SpringApplication.

1.1. Startup Failure

If your application fails to start, registered FailureAnalyzers get a chance to provide a dedicated error message and a concrete action to fix the problem. For instance, if you start a web application on port 8080 and that port is already in use, you should see something similar to the following message:

***************************
APPLICATION FAILED TO START
***************************

Description:

Embedded servlet container failed to start. Port 8080 was already in use.

Action:

Identify and stop the process that's listening on port 8080 or configure this application to listen on another port.
Spring Boot provides numerous FailureAnalyzer implementations, and you can add your own.

If no failure analyzers are able to handle the exception, you can still display the full conditions report to better understand what went wrong. To do so, you need to enable the debug property or enable DEBUG logging for org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.logging.ConditionEvaluationReportLoggingListener.

For instance, if you are running your application by using java -jar, you can enable the debug property as follows:

$ java -jar myproject-0.0.1-SNAPSHOT.jar --debug

1.2. Lazy Initialization

SpringApplication allows an application to be initialized lazily. When lazy initialization is enabled, beans are created as they are needed rather than during application startup. As a result, enabling lazy initialization can reduce the time that it takes your application to start. In a web application, enabling lazy initialization will result in many web-related beans not being initialized until an HTTP request is received.

A downside of lazy initialization is that it can delay the discovery of a problem with the application. If a misconfigured bean is initialized lazily, a failure will no longer occur during startup and the problem will only become apparent when the bean is initialized. Care must also be taken to ensure that the JVM has sufficient memory to accommodate all of the application’s beans and not just those that are initialized during startup. For these reasons, lazy initialization is not enabled by default and it is recommended that fine-tuning of the JVM’s heap size is done before enabling lazy initialization.

Lazy initialization can be enabled programmatically using the lazyInitialization method on SpringApplicationBuilder or the setLazyInitialization method on SpringApplication. Alternatively, it can be enabled using the spring.main.lazy-initialization property as shown in the following example:

spring.main.lazy-initialization=true
If you want to disable lazy initialization for certain beans while using lazy initialization for the rest of the application, you can explicitly set their lazy attribute to false using the @Lazy(false) annotation.

1.3. Customizing the Banner

The banner that is printed on start up can be changed by adding a banner.txt file to your classpath or by setting the spring.banner.location property to the location of such a file. If the file has an encoding other than UTF-8, you can set spring.banner.charset. In addition to a text file, you can also add a banner.gif, banner.jpg, or banner.png image file to your classpath or set the spring.banner.image.location property. Images are converted into an ASCII art representation and printed above any text banner.

Inside your banner.txt file, you can use any of the following placeholders:

Table 1. Banner variables
Variable Description

${application.version}

The version number of your application, as declared in MANIFEST.MF. For example, Implementation-Version: 1.0 is printed as 1.0.

${application.formatted-version}

The version number of your application, as declared in MANIFEST.MF and formatted for display (surrounded with brackets and prefixed with v). For example (v1.0).

${spring-boot.version}

The Spring Boot version that you are using. For example 2.3.2.RELEASE.

${spring-boot.formatted-version}

The Spring Boot version that you are using, formatted for display (surrounded with brackets and prefixed with v). For example (v2.3.2.RELEASE).

${Ansi.NAME} (or ${AnsiColor.NAME}, ${AnsiBackground.NAME}, ${AnsiStyle.NAME})

Where NAME is the name of an ANSI escape code. See AnsiPropertySource for details.

${application.title}

The title of your application, as declared in MANIFEST.MF. For example Implementation-Title: MyApp is printed as MyApp.
The SpringApplication.setBanner(…​) method can be used if you want to generate a banner programmatically. Use the org.springframework.boot.Banner interface and implement your own printBanner() method.

You can also use the spring.main.banner-mode property to determine if the banner has to be printed on System.out (console), sent to the configured logger (log), or not produced at all (off).

The printed banner is registered as a singleton bean under the following name: springBootBanner.

1.4. Customizing SpringApplication

If the SpringApplication defaults are not to your taste, you can instead create a local instance and customize it. For example, to turn off the banner, you could write:

public static void main(String[] args) {
    SpringApplication app = new SpringApplication(MySpringConfiguration.class);
    app.setBannerMode(Banner.Mode.OFF);
    app.run(args);
}
The constructor arguments passed to SpringApplication are configuration sources for Spring beans. In most cases, these are references to @Configuration classes, but they could also be references to XML configuration or to packages that should be scanned.

It is also possible to configure the SpringApplication by using an application.properties file. See Externalized Configuration for details.

For a complete list of the configuration options, see the SpringApplication Javadoc.

1.5. Fluent Builder API

If you need to build an ApplicationContext hierarchy (multiple contexts with a parent/child relationship) or if you prefer using a “fluent” builder API, you can use the SpringApplicationBuilder.

The SpringApplicationBuilder lets you chain together multiple method calls and includes parent and child methods that let you create a hierarchy, as shown in the following example:

new SpringApplicationBuilder()
        .sources(Parent.class)
        .child(Application.class)
        .bannerMode(Banner.Mode.OFF)
        .run(args);
There are some restrictions when creating an ApplicationContext hierarchy. For example, Web components must be contained within the child context, and the same Environment is used for both parent and child contexts. See the SpringApplicationBuilder Javadoc for full details.

1.6. Application Availability

When deployed on platforms, applications can provide information about their availability to the platform using infrastructure such as Kubernetes Probes. Spring Boot includes out-of-the box support for the commonly used “liveness” and “readiness” availability states. If you are using Spring Boot’s “actuator” support then these states are exposed as health endpoint groups.

In addition, you can also obtain availability states by injecting the ApplicationAvailability interface into your own beans.

1.6.1. Liveness State

The “Liveness” state of an application tells whether its internal state allows it to work correctly, or recover by itself if it’s currently failing. A broken “Liveness” state means that the application is in a state that it cannot recover from, and the infrastructure should restart the application.

In general, the "Liveness" state should not be based on external checks, such as Health checks. If it did, a failing external system (a database, a Web API, an external cache) would trigger massive restarts and cascading failures across the platform.

The internal state of Spring Boot applications is mostly represented by the Spring ApplicationContext. If the application context has started successfully, Spring Boot assumes that the application is in a valid state. An application is considered live as soon as the context has been refreshed, see Spring Boot application lifecycle and related Application Events.

1.6.2. Readiness State

The “Readiness” state of an application tells whether the application is ready to handle traffic. A failing “Readiness” state tells the platform that it should not route traffic to the application for now. This typically happens during startup, while CommandLineRunner and ApplicationRunner components are being processed, or at any time if the application decides that it’s too busy for additional traffic.

An application is considered ready as soon as application and command-line runners have been called, see Spring Boot application lifecycle and related Application Events.

Tasks expected to run during startup should be executed by CommandLineRunner and ApplicationRunner components instead of using Spring component lifecycle callbacks such as @PostConstruct.

1.6.3. Managing the Application Availability State

Application components can retrieve the current availability state at any time, by injecting the ApplicationAvailability interface and calling methods on it. More often, applications will want to listen to state updates or update the state of the application.

For example, we can export the "Readiness" state of the application to a file so that a Kubernetes "exec Probe" can look at this file:

@Component
public class ReadinessStateExporter {

    @EventListener
    public void onStateChange(AvailabilityChangeEvent<ReadinessState> event) {
        switch (event.getState()) {
        case ACCEPTING_TRAFFIC:
            // create file /tmp/healthy
        break;
        case REFUSING_TRAFFIC:
            // remove file /tmp/healthy
        break;
        }
    }

}

We can also update the state of the application, when the application breaks and cannot recover:

@Component
public class LocalCacheVerifier {

    private final ApplicationEventPublisher eventPublisher;

    public LocalCacheVerifier(ApplicationEventPublisher eventPublisher) {
        this.eventPublisher = eventPublisher;
    }

    public void checkLocalCache() {
        try {
            //...
        }
        catch (CacheCompletelyBrokenException ex) {
            AvailabilityChangeEvent.publish(this.eventPublisher, ex, LivenessState.BROKEN);
        }
    }

}

Spring Boot provides Kubernetes HTTP probes for "Liveness" and "Readiness" with Actuator Health Endpoints. You can get more guidance about deploying Spring Boot applications on Kubernetes in the dedicated section.

1.7. Application Events and Listeners

In addition to the usual Spring Framework events, such as ContextRefreshedEvent, a SpringApplication sends some additional application events.

Some events are actually triggered before the ApplicationContext is created, so you cannot register a listener on those as a @Bean. You can register them with the SpringApplication.addListeners(…​) method or the SpringApplicationBuilder.listeners(…​) method.

If you want those listeners to be registered automatically, regardless of the way the application is created, you can add a META-INF/spring.factories file to your project and reference your listener(s) by using the org.springframework.context.ApplicationListener key, as shown in the following example:

org.springframework.context.ApplicationListener=com.example.project.MyListener

Application events are sent in the following order, as your application runs:

  1. An ApplicationStartingEvent is sent at the start of a run but before any processing, except for the registration of listeners and initializers.

  2. An ApplicationEnvironmentPreparedEvent is sent when the Environment to be used in the context is known but before the context is created.

  3. An ApplicationContextInitializedEvent is sent when the ApplicationContext is prepared and ApplicationContextInitializers have been called but before any bean definitions are loaded.

  4. An ApplicationPreparedEvent is sent just before the refresh is started but after bean definitions have been loaded.

  5. An ApplicationStartedEvent is sent after the context has been refreshed but before any application and command-line runners have been called.

  6. An AvailabilityChangeEvent is sent right after with LivenessState.CORRECT to indicate that the application is considered as live.

  7. An ApplicationReadyEvent is sent after any application and command-line runners have been called.

  8. An AvailabilityChangeEvent is sent right after with ReadinessState.ACCEPTING_TRAFFIC to indicate that the application is ready to service requests.

  9. An ApplicationFailedEvent is sent if there is an exception on startup.

The above list only includes SpringApplicationEvents that are tied to a SpringApplication. In addition to these, the following events are also published after ApplicationPreparedEvent and before ApplicationStartedEvent:

  • A WebServerInitializedEvent is sent after the WebServer is ready. ServletWebServerInitializedEvent and ReactiveWebServerInitializedEvent are the servlet and reactive variants respectively.

  • A ContextRefreshedEvent is sent when an ApplicationContext is refreshed.

You often need not use application events, but it can be handy to know that they exist. Internally, Spring Boot uses events to handle a variety of tasks.

Application events are sent by using Spring Framework’s event publishing mechanism. Part of this mechanism ensures that an event published to the listeners in a child context is also published to the listeners in any ancestor contexts. As a result of this, if your application uses a hierarchy of SpringApplication instances, a listener may receive multiple instances of the same type of application event.

To allow your listener to distinguish between an event for its context and an event for a descendant context, it should request that its application context is injected and then compare the injected context with the context of the event. The context can be injected by implementing ApplicationContextAware or, if the listener is a bean, by using @Autowired.

1.8. Web Environment

A SpringApplication attempts to create the right type of ApplicationContext on your behalf. The algorithm used to determine a WebApplicationType is the following:

  • If Spring MVC is present, an AnnotationConfigServletWebServerApplicationContext is used

  • If Spring MVC is not present and Spring WebFlux is present, an AnnotationConfigReactiveWebServerApplicationContext is used

  • Otherwise, AnnotationConfigApplicationContext is used

This means that if you are using Spring MVC and the new WebClient from Spring WebFlux in the same application, Spring MVC will be used by default. You can override that easily by calling setWebApplicationType(WebApplicationType).

It is also possible to take complete control of the ApplicationContext type that is used by calling setApplicationContextClass(…​).

It is often desirable to call setWebApplicationType(WebApplicationType.NONE) when using SpringApplication within a JUnit test.

1.9. Accessing Application Arguments

If you need to access the application arguments that were passed to SpringApplication.run(…​), you can inject a org.springframework.boot.ApplicationArguments bean. The ApplicationArguments interface provides access to both the raw String[] arguments as well as parsed option and non-option arguments, as shown in the following example:

import org.springframework.boot.*;
import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.*;
import org.springframework.stereotype.*;

@Component
public class MyBean {

    @Autowired
    public MyBean(ApplicationArguments args) {
        boolean debug = args.containsOption("debug");
        List<String> files = args.getNonOptionArgs();
        // if run with "--debug logfile.txt" debug=true, files=["logfile.txt"]
    }

}
Spring Boot also registers a CommandLinePropertySource with the Spring Environment. This lets you also inject single application arguments by using the @Value annotation.

1.10. Using the ApplicationRunner or CommandLineRunner

If you need to run some specific code once the SpringApplication has started, you can implement the ApplicationRunner or CommandLineRunner interfaces. Both interfaces work in the same way and offer a single run method, which is called just before SpringApplication.run(…​) completes.

The CommandLineRunner interfaces provides access to application arguments as a string array, whereas the ApplicationRunner uses the ApplicationArguments interface discussed earlier. The following example shows a CommandLineRunner with a run method:

import org.springframework.boot.*;
import org.springframework.stereotype.*;

@Component
public class MyBean implements CommandLineRunner {

    public void run(String... args) {
        // Do something...
    }

}

If several CommandLineRunner or ApplicationRunner beans are defined that must be called in a specific order, you can additionally implement the org.springframework.core.Ordered interface or use the org.springframework.core.annotation.Order annotation.

1.11. Application Exit

Each SpringApplication registers a shutdown hook with the JVM to ensure that the ApplicationContext closes gracefully on exit. All the standard Spring lifecycle callbacks (such as the DisposableBean interface or the @PreDestroy annotation) can be used.

In addition, beans may implement the org.springframework.boot.ExitCodeGenerator interface if they wish to return a specific exit code when SpringApplication.exit() is called. This exit code can then be passed to System.exit() to return it as a status code, as shown in the following example:

@SpringBootApplication
public class ExitCodeApplication {

    @Bean
    public ExitCodeGenerator exitCodeGenerator() {
        return () -> 42;
    }

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

}

Also, the ExitCodeGenerator interface may be implemented by exceptions. When such an exception is encountered, Spring Boot returns the exit code provided by the implemented getExitCode() method.

1.12. Admin Features

It is possible to enable admin-related features for the application by specifying the spring.application.admin.enabled property. This exposes the SpringApplicationAdminMXBean on the platform MBeanServer. You could use this feature to administer your Spring Boot application remotely. This feature could also be useful for any service wrapper implementation.

If you want to know on which HTTP port the application is running, get the property with a key of local.server.port.

2. Externalized Configuration

Spring Boot lets you externalize your configuration so that you can work with the same application code in different environments. You can use properties files, YAML files, environment variables, and command-line arguments to externalize configuration. Property values can be injected directly into your beans by using the @Value annotation, accessed through Spring’s Environment abstraction, or be bound to structured objects through @ConfigurationProperties.

Spring Boot uses a very particular PropertySource order that is designed to allow sensible overriding of values. Properties are considered in the following order:

  1. Devtools global settings properties in the $HOME/.config/spring-boot directory when devtools is active.

  2. @TestPropertySource annotations on your tests.

  3. properties attribute on your tests. Available on @SpringBootTest and the test annotations for testing a particular slice of your application.

  4. Command line arguments.

  5. Properties from SPRING_APPLICATION_JSON (inline JSON embedded in an environment variable or system property).

  6. ServletConfig init parameters.

  7. ServletContext init parameters.

  8. JNDI attributes from java:comp/env.

  9. Java System properties (System.getProperties()).

  10. OS environment variables.

  11. A RandomValuePropertySource that has properties only in random.*.

  12. Profile-specific application properties outside of your packaged jar (application-{profile}.properties and YAML variants).

  13. Profile-specific application properties packaged inside your jar (application-{profile}.properties and YAML variants).

  14. Application properties outside of your packaged jar (application.properties and YAML variants).

  15. Application properties packaged inside your jar (application.properties and YAML variants).

  16. @PropertySource annotations on your @Configuration classes. Please note that such property sources are not added to the Environment until the application context is being refreshed. This is too late to configure certain properties such as logging.* and spring.main.* which are read before refresh begins.

  17. Default properties (specified by setting SpringApplication.setDefaultProperties).

To provide a concrete example, suppose you develop a @Component that uses a name property, as shown in the following example:

import org.springframework.stereotype.*;
import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.*;

@Component
public class MyBean {

    @Value("${name}")
    private String name;

    // ...

}

On your application classpath (for example, inside your jar) you can have an application.properties file that provides a sensible default property value for name. When running in a new environment, an application.properties file can be provided outside of your jar that overrides the name. For one-off testing, you can launch with a specific command line switch (for example, java -jar app.jar --name="Spring").

Spring Boot also supports wildcard locations when loading configuration files. By default, a wildcard location of config/*/ outside of your jar is supported. Wildcard locations are also supported when specifying spring.config.additional-location and spring.config.location.

Wildcard locations are particularly useful in an environment such as Kubernetes when there are multiple sources of config properties. For example, if you have some Redis configuration and some MySQL configuration, you might want to keep those two pieces of configuration separate, while requiring that both those are present in an application.properties that the app can bind to. This might result in two separate application.properties files mounted at different locations such as /config/redis/application.properties and /config/mysql/application.properties. In such a case, having a wildcard location of config/*/, will result in both files being processed.

A wildcard location must contain only one and end with / for search locations that are directories or */<filename> for search locations that are files. Locations with wildcards are sorted alphabetically based on the absolute path of the file names.

The SPRING_APPLICATION_JSON properties can be supplied on the command line with an environment variable. For example, you could use the following line in a UN*X shell:

$ SPRING_APPLICATION_JSON='{"acme":{"name":"test"}}' java -jar myapp.jar

In the preceding example, you end up with acme.name=test in the Spring Environment. You can also supply the JSON as spring.application.json in a System property, as shown in the following example:

$ java -Dspring.application.json='{"name":"test"}' -jar myapp.jar

You can also supply the JSON by using a command line argument, as shown in the following example:

$ java -jar myapp.jar --spring.application.json='{"name":"test"}'

You can also supply the JSON as a JNDI variable, as follows: java:comp/env/spring.application.json.

2.1. Configuring Random Values

The RandomValuePropertySource is useful for injecting random values (for example, into secrets or test cases). It can produce integers, longs, uuids, or strings, as shown in the following example:

my.secret=${random.value}
my.number=${random.int}
my.bignumber=${random.long}
my.uuid=${random.uuid}
my.number.less.than.ten=${random.int(10)}
my.number.in.range=${random.int[1024,65536]}

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

2.2. Accessing Command Line Properties

By default, SpringApplication converts any command line option arguments (that is, arguments starting with --, such as --server.port=9000) to a property and adds them to the Spring Environment. As mentioned previously, command line properties always take precedence over other property sources.

If you do not want command line properties to be added to the Environment, you can disable them by using SpringApplication.setAddCommandLineProperties(false).

2.3. Application Property Files

SpringApplication loads properties from application.properties files in the following locations and adds them to the Spring Environment:

  1. A /config subdirectory of the current directory

  2. The current directory

  3. A classpath /config package

  4. The classpath root

The list is ordered by precedence (properties defined in locations higher in the list override those defined in lower locations).

You can also use YAML ('.yml') files as an alternative to '.properties'.

If you do not like application.properties as the configuration file name, you can switch to another file name by specifying a spring.config.name environment property. You can also refer to an explicit location by using the spring.config.location environment property (which is a comma-separated list of directory locations or file paths). The following example shows how to specify a different file name:

$ java -jar myproject.jar --spring.config.name=myproject

The following example shows how to specify two locations:

$ java -jar myproject.jar --spring.config.location=classpath:/default.properties,classpath:/override.properties
spring.config.name and spring.config.location are used very early to determine which files have to be loaded. They must be defined as an environment property (typically an OS environment variable, a system property, or a command-line argument).

If spring.config.location contains directories (as opposed to files), they should end in / (and, at runtime, be appended with the names generated from spring.config.name before being loaded, including profile-specific file names). Files specified in spring.config.location are used as-is, with no support for profile-specific variants, and are overridden by any profile-specific properties.

Config locations are searched in reverse order. By default, the configured locations are classpath:/,classpath:/config/,file:./,file:./config/*/,file:./config/. The resulting search order is the following:

  1. file:./config/

  2. file:./config/*/

  3. file:./

  4. classpath:/config/

  5. classpath:/

When custom config locations are configured by using spring.config.location, they replace the default locations. For example, if spring.config.location is configured with the value classpath:/custom-config/,file:./custom-config/, the search order becomes the following:

  1. file:./custom-config/

  2. classpath:custom-config/

Alternatively, when custom config locations are configured by using spring.config.additional-location, they are used in addition to the default locations. Additional locations are searched before the default locations. For example, if additional locations of classpath:/custom-config/,file:./custom-config/ are configured, the search order becomes the following:

  1. file:./custom-config/

  2. classpath:custom-config/

  3. file:./config/

  4. file:./config/*/

  5. file:./

  6. classpath:/config/

  7. classpath:/

This search ordering lets you specify default values in one configuration file and then selectively override those values in another. You can provide default values for your application in application.properties (or whatever other basename you choose with spring.config.name) in one of the default locations. These default values can then be overridden at runtime with a different file located in one of the custom locations.

If you use environment variables rather than system properties, most operating systems disallow period-separated key names, but you can use underscores instead (for example, SPRING_CONFIG_NAME instead of spring.config.name). See Binding from Environment Variables for details.
If your application runs in a container, then JNDI properties (in java:comp/env) or servlet context initialization parameters can be used instead of, or as well as, environment variables or system properties.

2.4. Profile-specific Properties

In addition to application.properties files, profile-specific properties can also be defined by using the following naming convention: application-{profile}.properties. The Environment has a set of default profiles (by default, [default]) that are used if no active profiles are set. In other words, if no profiles are explicitly activated, then properties from application-default.properties are loaded.

Profile-specific properties are loaded from the same locations as standard application.properties, with profile-specific files always overriding the non-specific ones, whether or not the profile-specific files are inside or outside your packaged jar.

If several profiles are specified, a last-wins strategy applies. For example, profiles specified by the spring.profiles.active property are added after those configured through the SpringApplication API and therefore take precedence.

If you have specified any files in spring.config.location, profile-specific variants of those files are not considered. Use directories in spring.config.location if you want to also use profile-specific properties.

2.5. Placeholders in Properties

The values in application.properties are filtered through the existing Environment when they are used, so you can refer back to previously defined values (for example, from System properties).

app.name=MyApp
app.description=${app.name} is a Spring Boot application
You can also use this technique to create “short” variants of existing Spring Boot properties. See the howto.html how-to for details.

2.6. Encrypting Properties

Spring Boot does not provide any built in support for encrypting property values, however, it does provide the hook points necessary to modify values contained in the Spring Environment. The EnvironmentPostProcessor interface allows you to manipulate the Environment before the application starts. See howto.html for details.

If you’re looking for a secure way to store credentials and passwords, the Spring Cloud Vault project provides support for storing externalized configuration in HashiCorp Vault.

2.7. Using YAML Instead of Properties

YAML is a superset of JSON and, as such, is a convenient format for specifying hierarchical configuration data. The SpringApplication class automatically supports YAML as an alternative to properties whenever you have the SnakeYAML library on your classpath.

If you use “Starters”, SnakeYAML is automatically provided by spring-boot-starter.

2.7.1. Loading YAML

Spring Framework provides two convenient classes that can be used to load YAML documents. The YamlPropertiesFactoryBean loads YAML as Properties and the YamlMapFactoryBean loads YAML as a Map.

For example, consider the following YAML document:

environments:
    dev:
        url: https://dev.example.com
        name: Developer Setup
    prod:
        url: https://another.example.com
        name: My Cool App

The preceding example would be transformed into the following properties:

environments.dev.url=https://dev.example.com
environments.dev.name=Developer Setup
environments.prod.url=https://another.example.com
environments.prod.name=My Cool App

YAML lists are represented as property keys with [index] dereferencers. For example, consider the following YAML:

my:
   servers:
       - dev.example.com
       - another.example.com

The preceding example would be transformed into these properties:

my.servers[0]=dev.example.com
my.servers[1]=another.example.com

To bind to properties like that by using Spring Boot’s Binder utilities (which is what @ConfigurationProperties does), you need to have a property in the target bean of type java.util.List (or Set) and you either need to provide a setter or initialize it with a mutable value. For example, the following example binds to the properties shown previously:

@ConfigurationProperties(prefix="my")
public class Config {

    private List<String> servers = new ArrayList<String>();

    public List<String> getServers() {
        return this.servers;
    }
}

2.7.2. Exposing YAML as Properties in the Spring Environment

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

2.7.3. Multi-profile YAML Documents

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

server:
    address: 192.168.1.100
---
spring:
    profiles: development
server:
    address: 127.0.0.1
---
spring:
    profiles: production & eu-central
server:
    address: 192.168.1.120

In the preceding example, if the development profile is active, the server.address property is 127.0.0.1. Similarly, if the production and eu-central profiles are active, the server.address property is 192.168.1.120. If the development, production and eu-central profiles are not enabled, then the value for the property is 192.168.1.100.

spring.profiles can therefore contain a profile name (for example production) or a profile expression. A profile expression allows for more complicated profile logic to be expressed, for example production & (eu-central | eu-west). Check the reference guide for more details.

If none are explicitly active when the application context starts, the default profiles are activated. So, in the following YAML, we set a value for spring.security.user.password that is available only in the "default" profile:

server:
  port: 8000
---
spring:
  profiles: default
  security:
    user:
      password: weak

Whereas, in the following example, the password is always set because it is not attached to any profile, and it would have to be explicitly reset in all other profiles as necessary:

server:
  port: 8000
spring:
  security:
    user:
      password: weak

Spring profiles designated by using the spring.profiles element may optionally be negated by using the ! character. If both negated and non-negated profiles are specified for a single document, at least one non-negated profile must match, and no negated profiles may match.

2.7.4. YAML Shortcomings

YAML files cannot be loaded by using the @PropertySource annotation. So, in the case that you need to load values that way, you need to use a properties file.

Using the multi YAML document syntax in profile-specific YAML files can lead to unexpected behavior. For example, consider the following config in a file:

application-dev.yml
server:
  port: 8000
---
spring:
  profiles: "!test"
  security:
    user:
      password: "secret"

If you run the application with the argument --spring.profiles.active=dev you might expect security.user.password to be set to “secret”, but this is not the case.

The nested document will be filtered because the main file is named application-dev.yml. It is already considered to be profile-specific, and nested documents will be ignored.

We recommend that you don’t mix profile-specific YAML files and multiple YAML documents. Stick to using only one of them.

2.8. Type-safe Configuration Properties

Using the @Value("${property}") annotation to inject configuration properties can sometimes be cumbersome, especially if you are working with multiple properties or your data is hierarchical in nature. Spring Boot provides an alternative method of working with properties that lets strongly typed beans govern and validate the configuration of your application.

See also the differences between @Value and type-safe configuration properties.

2.8.1. JavaBean properties binding

It is possible to bind a bean declaring standard JavaBean properties as shown in the following example:

package com.example;

import java.net.InetAddress;
import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.Collections;
import java.util.List;

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

@ConfigurationProperties("acme")
public class AcmeProperties {

    private boolean enabled;

    private InetAddress remoteAddress;

    private final Security security = new Security();

    public boolean isEnabled() { ... }

    public void setEnabled(boolean enabled) { ... }

    public InetAddress getRemoteAddress() { ... }

    public void setRemoteAddress(InetAddress remoteAddress) { ... }

    public Security getSecurity() { ... }

    public static class Security {

        private String username;

        private String password;

        private List<String> roles = new ArrayList<>(Collections.singleton("USER"));

        public String getUsername() { ... }

        public void setUsername(String username) { ... }

        public String getPassword() { ... }

        public void setPassword(String password) { ... }

        public List<String> getRoles() { ... }

        public void setRoles(List<String> roles) { ... }

    }
}

The preceding POJO defines the following properties:

  • acme.enabled, with a value of false by default.

  • acme.remote-address, with a type that can be coerced from String.

  • acme.security.username, with a nested "security" object whose name is determined by the name of the property. In particular, the return type is not used at all there and could have been SecurityProperties.

  • acme.security.password.

  • acme.security.roles, with a collection of String that defaults to USER.

The properties that map to @ConfigurationProperties classes available in Spring Boot, which are configured via properties files, YAML files, environment variables etc., are public API but the accessors (getters/setters) of the class itself are not meant to be used directly.

Such arrangement relies on a default empty constructor and getters and setters are usually mandatory, since binding is through standard Java Beans property descriptors, just like in Spring MVC. A setter may be omitted in the following cases:

  • Maps, as long as they are initialized, need a getter but not necessarily a setter, since they can be mutated by the binder.

  • Collections and arrays can be accessed either through an index (typically with YAML) or by using a single comma-separated value (properties). In the latter case, a setter is mandatory. We recommend to always add a setter for such types. If you initialize a collection, make sure it is not immutable (as in the preceding example).

  • If nested POJO properties are initialized (like the Security field in the preceding example), a setter is not required. If you want the binder to create the instance on the fly by using its default constructor, you need a setter.

Some people use Project Lombok to add getters and setters automatically. Make sure that Lombok does not generate any particular constructor for such a type, as it is used automatically by the container to instantiate the object.

Finally, only standard Java Bean properties are considered and binding on static properties is not supported.

2.8.2. Constructor binding

The example in the previous section can be rewritten in an immutable fashion as shown in the following example:

package com.example;

import java.net.InetAddress;
import java.util.List;

import org.springframework.boot.context.properties.ConfigurationProperties;
import org.springframework.boot.context.properties.ConstructorBinding;
import org.springframework.boot.context.properties.bind.DefaultValue;

@ConstructorBinding
@ConfigurationProperties("acme")
public class AcmeProperties {

    private final boolean enabled;

    private final InetAddress remoteAddress;

    private final Security security;

    public AcmeProperties(boolean enabled, InetAddress remoteAddress, Security security) {
        this.enabled = enabled;
        this.remoteAddress = remoteAddress;
        this.security = security;
    }

    public boolean isEnabled() { ... }

    public InetAddress getRemoteAddress() { ... }

    public Security getSecurity() { ... }

    public static class Security {

        private final String username;

        private final String password;

        private final List<String> roles;

        public Security(String username, String password,
                @DefaultValue("USER") List<String> roles) {
            this.username = username;
            this.password = password;
            this.roles = roles;
        }

        public String getUsername() { ... }

        public String getPassword() { ... }

        public List<String> getRoles() { ... }

    }

}

In this setup, the @ConstructorBinding annotation is used to indicate that constructor binding should be used. This means that the binder will expect to find a constructor with the parameters that you wish to have bound.

Nested members of a @ConstructorBinding class (such as Security in the example above) will also be bound via their constructor.

Default values can be specified using @DefaultValue and the same conversion service will be applied to coerce the String value to the target type of a missing property. By default, if no properties are bound to Security, the AcmeProperties instance will contain a null value for security. If you wish you return a non-null instance of Security even when no properties are bound to it, you can use an empty @DefaultValue annotation to do so:

package com.example;
import java.net.InetAddress;
import java.util.List;

import org.springframework.boot.context.properties.ConfigurationProperties;
import org.springframework.boot.context.properties.ConstructorBinding;
import org.springframework.boot.context.properties.bind.DefaultValue;

@ConstructorBinding
@ConfigurationProperties("acme")
public class AcmeProperties {

    private final boolean enabled;

    private final InetAddress remoteAddress;

    private final Security security;

    public AcmeProperties(boolean enabled, InetAddress remoteAddress, @DefaultValue Security security) {
        this.enabled = enabled;
        this.remoteAddress = remoteAddress;
        this.security = security;
    }
}
To use constructor binding the class must be enabled using @EnableConfigurationProperties or configuration property scanning. You cannot use constructor binding with beans that are created by the regular Spring mechanisms (e.g. @Component beans, beans created via @Bean methods or beans loaded using @Import)
If you have more than one constructor for your class you can also use @ConstructorBinding directly on the constructor that should be bound.

2.8.3. Enabling @ConfigurationProperties-annotated types

Spring Boot provides infrastructure to bind @ConfigurationProperties types and register them as beans. You can either enable configuration properties on a class-by-class basis or enable configuration property scanning that works in a similar manner to component scanning.

Sometimes, classes annotated with @ConfigurationProperties might not be suitable for scanning, for example, if you’re developing your own auto-configuration or you want to enable them conditionally. In these cases, specify the list of types to process using the @EnableConfigurationProperties annotation. This can be done on any @Configuration class, as shown in the following example:

@Configuration(proxyBeanMethods = false)
@EnableConfigurationProperties(AcmeProperties.class)
public class MyConfiguration {
}

To use configuration property scanning, add the @ConfigurationPropertiesScan annotation to your application. Typically, it is added to the main application class that is annotated with @SpringBootApplication but it can be added to any @Configuration class. By default, scanning will occur from the package of the class that declares the annotation. If you want to define specific packages to scan, you can do so as shown in the following example:

@SpringBootApplication
@ConfigurationPropertiesScan({ "com.example.app", "org.acme.another" })
public class MyApplication {
}

When the @ConfigurationProperties bean is registered using configuration property scanning or via @EnableConfigurationProperties, the bean has a conventional name: <prefix>-<fqn>, where <prefix> is the environment key prefix specified in the @ConfigurationProperties annotation and <fqn> is the fully qualified name of the bean. If the annotation does not provide any prefix, only the fully qualified name of the bean is used.

The bean name in the example above is acme-com.example.AcmeProperties.

We recommend that @ConfigurationProperties only deal with the environment and, in particular, does not inject other beans from the context. For corner cases, setter injection can be used or any of the *Aware interfaces provided by the framework (such as EnvironmentAware if you need access to the Environment). If you still want to inject other beans using the constructor, the configuration properties bean must be annotated with @Component and use JavaBean-based property binding.

2.8.4. Using @ConfigurationProperties-annotated types

This style of configuration works particularly well with the SpringApplication external YAML configuration, as shown in the following example:

# application.yml

acme:
    remote-address: 192.168.1.1
    security:
        username: admin
        roles:
          - USER
          - ADMIN

# additional configuration as required

To work with @ConfigurationProperties beans, you can inject them in the same way as any other bean, as shown in the following example:

@Service
public class MyService {

    private final AcmeProperties properties;

    @Autowired
    public MyService(AcmeProperties properties) {
        this.properties = properties;
    }

    //...

    @PostConstruct
    public void openConnection() {
        Server server = new Server(this.properties.getRemoteAddress());
        // ...
    }

}
Using @ConfigurationProperties also lets you generate metadata files that can be used by IDEs to offer auto-completion for your own keys. See the appendix for details.

2.8.5. Third-party Configuration

As well as using @ConfigurationProperties to annotate a class, you can also use it on public @Bean methods. Doing so can be particularly useful when you want to bind properties to third-party components that are outside of your control.

To configure a bean from the Environment properties, add @ConfigurationProperties to its bean registration, as shown in the following example:

@ConfigurationProperties(prefix = "another")
@Bean
public AnotherComponent anotherComponent() {
    ...
}

Any JavaBean property defined with the another prefix is mapped onto that AnotherComponent bean in manner similar to the preceding AcmeProperties example.

2.8.6. Relaxed Binding

Spring Boot uses some relaxed rules for binding Environment properties to @ConfigurationProperties beans, so there does not need to be an exact match between the Environment property name and the bean property name. Common examples where this is useful include dash-separated environment properties (for example, context-path binds to contextPath), and capitalized environment properties (for example, PORT binds to port).

As an example, consider the following @ConfigurationProperties class:

@ConfigurationProperties(prefix="acme.my-project.person")
public class OwnerProperties {

    private String firstName;

    public String getFirstName() {
        return this.firstName;
    }

    public void setFirstName(String firstName) {
        this.firstName = firstName;
    }

}

With the preceding code, the following properties names can all be used:

Table 2. relaxed binding
Property Note

acme.my-project.person.first-name

Kebab case, which is recommended for use in .properties and .yml files.

acme.myProject.person.firstName

Standard camel case syntax.

acme.my_project.person.first_name

Underscore notation, which is an alternative format for use in .properties and .yml files.

ACME_MYPROJECT_PERSON_FIRSTNAME

Upper case format, which is recommended when using system environment variables.
The prefix value for the annotation must be in kebab case (lowercase and separated by -, such as acme.my-project.person).
Table 3. relaxed binding rules per property source
Property Source Simple List

Properties Files

Camel case, kebab case, or underscore notation

Standard list syntax using [ ] or comma-separated values

YAML Files

Camel case, kebab case, or underscore notation

Standard YAML list syntax or comma-separated values

Environment Variables

Upper case format with underscore as the delimiter (see Binding from Environment Variables).

Numeric values surrounded by underscores (see Binding from Environment Variables)`

System properties

Camel case, kebab case, or underscore notation

Standard list syntax using [ ] or comma-separated values
We recommend that, when possible, properties are stored in lower-case kebab format, such as my.property-name=acme.
Binding Maps

When binding to Map properties, if the key contains anything other than lowercase alpha-numeric characters or -, you need to use the bracket notation so that the original value is preserved. If the key is not surrounded by [], any characters that are not alpha-numeric or - are removed. For example, consider binding the following properties to a Map:

acme:
  map:
    "[/key1]": value1
    "[/key2]": value2
    /key3: value3

The properties above will bind to a Map with /key1, /key2 and key3 as the keys in the map.

For YAML files, the brackets need to be surrounded by quotes for the keys to be parsed properly.
Binding from Environment Variables

Most operating systems impose strict rules around the names that can be used for environment variables. For example, Linux shell variables can contain only letters (a to z or A to Z), numbers (0 to 9) or the underscore character (_). By convention, Unix shell variables will also have their names in UPPERCASE.

Spring Boot’s relaxed binding rules are, as much as possible, designed to be compatible with these naming restrictions.

To convert a property name in the canonical-form to an environment variable name you can follow these rules:

  • Replace dots (.) with underscores (_).

  • Remove any dashes (-).

  • Convert to uppercase.

For example, the configuration property spring.main.log-startup-info would be an environment variable named SPRING_MAIN_LOGSTARTUPINFO.

Underscores cannot be used to replace the dashes in property names. If you attempt to use SPRING_MAIN_LOG_STARTUP_INFO with the example above, no value will be bound.

Environment variables can also be used when binding to object lists. To bind to a List, the element number should be surrounded with underscores in the variable name.

For example, the configuration property my.acme[0].other would use an environment variable named MY_ACME_0_OTHER.

2.8.7. Merging Complex Types

When lists are configured in more than one place, overriding works by replacing the entire list.

For example, assume a MyPojo object with name and description attributes that are null by default. The following example exposes a list of MyPojo objects from AcmeProperties:

@ConfigurationProperties("acme")
public class AcmeProperties {

    private final List<MyPojo> list = new ArrayList<>();

    public List<MyPojo> getList() {
        return this.list;
    }

}

Consider the following configuration:

acme:
  list:
    - name: my name
      description: my description
---
spring:
  profiles: dev
acme:
  list:
    - name: my another name

If the dev profile is not active, AcmeProperties.list contains one MyPojo entry, as previously defined. If the dev profile is enabled, however, the list still contains only one entry (with a name of my another name and a description of null). This configuration does not add a second MyPojo instance to the list, and it does not merge the items.

When a List is specified in multiple profiles, the one with the highest priority (and only that one) is used. Consider the following example:

acme:
  list:
    - name: my name
      description: my description
    - name: another name
      description: another description
---
spring:
  profiles: dev
acme:
  list:
    - name: my another name

In the preceding example, if the dev profile is active, AcmeProperties.list contains one MyPojo entry (with a name of my another name and a description of null). For YAML, both comma-separated lists and YAML lists can be used for completely overriding the contents of the list.

For Map properties, you can bind with property values drawn from multiple sources. However, for the same property in multiple sources, the one with the highest priority is used. The following example exposes a Map<String, MyPojo> from AcmeProperties:

@ConfigurationProperties("acme")
public class AcmeProperties {

    private final Map<String, MyPojo> map = new HashMap<>();

    public Map<String, MyPojo> getMap() {
        return this.map;
    }

}

Consider the following configuration:

acme:
  map:
    key1:
      name: my name 1
      description: my description 1
---
spring:
  profiles: dev
acme:
  map:
    key1:
      name: dev name 1
    key2:
      name: dev name 2
      description: dev description 2

If the dev profile is not active, AcmeProperties.map contains one entry with key key1 (with a name of my name 1 and a description of my description 1). If the dev profile is enabled, however, map contains two entries with keys key1 (with a name of dev name 1 and a description of my description 1) and key2 (with a name of dev name 2 and a description of dev description 2).

The preceding merging rules apply to properties from all property sources and not just YAML files.

2.8.8. Properties Conversion

Spring Boot attempts to coerce the external application properties to the right type when it binds to the @ConfigurationProperties beans. If you need custom type conversion, you can provide a ConversionService bean (with a bean named conversionService) or custom property editors (through a CustomEditorConfigurer bean) or custom Converters (with bean definitions annotated as @ConfigurationPropertiesBinding).

As this bean is requested very early during the application lifecycle, make sure to limit the dependencies that your ConversionService is using. Typically, any dependency that you require may not be fully initialized at creation time. You may want to rename your custom ConversionService if it is not required for configuration keys coercion and only rely on custom converters qualified with @ConfigurationPropertiesBinding.
Converting durations

Spring Boot has dedicated support for expressing durations. If you expose a java.time.Duration property, the following formats in application properties are available:

  • A regular long representation (using milliseconds as the default unit unless a @DurationUnit has been specified)

  • The standard ISO-8601 format used by java.time.Duration

  • A more readable format where the value and the unit are coupled (e.g. 10s means 10 seconds)

Consider the following example:

@ConfigurationProperties("app.system")
public class AppSystemProperties {

    @DurationUnit(ChronoUnit.SECONDS)
    private Duration sessionTimeout = Duration.ofSeconds(30);

    private Duration readTimeout = Duration.ofMillis(1000);

    public Duration getSessionTimeout() {
        return this.sessionTimeout;
    }

    public void setSessionTimeout(Duration sessionTimeout) {
        this.sessionTimeout = sessionTimeout;
    }

    public Duration getReadTimeout() {
        return this.readTimeout;
    }

    public void setReadTimeout(Duration readTimeout) {
        this.readTimeout = readTimeout;
    }

}

To specify a session timeout of 30 seconds, 30, PT30S and 30s are all equivalent. A read timeout of 500ms can be specified in any of the following form: 500, PT0.5S and 500ms.

You can also use any of the supported units. These are:

  • ns for nanoseconds

  • us for microseconds

  • ms for milliseconds

  • s for seconds

  • m for minutes

  • h for hours

  • d for days

The default unit is milliseconds and can be overridden using @DurationUnit as illustrated in the sample above.

If you are upgrading a Long property, make sure to define the unit (using @DurationUnit) if it isn’t milliseconds. Doing so gives a transparent upgrade path while supporting a much richer format.
Converting periods

In addition to durations, Spring Boot can also work with java.time.Period type. The following formats can be used in application properties:

  • An regular int representation (using days as the default unit unless a @PeriodUnit has been specified)

  • The standard ISO-8601 format used by java.time.Period

  • A simpler format where the value and the unit pairs are coupled (e.g. 1y3d means 1 year and 3 days)

The following units are supported with the simple format:

  • y for years

  • m for months

  • w for weeks

  • d for days

The java.time.Period type never actually stores the number of weeks, it is a shortcut that means “7 days”.
Converting Data Sizes

Spring Framework has a DataSize value type that expresses a size in bytes. If you expose a DataSize property, the following formats in application properties are available:

  • A regular long representation (using bytes as the default unit unless a @DataSizeUnit has been specified)

  • A more readable format where the value and the unit are coupled (e.g. 10MB means 10 megabytes)

Consider the following example:

@ConfigurationProperties("app.io")
public class AppIoProperties {

    @DataSizeUnit(DataUnit.MEGABYTES)
    private DataSize bufferSize = DataSize.ofMegabytes(2);

    private DataSize sizeThreshold = DataSize.ofBytes(512);

    public DataSize getBufferSize() {
        return this.bufferSize;
    }

    public void setBufferSize(DataSize bufferSize) {
        this.bufferSize = bufferSize;
    }

    public DataSize getSizeThreshold() {
        return this.sizeThreshold;
    }

    public void setSizeThreshold(DataSize sizeThreshold) {
        this.sizeThreshold = sizeThreshold;
    }

}

To specify a buffer size of 10 megabytes, 10 and 10MB are equivalent. A size threshold of 256 bytes can be specified as 256 or 256B.

You can also use any of the supported units. These are:

  • B for bytes

  • KB for kilobytes

  • MB for megabytes

  • GB for gigabytes

  • TB for terabytes

The default unit is bytes and can be overridden using @DataSizeUnit as illustrated in the sample above.

If you are upgrading a Long property, make sure to define the unit (using @DataSizeUnit) if it isn’t bytes. Doing so gives a transparent upgrade path while supporting a much richer format.

2.8.9. @ConfigurationProperties Validation

Spring Boot attempts to validate @ConfigurationProperties classes whenever they are annotated with Spring’s @Validated annotation. You can use JSR-303 javax.validation constraint annotations directly on your configuration class. To do so, ensure that a compliant JSR-303 implementation is on your classpath and then add constraint annotations to your fields, as shown in the following example:

@ConfigurationProperties(prefix="acme")
@Validated
public class AcmeProperties {

    @NotNull
    private InetAddress remoteAddress;

    // ... getters and setters

}
You can also trigger validation by annotating the @Bean method that creates the configuration properties with @Validated.

To ensure that validation is always triggered for nested properties, even when no properties are found, the associated field must be annotated with @Valid. The following example builds on the preceding AcmeProperties example:

@ConfigurationProperties(prefix="acme")
@Validated
public class AcmeProperties {

    @NotNull
    private InetAddress remoteAddress;

    @Valid
    private final Security security = new Security();

    // ... getters and setters

    public static class Security {

        @NotEmpty
        public String username;

        // ... getters and setters

    }

}

You can also add a custom Spring Validator by creating a bean definition called configurationPropertiesValidator. The @Bean method should be declared static. The configuration properties validator is created very early in the application’s lifecycle, and declaring the @Bean method as static lets the bean be created without having to instantiate the @Configuration class. Doing so avoids any problems that may be caused by early instantiation.

The spring-boot-actuator module includes an endpoint that exposes all @ConfigurationProperties beans. Point your web browser to /actuator/configprops or use the equivalent JMX endpoint. See the "Production ready features" section for details.

2.8.10. @ConfigurationProperties vs. @Value

The @Value annotation is a core container feature, and it does not provide the same features as type-safe configuration properties. The following table summarizes the features that are supported by @ConfigurationProperties and @Value:

Feature @ConfigurationProperties @Value

Relaxed binding

Yes

Limited (see note below)

Meta-data support

Yes

No

SpEL evaluation

No

Yes

If you define a set of configuration keys for your own components, we recommend you group them in a POJO annotated with @ConfigurationProperties. Doing so will provide you with structured, type-safe object that you can inject into your own beans.

If you do want to use @Value, we recommend that you refer to property names using their canonical form (kebab-case using only lowercase letters). This will allow Spring Boot to use the same logic as it does when relaxed binding @ConfigurationProperties. For example, @Value("{demo.item-price}") will pick up demo.item-price and demo.itemPrice forms from the application.properties file, as well as DEMO_ITEMPRICE from the system environment. If you used @Value("{demo.itemPrice}") instead, demo.item-price and DEMO_ITEMPRICE would not be considered.

Finally, while you can write a SpEL expression in @Value, such expressions are not processed from application property files.

3. Profiles

Spring Profiles provide a way to segregate parts of your application configuration and make it be available only in certain environments. Any @Component, @Configuration or @ConfigurationProperties can be marked with @Profile to limit when it is loaded, as shown in the following example:

@Configuration(proxyBeanMethods = false)
@Profile("production")
public class ProductionConfiguration {

    // ...

}
If @ConfigurationProperties beans are registered via @EnableConfigurationProperties instead of automatic scanning, the @Profile annotation needs to be specified on the @Configuration class that has the @EnableConfigurationProperties annotation. In the case where @ConfigurationProperties are scanned, @Profile can be specified on the @ConfigurationProperties class itself.

You can use a spring.profiles.active Environment property to specify which profiles are active. You can specify the property in any of the ways described earlier in this chapter. For example, you could include it in your application.properties, as shown in the following example:

spring.profiles.active=dev,hsqldb

You could also specify it on the command line by using the following switch: --spring.profiles.active=dev,hsqldb.

3.1. Adding Active Profiles

The spring.profiles.active property follows the same ordering rules as other properties: The highest PropertySource wins. This means that you can specify active profiles in application.properties and then replace them by using the command line switch.

Sometimes, it is useful to have profile-specific properties that add to the active profiles rather than replace them. The spring.profiles.include property can be used to unconditionally add active profiles. The SpringApplication entry point also has a Java API for setting additional profiles (that is, on top of those activated by the spring.profiles.active property). See the setAdditionalProfiles() method in SpringApplication.

For example, when an application with the following properties is run by using the switch, --spring.profiles.active=prod, the proddb and prodmq profiles are also activated:

---
my.property: fromyamlfile
---
spring.profiles: prod
spring.profiles.include:
  - proddb
  - prodmq
Remember that the spring.profiles property can be defined in a YAML document to determine when this particular document is included in the configuration. See howto.html for more details.

3.2. Programmatically Setting Profiles

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

3.3. Profile-specific Configuration Files

Profile-specific variants of both application.properties (or application.yml) and files referenced through @ConfigurationProperties are considered as files and loaded. See "Profile-specific Properties" for details.

4. Logging

Spring Boot uses Commons Logging for all internal logging but leaves the underlying log implementation open. Default configurations are provided for Java Util Logging, Log4J2, and Logback. In each case, loggers are pre-configured to use console output with optional file output also available.

By default, if you use the “Starters”, Logback is used for logging. Appropriate Logback routing is also included to ensure that dependent libraries that use Java Util Logging, Commons Logging, Log4J, or SLF4J all work correctly.

There are a lot of logging frameworks available for Java. Do not worry if the above list seems confusing. Generally, you do not need to change your logging dependencies and the Spring Boot defaults work just fine.
When you deploy your application to a servlet container or application server, logging performed via the Java Util Logging API is not routed into your application’s logs. This prevents logging performed by the container or other applications that have been deployed to it from appearing in your application’s logs.

4.1. Log Format

The default log output from Spring Boot resembles the following example:

2019-03-05 10:57:51.112  INFO 45469 --- [           main] org.apache.catalina.core.StandardEngine  : Starting Servlet Engine: Apache Tomcat/7.0.52
2019-03-05 10:57:51.253  INFO 45469 --- [ost-startStop-1] o.a.c.c.C.[Tomcat].[localhost].[/]       : Initializing Spring embedded WebApplicationContext
2019-03-05 10:57:51.253  INFO 45469 --- [ost-startStop-1] o.s.web.context.ContextLoader            : Root WebApplicationContext: initialization completed in 1358 ms
2019-03-05 10:57:51.698  INFO 45469 --- [ost-startStop-1] o.s.b.c.e.ServletRegistrationBean        : Mapping servlet: 'dispatcherServlet' to [/]
2019-03-05 10:57:51.702  INFO 45469 --- [ost-startStop-1] o.s.b.c.embedded.FilterRegistrationBean  : Mapping filter: 'hiddenHttpMethodFilter' to: [/*]

The following items are output:

  • Date and Time: Millisecond precision and easily sortable.

  • Log Level: ERROR, WARN, INFO, DEBUG, or TRACE.

  • Process ID.

  • A --- separator to distinguish the start of actual log messages.

  • Thread name: Enclosed in square brackets (may be truncated for console output).

  • Logger name: This is usually the source class name (often abbreviated).

  • The log message.

Logback does not have a FATAL level. It is mapped to ERROR.

4.2. Console Output

The default log configuration echoes messages to the console as they are written. By default, ERROR-level, WARN-level, and INFO-level messages are logged. You can also enable a “debug” mode by starting your application with a --debug flag.

$ java -jar myapp.jar --debug
You can also specify debug=true in your application.properties.

When the debug mode is enabled, a selection of core loggers (embedded container, Hibernate, and Spring Boot) are configured to output more information. Enabling the debug mode does not configure your application to log all messages with DEBUG level.

Alternatively, you can enable a “trace” mode by starting your application with a --trace flag (or trace=true in your application.properties). Doing so enables trace logging for a selection of core loggers (embedded container, Hibernate schema generation, and the whole Spring portfolio).

4.2.1. Color-coded Output

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

Color coding is configured by using the %clr conversion word. In its simplest form, the converter colors the output according to the log level, as shown in the following example:

%clr(%5p)

The following table describes the mapping of log levels to colors:

Level Color

FATAL

Red

ERROR

Red

WARN

Yellow

INFO

Green

DEBUG

Green

TRACE

Green

Alternatively, you can specify the color or style that should be used by providing it as an option to the conversion. For example, to make the text yellow, use the following setting:

%clr(%d{yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss.SSS}){yellow}

The following colors and styles are supported:

  • blue

  • cyan

  • faint

  • green

  • magenta

  • red

  • yellow

4.3. File Output

By default, Spring Boot logs only to the console and does not write log files. If you want to write log files in addition to the console output, you need to set a logging.file.name or logging.file.path property (for example, in your application.properties).

The following table shows how the logging.* properties can be used together:

Table 4. Logging properties
logging.file.name logging.file.path Example Description

(none)

(none)

Console only logging.

Specific file

(none)

my.log

Writes to the specified log file. Names can be an exact location or relative to the current directory.

(none)

Specific directory

/var/log

Writes spring.log to the specified directory. Names can be an exact location or relative to the current directory.

Log files rotate when they reach 10 MB and, as with console output, ERROR-level, WARN-level, and INFO-level messages are logged by default. Size limits can be changed using the logging.file.max-size property. Rotated log files of the last 7 days are kept by default unless the logging.file.max-history property has been set. The total size of log archives can be capped using logging.file.total-size-cap. When the total size of log archives exceeds that threshold, backups will be deleted. To force log archive cleanup on application startup, use the logging.file.clean-history-on-start property.

Logging properties are independent of the actual logging infrastructure. As a result, specific configuration keys (such as logback.configurationFile for Logback) are not managed by spring Boot.

4.4. Log Levels

All the supported logging systems can have the logger levels set in the Spring Environment (for example, in application.properties) by using logging.level.<logger-name>=<level> where level is one of TRACE, DEBUG, INFO, WARN, ERROR, FATAL, or OFF. The root logger can be configured by using logging.level.root.

The following example shows potential logging settings in application.properties:

logging.level.root=warn
logging.level.org.springframework.web=debug
logging.level.org.hibernate=error

It’s also possible to set logging levels using environment variables. For example, LOGGING_LEVEL_ORG_SPRINGFRAMEWORK_WEB=DEBUG will set org.springframework.web to DEBUG.

The above approach will only work for package level logging. Since relaxed binding always converts environment variables to lowercase, it’s not possible to configure logging for an individual class in this way. If you need to configure logging for a class, you can use the SPRING_APPLICATION_JSON variable.

4.5. Log Groups

It’s often useful to be able to group related loggers together so that they can all be configured at the same time. For example, you might commonly change the logging levels for all Tomcat related loggers, but you can’t easily remember top level packages.

To help with this, Spring Boot allows you to define logging groups in your Spring Environment. For example, here’s how you could define a “tomcat” group by adding it to your application.properties:

logging.group.tomcat=org.apache.catalina, org.apache.coyote, org.apache.tomcat

Once defined, you can change the level for all the loggers in the group with a single line:

logging.level.tomcat=TRACE

Spring Boot includes the following pre-defined logging groups that can be used out-of-the-box:

Name Loggers

web

org.springframework.core.codec, org.springframework.http, org.springframework.web, org.springframework.boot.actuate.endpoint.web, org.springframework.boot.web.servlet.ServletContextInitializerBeans

sql

org.springframework.jdbc.core, org.hibernate.SQL, org.jooq.tools.LoggerListener

4.6. Custom Log Configuration

The various logging systems can be activated by including the appropriate libraries on the classpath and can be further customized by providing a suitable configuration file in the root of the classpath or in a location specified by the following Spring Environment property: logging.config.

You can force Spring Boot to use a particular logging system by using the org.springframework.boot.logging.LoggingSystem system property. The value should be the fully qualified class name of a LoggingSystem implementation. You can also disable Spring Boot’s logging configuration entirely by using a value of none.

Since logging is initialized before the ApplicationContext is created, it is not possible to control logging from @PropertySources in Spring @Configuration files. The only way to change the logging system or disable it entirely is via System properties.

Depending on your logging system, the following files are loaded:

Logging System Customization

Logback

logback-spring.xml, logback-spring.groovy, logback.xml, or logback.groovy

Log4j2

log4j2-spring.xml or log4j2.xml

JDK (Java Util Logging)

logging.properties
When possible, we recommend that you use the -spring variants for your logging configuration (for example, logback-spring.xml rather than logback.xml). If you use standard configuration locations, Spring cannot completely control log initialization.
There are known classloading issues with Java Util Logging that cause problems when running from an 'executable jar'. We recommend that you avoid it when running from an 'executable jar' if at all possible.

To help with the customization, some other properties are transferred from the Spring Environment to System properties, as described in the following table:

Spring Environment System Property Comments

logging.exception-conversion-word

LOG_EXCEPTION_CONVERSION_WORD

The conversion word used when logging exceptions.

logging.file.clean-history-on-start

LOG_FILE_CLEAN_HISTORY_ON_START

Whether to clean the archive log files on startup (if LOG_FILE enabled). (Only supported with the default Logback setup.)

logging.file.name

LOG_FILE

If defined, it is used in the default log configuration.

logging.file.max-size

LOG_FILE_MAX_SIZE

Maximum log file size (if LOG_FILE enabled). (Only supported with the default Logback setup.)

logging.file.max-history

LOG_FILE_MAX_HISTORY

Maximum number of archive log files to keep (if LOG_FILE enabled). (Only supported with the default Logback setup.)

logging.file.path

LOG_PATH

If defined, it is used in the default log configuration.

logging.file.total-size-cap

LOG_FILE_TOTAL_SIZE_CAP

Total size of log backups to be kept (if LOG_FILE enabled). (Only supported with the default Logback setup.)

logging.pattern.console

CONSOLE_LOG_PATTERN

The log pattern to use on the console (stdout). (Only supported with the default Logback setup.)

logging.pattern.dateformat

LOG_DATEFORMAT_PATTERN

Appender pattern for log date format. (Only supported with the default Logback setup.)

logging.pattern.file

FILE_LOG_PATTERN

The log pattern to use in a file (if LOG_FILE is enabled). (Only supported with the default Logback setup.)

logging.pattern.level

LOG_LEVEL_PATTERN

The format to use when rendering the log level (default %5p). (Only supported with the default Logback setup.)

logging.pattern.rolling-file-name

ROLLING_FILE_NAME_PATTERN

Pattern for rolled-over log file names (default ${LOG_FILE}.%d{yyyy-MM-dd}.%i.gz). (Only supported with the default Logback setup.)

PID

PID

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

All the supported logging systems can consult System properties when parsing their configuration files. See the default configurations in spring-boot.jar for examples:

If you want to use a placeholder in a logging property, you should use Spring Boot’s syntax and not the syntax of the underlying framework. Notably, if you use Logback, you should use : as the delimiter between a property name and its default value and not use :-.

You can add MDC and other ad-hoc content to log lines by overriding only the LOG_LEVEL_PATTERN (or logging.pattern.level with Logback). For example, if you use logging.pattern.level=user:%X{user} %5p, then the default log format contains an MDC entry for "user", if it exists, as shown in the following example.

2019-08-30 12:30:04.031 user:someone INFO 22174 --- [  nio-8080-exec-0] demo.Controller
Handling authenticated request

4.7. Logback Extensions

Spring Boot includes a number of extensions to Logback that can help with advanced configuration. You can use these extensions in your logback-spring.xml configuration file.

Because the standard logback.xml configuration file is loaded too early, you cannot use extensions in it. You need to either use logback-spring.xml or define a logging.config property.
The extensions cannot be used with Logback’s configuration scanning. If you attempt to do so, making changes to the configuration file results in an error similar to one of the following being logged: 
ERROR in ch.qos.logback.core.joran.spi.Interpreter@4:71 - no applicable action for [springProperty], current ElementPath is [[configuration][springProperty]]
ERROR in ch.qos.logback.core.joran.spi.Interpreter@4:71 - no applicable action for [springProfile], current ElementPath is [[configuration][springProfile]]

4.7.1. Profile-specific Configuration

The <springProfile> tag lets you optionally include or exclude sections of configuration based on the active Spring profiles. Profile sections are supported anywhere within the <configuration> element. Use the name attribute to specify which profile accepts the configuration. The <springProfile> tag can contain a profile name (for example staging) or a profile expression. A profile expression allows for more complicated profile logic to be expressed, for example production & (eu-central | eu-west). Check the reference guide for more details. The following listing shows three sample profiles:

<springProfile name="staging">
    <!-- configuration to be enabled when the "staging" profile is active -->
</springProfile>

<springProfile name="dev | staging">
    <!-- configuration to be enabled when the "dev" or "staging" profiles are active -->
</springProfile>

<springProfile name="!production">
    <!-- configuration to be enabled when the "production" profile is not active -->
</springProfile>

4.7.2. Environment Properties

The <springProperty> tag lets you expose properties from the Spring Environment for use within Logback. Doing so can be useful if you want to access values from your application.properties file in your Logback configuration. The tag works in a similar way to Logback’s standard <property> tag. However, rather than specifying a direct value, you specify the source of the property (from the Environment). If you need to store the property somewhere other than in local scope, you can use the scope attribute. If you need a fallback value (in case the property is not set in the Environment), you can use the defaultValue attribute. The following example shows how to expose properties for use within Logback:

<springProperty scope="context" name="fluentHost" source="myapp.fluentd.host"
        defaultValue="localhost"/>
<appender name="FLUENT" class="ch.qos.logback.more.appenders.DataFluentAppender">
    <remoteHost>${fluentHost}</remoteHost>
    ...
</appender>
The source must be specified in kebab case (such as my.property-name). However, properties can be added to the Environment by using the relaxed rules.

5. Internationalization

Spring Boot supports localized messages so that your application can cater to users of different language preferences. By default, Spring Boot looks for the presence of a messages resource bundle at the root of the classpath.

The auto-configuration applies when the default properties file for the configured resource bundle is available (i.e. messages.properties by default). If your resource bundle contains only language-specific properties files, you are required to add the default. If no properties file is found that matches any of the configured base names, there will be no auto-configured MessageSource.

The basename of the resource bundle as well as several other attributes can be configured using the spring.messages namespace, as shown in the following example:

spring.messages.basename=messages,config.i18n.messages
spring.messages.fallback-to-system-locale=false
spring.messages.basename supports comma-separated list of locations, either a package qualifier or a resource resolved from the classpath root.

See MessageSourceProperties for more supported options.

6. JSON

Spring Boot provides integration with three JSON mapping libraries:

  • Gson

  • Jackson

  • JSON-B

Jackson is the preferred and default library.

6.1. Jackson

Auto-configuration for Jackson is provided and Jackson is part of spring-boot-starter-json. When Jackson is on the classpath an ObjectMapper bean is automatically configured. Several configuration properties are provided for customizing the configuration of the ObjectMapper.

6.2. Gson

Auto-configuration for Gson is provided. When Gson is on the classpath a Gson bean is automatically configured. Several spring.gson.* configuration properties are provided for customizing the configuration. To take more control, one or more GsonBuilderCustomizer beans can be used.

6.3. JSON-B

Auto-configuration for JSON-B is provided. When the JSON-B API and an implementation are on the classpath a Jsonb bean will be automatically configured. The preferred JSON-B implementation is Apache Johnzon for which dependency management is provided.

7. Developing Web Applications

Spring Boot is well suited for web application development. You can create a self-contained HTTP server by using embedded Tomcat, Jetty, Undertow, or Netty. Most web applications use the spring-boot-starter-web module to get up and running quickly. You can also choose to build reactive web applications by using the spring-boot-starter-webflux module.

If you have not yet developed a Spring Boot web application, you can follow the "Hello World!" example in the Getting started section.

7.1. The “Spring Web MVC Framework”

The Spring Web MVC framework (often referred to as “Spring MVC”) is a rich “model view controller” web framework. Spring MVC lets you create special @Controller or @RestController beans to handle incoming HTTP requests. Methods in your controller are mapped to HTTP by using @RequestMapping annotations.

The following code shows a typical @RestController that serves JSON data:

@RestController
@RequestMapping(value="/users")
public class MyRestController {

    @RequestMapping(value="/{user}", method=RequestMethod.GET)
    public User getUser(@PathVariable Long user) {
        // ...
    }

    @RequestMapping(value="/{user}/customers", method=RequestMethod.GET)
    List<Customer> getUserCustomers(@PathVariable Long user) {
        // ...
    }

    @RequestMapping(value="/{user}", method=RequestMethod.DELETE)
    public User deleteUser(@PathVariable Long user) {
        // ...
    }

}

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

7.1.1. Spring MVC Auto-configuration

Spring Boot provides auto-configuration for Spring MVC that works well with most applications.

The auto-configuration adds the following features on top of Spring’s defaults:

  • Inclusion of ContentNegotiatingViewResolver and BeanNameViewResolver beans.

  • Support for serving static resources, including support for WebJars (covered later in this document)).

  • Automatic registration of Converter, GenericConverter, and Formatter beans.

  • Support for HttpMessageConverters (covered later in this document).

  • Automatic registration of MessageCodesResolver (covered later in this document).

  • Static index.html support.

  • Custom Favicon support (covered later in this document).

  • Automatic use of a ConfigurableWebBindingInitializer bean (covered later in this document).

If you want to keep those Spring Boot MVC customizations and make more MVC customizations (interceptors, formatters, view controllers, and other features), you can add your own @Configuration class of type WebMvcConfigurer but without @EnableWebMvc.

If you want to provide custom instances of RequestMappingHandlerMapping, RequestMappingHandlerAdapter, or ExceptionHandlerExceptionResolver, and still keep the Spring Boot MVC customizations, you can declare a bean of type WebMvcRegistrations and use it to provide custom instances of those components.

If you want to take complete control of Spring MVC, you can add your own @Configuration annotated with @EnableWebMvc, or alternatively add your own @Configuration-annotated DelegatingWebMvcConfiguration as described in the Javadoc of @EnableWebMvc.

7.1.2. HttpMessageConverters

Spring MVC uses the HttpMessageConverter interface to convert HTTP requests and responses. Sensible defaults are included out of the box. For example, objects can be automatically converted to JSON (by using the Jackson library) or XML (by using the Jackson XML extension, if available, or by using JAXB if the Jackson XML extension is not available). By default, strings are encoded in UTF-8.

If you need to add or customize converters, you can use Spring Boot’s HttpMessageConverters class, as shown in the following listing:

import org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.http.HttpMessageConverters;
import org.springframework.context.annotation.*;
import org.springframework.http.converter.*;

@Configuration(proxyBeanMethods = false)
public class MyConfiguration {

    @Bean
    public HttpMessageConverters customConverters() {
        HttpMessageConverter<?> additional = ...
        HttpMessageConverter<?> another = ...
        return new HttpMessageConverters(additional, another);
    }

}

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

7.1.3. Custom JSON Serializers and Deserializers

If you use Jackson to serialize and deserialize JSON data, you might want to write your own JsonSerializer and JsonDeserializer classes. Custom serializers are usually registered with Jackson through a module, but Spring Boot provides an alternative @JsonComponent annotation that makes it easier to directly register Spring Beans.

You can use the @JsonComponent annotation directly on JsonSerializer, JsonDeserializer or KeyDeserializer implementations. You can also use it on classes that contain serializers/deserializers as inner classes, as shown in the following example:

import java.io.*;
import com.fasterxml.jackson.core.*;
import com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.*;
import org.springframework.boot.jackson.*;

@JsonComponent
public class Example {

    public static class Serializer extends JsonSerializer<SomeObject> {
        // ...
    }

    public static class Deserializer extends JsonDeserializer<SomeObject> {
        // ...
    }

}

All @JsonComponent beans in the ApplicationContext are automatically registered with Jackson. Because @JsonComponent is meta-annotated with @Component, the usual component-scanning rules apply.

Spring Boot also provides JsonObjectSerializer and JsonObjectDeserializer base classes that provide useful alternatives to the standard Jackson versions when serializing objects. See JsonObjectSerializer and JsonObjectDeserializer in the Javadoc for details.

7.1.4. MessageCodesResolver

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

7.1.5. Static Content

By default, Spring Boot serves static content from a directory called /static (or /public or /resources or /META-INF/resources) in the classpath or from the root of the ServletContext. It uses the ResourceHttpRequestHandler from Spring MVC so that you can modify that behavior by adding your own WebMvcConfigurer and overriding the addResourceHandlers method.

In a stand-alone web application, the default servlet from the container is also enabled and acts as a fallback, serving content from the root of the ServletContext if Spring decides not to handle it. Most of the time, this does not happen (unless you modify the default MVC configuration), because Spring can always handle requests through the DispatcherServlet.

By default, resources are mapped on /**, but you can tune that with the spring.mvc.static-path-pattern property. For instance, relocating all resources to /resources/** can be achieved as follows:

spring.mvc.static-path-pattern=/resources/**

You can also customize the static resource locations by using the spring.resources.static-locations property (replacing the default values with a list of directory locations). The root Servlet context path, "/", is automatically added as a location as well.

In addition to the “standard” static resource locations mentioned earlier, a special case is made for Webjars content. Any resources with a path in /webjars/** are served from jar files if they are packaged in the Webjars format.

Do not use the src/main/webapp directory if your application is packaged as a jar. Although this directory is a common standard, it works only with war packaging, and it is silently ignored by most build tools if you generate a jar.

Spring Boot also supports the advanced resource handling features provided by Spring MVC, allowing use cases such as cache-busting static resources or using version agnostic URLs for Webjars.

To use version agnostic URLs for Webjars, add the webjars-locator-core dependency. Then declare your Webjar. Using jQuery as an example, adding "/webjars/jquery/jquery.min.js" results in "/webjars/jquery/x.y.z/jquery.min.js" where x.y.z is the Webjar version.

If you use JBoss, you need to declare the webjars-locator-jboss-vfs dependency instead of the webjars-locator-core. Otherwise, all Webjars resolve as a 404.

To use cache busting, the following configuration configures a cache busting solution for all static resources, effectively adding a content hash, such as <link href="/css/spring-2a2d595e6ed9a0b24f027f2b63b134d6.css"/>, in URLs:

spring.resources.chain.strategy.content.enabled=true
spring.resources.chain.strategy.content.paths=/**
Links to resources are rewritten in templates at runtime, thanks to a ResourceUrlEncodingFilter that is auto-configured for Thymeleaf and FreeMarker. You should manually declare this filter when using JSPs. Other template engines are currently not automatically supported but can be with custom template macros/helpers and the use of the ResourceUrlProvider.

When loading resources dynamically with, for example, a JavaScript module loader, renaming files is not an option. That is why other strategies are also supported and can be combined. A "fixed" strategy adds a static version string in the URL without changing the file name, as shown in the following example:

spring.resources.chain.strategy.content.enabled=true
spring.resources.chain.strategy.content.paths=/**
spring.resources.chain.strategy.fixed.enabled=true
spring.resources.chain.strategy.fixed.paths=/js/lib/
spring.resources.chain.strategy.fixed.version=v12

With this configuration, JavaScript modules located under "/js/lib/" use a fixed versioning strategy ("/v12/js/lib/mymodule.js"), while other resources still use the content one (<link href="/css/spring-2a2d595e6ed9a0b24f027f2b63b134d6.css"/>).

See ResourceProperties for more supported options.

This feature has been thoroughly described in a dedicated blog post and in Spring Framework’s reference documentation.

7.1.6. Welcome Page

Spring Boot supports both static and templated welcome pages. It first looks for an index.html file in the configured static content locations. If one is not found, it then looks for an index template. If either is found, it is automatically used as the welcome page of the application.

7.1.7. Custom Favicon

As with other static resources, Spring Boot looks for a favicon.ico in the configured static content locations. If such a file is present, it is automatically used as the favicon of the application.

7.1.8. Path Matching and Content Negotiation

Spring MVC can map incoming HTTP requests to handlers by looking at the request path and matching it to the mappings defined in your application (for example, @GetMapping annotations on Controller methods).

Spring Boot chooses to disable suffix pattern matching by default, which means that requests like "GET /projects/spring-boot.json" won’t be matched to @GetMapping("/projects/spring-boot") mappings. This is considered as a best practice for Spring MVC applications. This feature was mainly useful in the past for HTTP clients which did not send proper "Accept" request headers; we needed to make sure to send the correct Content Type to the client. Nowadays, Content Negotiation is much more reliable.

There are other ways to deal with HTTP clients that don’t consistently send proper "Accept" request headers. Instead of using suffix matching, we can use a query parameter to ensure that requests like "GET /projects/spring-boot?format=json" will be mapped to @GetMapping("/projects/spring-boot"):

spring.mvc.contentnegotiation.favor-parameter=true

# We can change the parameter name, which is "format" by default:
# spring.mvc.contentnegotiation.parameter-name=myparam

# We can also register additional file extensions/media types with:
spring.mvc.contentnegotiation.media-types.markdown=text/markdown

Suffix pattern matching is deprecated and will be removed in a future release. If you understand the caveats and would still like your application to use suffix pattern matching, the following configuration is required:

spring.mvc.contentnegotiation.favor-path-extension=true
spring.mvc.pathmatch.use-suffix-pattern=true

Alternatively, rather than open all suffix patterns, it’s more secure to only support registered suffix patterns:

spring.mvc.contentnegotiation.favor-path-extension=true
spring.mvc.pathmatch.use-registered-suffix-pattern=true

# You can also register additional file extensions/media types with:
# spring.mvc.contentnegotiation.media-types.adoc=text/asciidoc

7.1.9. ConfigurableWebBindingInitializer

Spring MVC uses a WebBindingInitializer to initialize a WebDataBinder for a particular request. If you create your own ConfigurableWebBindingInitializer @Bean, Spring Boot automatically configures Spring MVC to use it.

7.1.10. Template Engines

As well as REST web services, you can also use Spring MVC to serve dynamic HTML content. Spring MVC supports a variety of templating technologies, including Thymeleaf, FreeMarker, and JSPs. Also, many other templating engines include their own Spring MVC integrations.

Spring Boot includes auto-configuration support for the following templating engines:

If possible, JSPs should be avoided. There are several known limitations when using them with embedded servlet containers.

When you use one of these templating engines with the default configuration, your templates are picked up automatically from src/main/resources/templates.

Depending on how you run your application, IntelliJ IDEA orders the classpath differently. Running your application in the IDE from its main method results in a different ordering than when you run your application by using Maven or Gradle or from its packaged jar. This can cause Spring Boot to fail to find the templates on the classpath. If you have this problem, you can reorder the classpath in the IDE to place the module’s classes and resources first. Alternatively, you can configure the template prefix to search every templates directory on the classpath, as follows: classpath*:/templates/.

7.1.11. Error Handling

By default, Spring Boot provides an /error mapping that handles all errors in a sensible way, and it is registered as a “global” error page in the servlet container. For machine clients, it produces a JSON response with details of the error, the HTTP status, and the exception message. For browser clients, there is a “whitelabel” error view that renders the same data in HTML format (to customize it, add a View that resolves to error). To replace the default behavior completely, you can implement ErrorController and register a bean definition of that type or add a bean of type ErrorAttributes to use the existing mechanism but replace the contents.

The BasicErrorController can be used as a base class for a custom ErrorController. This is particularly useful if you want to add a handler for a new content type (the default is to handle text/html specifically and provide a fallback for everything else). To do so, extend BasicErrorController, add a public method with a @RequestMapping that has a produces attribute, and create a bean of your new type.

You can also define a class annotated with @ControllerAdvice to customize the JSON document to return for a particular controller and/or exception type, as shown in the following example:

@ControllerAdvice(basePackageClasses = AcmeController.class)
public class AcmeControllerAdvice extends ResponseEntityExceptionHandler {

    @ExceptionHandler(YourException.class)
    @ResponseBody
    ResponseEntity<?> handleControllerException(HttpServletRequest request, Throwable ex) {
        HttpStatus status = getStatus(request);
        return new ResponseEntity<>(new CustomErrorType(status.value(), ex.getMessage()), status);
    }

    private HttpStatus getStatus(HttpServletRequest request) {
        Integer statusCode = (Integer) request.getAttribute("javax.servlet.error.status_code");
        if (statusCode == null) {
            return HttpStatus.INTERNAL_SERVER_ERROR;
        }
        return HttpStatus.valueOf(statusCode);
    }

}

In the preceding example, if YourException is thrown by a controller defined in the same package as AcmeController, a JSON representation of the CustomErrorType POJO is used instead of the ErrorAttributes representation.

Custom Error Pages

If you want to display a custom HTML error page for a given status code, you can add a file to an /error directory. Error pages can either be static HTML (that is, added under any of the static resource directories) or be built by using templates. The name of the file should be the exact status code or a series mask.

For example, to map 404 to a static HTML file, your directory structure would be as follows:

src/
 +- main/
     +- java/
     |   + <source code>
     +- resources/
         +- public/
             +- error/
             |   +- 404.html
             +- <other public assets>

To map all 5xx errors by using a FreeMarker template, your directory structure would be as follows:

src/
 +- main/
     +- java/
     |   + <source code>
     +- resources/
         +- templates/
             +- error/
             |   +- 5xx.ftlh
             +- <other templates>

For more complex mappings, you can also add beans that implement the ErrorViewResolver interface, as shown in the following example:

public class MyErrorViewResolver implements ErrorViewResolver {

    @Override
    public ModelAndView resolveErrorView(HttpServletRequest request,
            HttpStatus status, Map<String, Object> model) {
        // Use the request or status to optionally return a ModelAndView
        return ...
    }

}

You can also use regular Spring MVC features such as @ExceptionHandler methods and @ControllerAdvice. The ErrorController then picks up any unhandled exceptions.

Mapping Error Pages outside of Spring MVC

For applications that do not use Spring MVC, you can use the ErrorPageRegistrar interface to directly register ErrorPages. This abstraction works directly with the underlying embedded servlet container and works even if you do not have a Spring MVC DispatcherServlet.

@Bean
public ErrorPageRegistrar errorPageRegistrar(){
    return new MyErrorPageRegistrar();
}

// ...

private static class MyErrorPageRegistrar implements ErrorPageRegistrar {

    @Override
    public void registerErrorPages(ErrorPageRegistry registry) {
        registry.addErrorPages(new ErrorPage(HttpStatus.BAD_REQUEST, "/400"));
    }

}
If you register an ErrorPage with a path that ends up being handled by a Filter (as is common with some non-Spring web frameworks, like Jersey and Wicket), then the Filter has to be explicitly registered as an ERROR dispatcher, as shown in the following example: 
@Bean
public FilterRegistrationBean myFilter() {
    FilterRegistrationBean registration = new FilterRegistrationBean();
    registration.setFilter(new MyFilter());
    ...
    registration.setDispatcherTypes(EnumSet.allOf(DispatcherType.class));
    return registration;
}

Note that the default FilterRegistrationBean does not include the ERROR dispatcher type.

Error handling in a war deployment

When deployed to a servlet container, Spring Boot uses its error page filter to forward a request with an error status to the appropriate error page. This is necessary as the Servlet specification does not provide an API for registering error pages. Depending on the container that you are deploying your war file to and the technologies that your application uses, some additional configuration may be required.

The error page filter can only forward the request to the correct error page if the response has not already been committed. By default, WebSphere Application Server 8.0 and later commits the response upon successful completion of a servlet’s service method. You should disable this behavior by setting com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.invokeFlushAfterService to false.

If you are using Spring Security and want to access the principal in an error page, you must configure Spring Security’s filter to be invoked on error dispatches. To do so, set the spring.security.filter.dispatcher-types property to async, error, forward, request.

7.1.12. Spring HATEOAS

If you develop a RESTful API that makes use of hypermedia, Spring Boot provides auto-configuration for Spring HATEOAS that works well with most applications. The auto-configuration replaces the need to use @EnableHypermediaSupport and registers a number of beans to ease building hypermedia-based applications, including a LinkDiscoverers (for client side support) and an ObjectMapper configured to correctly marshal responses into the desired representation. The ObjectMapper is customized by setting the various spring.jackson.* properties or, if one exists, by a Jackson2ObjectMapperBuilder bean.

You can take control of Spring HATEOAS’s configuration by using @EnableHypermediaSupport. Note that doing so disables the ObjectMapper customization described earlier.

7.1.13. CORS Support

Cross-origin resource sharing (CORS) is a W3C specification implemented by most browsers that lets you specify in a flexible way what kind of cross-domain requests are authorized., instead of using some less secure and less powerful approaches such as IFRAME or JSONP.

As of version 4.2, Spring MVC supports CORS. Using controller method CORS configuration with @CrossOrigin annotations in your Spring Boot application does not require any specific configuration. Global CORS configuration can be defined by registering a WebMvcConfigurer bean with a customized addCorsMappings(CorsRegistry) method, as shown in the following example:

@Configuration(proxyBeanMethods = false)
public class MyConfiguration {

    @Bean
    public WebMvcConfigurer corsConfigurer() {
        return new WebMvcConfigurer() {
            @Override
            public void addCorsMappings(CorsRegistry registry) {
                registry.addMapping("/api/**");
            }
        };
    }
}

7.2. The “Spring WebFlux Framework”

Spring WebFlux is the new reactive web framework introduced in Spring Framework 5.0. Unlike Spring MVC, it does not require the Servlet API, is fully asynchronous and non-blocking, and implements the Reactive Streams specification through the Reactor project.

Spring WebFlux comes in two flavors: functional and annotation-based. The annotation-based one is quite close to the Spring MVC model, as shown in the following example:

@RestController
@RequestMapping("/users")
public class MyRestController {

    @GetMapping("/{user}")
    public Mono<User> getUser(@PathVariable Long user) {
        // ...
    }

    @GetMapping("/{user}/customers")
    public Flux<Customer> getUserCustomers(@PathVariable Long user) {
        // ...
    }

    @DeleteMapping("/{user}")
    public Mono<User> deleteUser(@PathVariable Long user) {
        // ...
    }

}

“WebFlux.fn”, the functional variant, separates the routing configuration from the actual handling of the requests, as shown in the following example:

@Configuration(proxyBeanMethods = false)
public class RoutingConfiguration {

    @Bean
    public RouterFunction<ServerResponse> monoRouterFunction(UserHandler userHandler) {
        return route(GET("/{user}").and(accept(APPLICATION_JSON)), userHandler::getUser)
                .andRoute(GET("/{user}/customers").and(accept(APPLICATION_JSON)), userHandler::getUserCustomers)
                .andRoute(DELETE("/{user}").and(accept(APPLICATION_JSON)), userHandler::deleteUser);
    }

}

@Component
public class UserHandler {

    public Mono<ServerResponse> getUser(ServerRequest request) {
        // ...
    }

    public Mono<ServerResponse> getUserCustomers(ServerRequest request) {
        // ...
    }

    public Mono<ServerResponse> deleteUser(ServerRequest request) {
        // ...
    }
}

WebFlux is part of the Spring Framework and detailed information is available in its reference documentation.

You can define as many RouterFunction beans as you like to modularize the definition of the router. Beans can be ordered if you need to apply a precedence.

To get started, add the spring-boot-starter-webflux module to your application.

Adding both spring-boot-starter-web and spring-boot-starter-webflux modules in your application results in Spring Boot auto-configuring Spring MVC, not WebFlux. This behavior has been chosen because many Spring developers add spring-boot-starter-webflux to their Spring MVC application to use the reactive WebClient. You can still enforce your choice by setting the chosen application type to SpringApplication.setWebApplicationType(WebApplicationType.REACTIVE).

7.2.1. Spring WebFlux Auto-configuration

Spring Boot provides auto-configuration for Spring WebFlux that works well with most applications.

The auto-configuration adds the following features on top of Spring’s defaults:

If you want to keep Spring Boot WebFlux features and you want to add additional WebFlux configuration, you can add your own @Configuration class of type WebFluxConfigurer but without @EnableWebFlux.

If you want to take complete control of Spring WebFlux, you can add your own @Configuration annotated with @EnableWebFlux.

7.2.2. HTTP Codecs with HttpMessageReaders and HttpMessageWriters

Spring WebFlux uses the HttpMessageReader and HttpMessageWriter interfaces to convert HTTP requests and responses. They are configured with CodecConfigurer to have sensible defaults by looking at the libraries available in your classpath.

Spring Boot provides dedicated configuration properties for codecs, spring.codec.*. It also applies further customization by using CodecCustomizer instances. For example, spring.jackson.* configuration keys are applied to the Jackson codec.

If you need to add or customize codecs, you can create a custom CodecCustomizer component, as shown in the following example:

import org.springframework.boot.web.codec.CodecCustomizer;

@Configuration(proxyBeanMethods = false)
public class MyConfiguration {

    @Bean
    public CodecCustomizer myCodecCustomizer() {
        return codecConfigurer -> {
            // ...
        };
    }

}

You can also leverage Boot’s custom JSON serializers and deserializers.

7.2.3. Static Content

By default, Spring Boot serves static content from a directory called /static (or /public or /resources or /META-INF/resources) in the classpath. It uses the ResourceWebHandler from Spring WebFlux so that you can modify that behavior by adding your own WebFluxConfigurer and overriding the addResourceHandlers method.

By default, resources are mapped on /**, but you can tune that by setting the spring.webflux.static-path-pattern property. For instance, relocating all resources to /resources/** can be achieved as follows:

spring.webflux.static-path-pattern=/resources/**

You can also customize the static resource locations by using spring.resources.static-locations. Doing so replaces the default values with a list of directory locations. If you do so, the default welcome page detection switches to your custom locations. So, if there is an index.html in any of your locations on startup, it is the home page of the application.

In addition to the “standard” static resource locations listed earlier, a special case is made for Webjars content. Any resources with a path in /webjars/** are served from jar files if they are packaged in the Webjars format.

Spring WebFlux applications do not strictly depend on the Servlet API, so they cannot be deployed as war files and do not use the src/main/webapp directory.

7.2.4. Welcome Page

Spring Boot supports both static and templated welcome pages. It first looks for an index.html file in the configured static content locations. If one is not found, it then looks for an index template. If either is found, it is automatically used as the welcome page of the application.

7.2.5. Template Engines

As well as REST web services, you can also use Spring WebFlux to serve dynamic HTML content. Spring WebFlux supports a variety of templating technologies, including Thymeleaf, FreeMarker, and Mustache.

Spring Boot includes auto-configuration support for the following templating engines:

When you use one of these templating engines with the default configuration, your templates are picked up automatically from src/main/resources/templates.

7.2.6. Error Handling

Spring Boot provides a WebExceptionHandler that handles all errors in a sensible way. Its position in the processing order is immediately before the handlers provided by WebFlux, which are considered last. For machine clients, it produces a JSON response with details of the error, the HTTP status, and the exception message. For browser clients, there is a “whitelabel” error handler that renders the same data in HTML format. You can also provide your own HTML templates to display errors (see the next section).

The first step to customizing this feature often involves using the existing mechanism but replacing or augmenting the error contents. For that, you can add a bean of type ErrorAttributes.

To change the error handling behavior, you can implement ErrorWebExceptionHandler and register a bean definition of that type. Because a WebExceptionHandler is quite low-level, Spring Boot also provides a convenient AbstractErrorWebExceptionHandler to let you handle errors in a WebFlux functional way, as shown in the following example:

public class CustomErrorWebExceptionHandler extends AbstractErrorWebExceptionHandler {

    // Define constructor here

    @Override
    protected RouterFunction<ServerResponse> getRoutingFunction(ErrorAttributes errorAttributes) {

        return RouterFunctions
                .route(aPredicate, aHandler)
                .andRoute(anotherPredicate, anotherHandler);
    }

}

For a more complete picture, you can also subclass DefaultErrorWebExceptionHandler directly and override specific methods.

Custom Error Pages

If you want to display a custom HTML error page for a given status code, you can add a file to an /error directory. Error pages can either be static HTML (that is, added under any of the static resource directories) or built with templates. The name of the file should be the exact status code or a series mask.

For example, to map 404 to a static HTML file, your directory structure would be as follows:

src/
 +- main/
     +- java/
     |   + <source code>
     +- resources/
         +- public/
             +- error/
             |   +- 404.html
             +- <other public assets>

To map all 5xx errors by using a Mustache template, your directory structure would be as follows:

src/
 +- main/
     +- java/
     |   + <source code>
     +- resources/
         +- templates/
             +- error/
             |   +- 5xx.mustache
             +- <other templates>

7.2.7. Web Filters

Spring WebFlux provides a WebFilter interface that can be implemented to filter HTTP request-response exchanges. WebFilter beans found in the application context will be automatically used to filter each exchange.

Where the order of the filters is important they can implement Ordered or be annotated with @Order. Spring Boot auto-configuration may configure web filters for you. When it does so, the orders shown in the following table will be used:

Web Filter Order

MetricsWebFilter

Ordered.HIGHEST_PRECEDENCE + 1

WebFilterChainProxy (Spring Security)

-100

HttpTraceWebFilter

Ordered.LOWEST_PRECEDENCE - 10

7.3. JAX-RS and Jersey

If you prefer the JAX-RS programming model for REST endpoints, you can use one of the available implementations instead of Spring MVC. Jersey and Apache CXF work quite well out of the box. CXF requires you to register its Servlet or Filter as a @Bean in your application context. Jersey has some native Spring support, so we also provide auto-configuration support for it in Spring Boot, together with a starter.

To get started with Jersey, include the spring-boot-starter-jersey as a dependency and then you need one @Bean of type ResourceConfig in which you register all the endpoints, as shown in the following example:

@Component
public class JerseyConfig extends ResourceConfig {

    public JerseyConfig() {
        register(Endpoint.class);
    }

}
Jersey’s support for scanning executable archives is rather limited. For example, it cannot scan for endpoints in a package found in a fully executable jar file or in WEB-INF/classes when running an executable war file. To avoid this limitation, the packages method should not be used, and endpoints should be registered individually by using the register method, as shown in the preceding example.

For more advanced customizations, you can also register an arbitrary number of beans that implement ResourceConfigCustomizer.

All the registered endpoints should be @Components with HTTP resource annotations (@GET and others), as shown in the following example:

@Component
@Path("/hello")
public class Endpoint {

    @GET
    public String message() {
        return "Hello";
    }

}

Since the Endpoint is a Spring @Component, its lifecycle is managed by Spring and you can use the @Autowired annotation to inject dependencies and use the @Value annotation to inject external configuration. By default, the Jersey servlet is registered and mapped to /*. You can change the mapping by adding @ApplicationPath to your ResourceConfig.

By default, Jersey is set up as a Servlet in a @Bean of type ServletRegistrationBean named jerseyServletRegistration. By default, the servlet is initialized lazily, but you can customize that behavior by setting spring.jersey.servlet.load-on-startup. You can disable or override that bean by creating one of your own with the same name. You can also use a filter instead of a servlet by setting spring.jersey.type=filter (in which case, the @Bean to replace or override is jerseyFilterRegistration). The filter has an @Order, which you can set with spring.jersey.filter.order. Both the servlet and the filter registrations can be given init parameters by using spring.jersey.init.* to specify a map of properties.

7.4. Embedded Servlet Container Support

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

7.4.1. Servlets, Filters, and listeners

When using an embedded servlet container, you can register servlets, filters, and all the listeners (such as HttpSessionListener) from the Servlet spec, either by using Spring beans or by scanning for Servlet components.

Registering Servlets, Filters, and Listeners as Spring Beans

Any Servlet, Filter, or servlet *Listener instance that is a Spring bean is registered with the embedded container. This can be particularly convenient if you want to refer to a value from your application.properties during configuration.

By default, if the context contains only a single Servlet, it is mapped to /. In the case of multiple servlet beans, the bean name is used as a path prefix. Filters map to /*.

If convention-based mapping is not flexible enough, you can use the ServletRegistrationBean, FilterRegistrationBean, and ServletListenerRegistrationBean classes for complete control.

It is usually safe to leave Filter beans unordered. If a specific order is required, you should annotate the Filter with @Order or make it implement Ordered. You cannot configure the order of a Filter by annotating its bean method with @Order. If you cannot change the Filter class to add @Order or implement Ordered, you must define a FilterRegistrationBean for the Filter and set the registration bean’s order using the setOrder(int) method. Avoid configuring a Filter that reads the request body at Ordered.HIGHEST_PRECEDENCE, since it might go against the character encoding configuration of your application. If a Servlet filter wraps the request, it should be configured with an order that is less than or equal to OrderedFilter.REQUEST_WRAPPER_FILTER_MAX_ORDER.

To see the order of every Filter in your application, enable debug level logging for the web logging group (logging.level.web=debug). Details of the registered filters, including their order and URL patterns, will then be logged at startup.
Take care when registering Filter beans since they are initialized very early in the application lifectyle. If you need to register a Filter that interacts with other beans, consider using a DelegatingFilterProxyRegistrationBean instead.

7.4.2. Servlet Context Initialization

Embedded servlet containers do not directly execute the Servlet 3.0+ javax.servlet.ServletContainerInitializer interface or Spring’s org.springframework.web.WebApplicationInitializer interface. This is an intentional design decision intended to reduce the risk that third party libraries designed to run inside a war may break Spring Boot applications.

If you need to perform servlet context initialization in a Spring Boot application, you should register a bean that implements the org.springframework.boot.web.servlet.ServletContextInitializer interface. The single onStartup method provides access to the ServletContext and, if necessary, can easily be used as an adapter to an existing WebApplicationInitializer.

Scanning for Servlets, Filters, and listeners

When using an embedded container, automatic registration of classes annotated with @WebServlet, @WebFilter, and @WebListener can be enabled by using @ServletComponentScan.

@ServletComponentScan has no effect in a standalone container, where the container’s built-in discovery mechanisms are used instead.

7.4.3. The ServletWebServerApplicationContext

Under the hood, Spring Boot uses a different type of ApplicationContext for embedded servlet container support. The ServletWebServerApplicationContext is a special type of WebApplicationContext that bootstraps itself by searching for a single ServletWebServerFactory bean. Usually a TomcatServletWebServerFactory, JettyServletWebServerFactory, or UndertowServletWebServerFactory has been auto-configured.

You usually do not need to be aware of these implementation classes. Most applications are auto-configured, and the appropriate ApplicationContext and ServletWebServerFactory are created on your behalf.

7.4.4. Customizing Embedded Servlet Containers

Common servlet container settings can be configured by using Spring Environment properties. Usually, you would define the properties in your application.properties file.

Common server settings include:

  • Network settings: Listen port for incoming HTTP requests (server.port), interface address to bind to server.address, and so on.

  • Session settings: Whether the session is persistent (server.servlet.session.persistent), session timeout (server.servlet.session.timeout), location of session data (server.servlet.session.store-dir), and session-cookie configuration (server.servlet.session.cookie.*).

  • Error management: Location of the error page (server.error.path) and so on.

  • SSL

  • HTTP compression

Spring Boot tries as much as possible to expose common settings, but this is not always possible. For those cases, dedicated namespaces offer server-specific customizations (see server.tomcat and server.undertow). For instance, access logs can be configured with specific features of the embedded servlet container.

See the ServerProperties class for a complete list.
Programmatic Customization

If you need to programmatically configure your embedded servlet container, you can register a Spring bean that implements the WebServerFactoryCustomizer interface. WebServerFactoryCustomizer provides access to the ConfigurableServletWebServerFactory, which includes numerous customization setter methods. The following example shows programmatically setting the port:

import org.springframework.boot.web.server.WebServerFactoryCustomizer;
import org.springframework.boot.web.servlet.server.ConfigurableServletWebServerFactory;
import org.springframework.stereotype.Component;

@Component
public class CustomizationBean implements WebServerFactoryCustomizer<ConfigurableServletWebServerFactory> {

    @Override
    public void customize(ConfigurableServletWebServerFactory server) {
        server.setPort(9000);
    }

}
TomcatServletWebServerFactory, JettyServletWebServerFactory and UndertowServletWebServerFactory are dedicated variants of ConfigurableServletWebServerFactory that have additional customization setter methods for Tomcat, Jetty and Undertow respectively.
Customizing ConfigurableServletWebServerFactory Directly

If the preceding customization techniques are too limited, you can register the TomcatServletWebServerFactory, JettyServletWebServerFactory, or UndertowServletWebServerFactory bean yourself.

@Bean
public ConfigurableServletWebServerFactory webServerFactory() {
    TomcatServletWebServerFactory factory = new TomcatServletWebServerFactory();
    factory.setPort(9000);
    factory.setSessionTimeout(10, TimeUnit.MINUTES);
    factory.addErrorPages(new ErrorPage(HttpStatus.NOT_FOUND, "/notfound.html"));
    return factory;
}

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

7.4.5. JSP Limitations

When running a Spring Boot application that uses an embedded servlet container (and is packaged as an executable archive), there are some limitations in the JSP support.

  • With Jetty and Tomcat, it should work if you use war packaging. An executable war will work when launched with java -jar, and will also be deployable to any standard container. JSPs are not supported when using an executable jar.

  • Undertow does not support JSPs.

  • Creating a custom error.jsp page does not override the default view for error handling. Custom error pages should be used instead.

7.5. Embedded Reactive Server Support

Spring Boot includes support for the following embedded reactive web servers: Reactor Netty, Tomcat, Jetty, and Undertow. Most developers use the appropriate “Starter” to obtain a fully configured instance. By default, the embedded server listens for HTTP requests on port 8080.

7.6. Reactive Server Resources Configuration

When auto-configuring a Reactor Netty or Jetty server, Spring Boot will create specific beans that will provide HTTP resources to the server instance: ReactorResourceFactory or JettyResourceFactory.

By default, those resources will be also shared with the Reactor Netty and Jetty clients for optimal performances, given:

  • the same technology is used for server and client

  • the client instance is built using the WebClient.Builder bean auto-configured by Spring Boot

Developers can override the resource configuration for Jetty and Reactor Netty by providing a custom ReactorResourceFactory or JettyResourceFactory bean - this will be applied to both clients and servers.

You can learn more about the resource configuration on the client side in the WebClient Runtime section.

8. Graceful shutdown

Graceful shutdown is supported with all four embedded web servers (Jetty, Reactor Netty, Tomcat, and Undertow) and with both reactive and Servlet-based web applications. It occurs as part of closing the application context and is performed in the earliest phase of stopping SmartLifecycle beans. This stop processing uses a timeout which provides a grace period during which existing requests will be allowed to complete but no new requests will be permitted. The exact way in which new requests are not permitted varies depending on the web server that is being used. Jetty, Reactor Netty, and Tomcat will stop accepting requests at the network layer. Undertow will accept requests but respond immediately with a service unavailable (503) response.

Graceful shutdown with Tomcat requires Tomcat 9.0.33 or later.

To enable graceful shutdown, configure the server.shutdown property, as shown in the following example:

server.shutdown=graceful

To configure the timeout period, configure the spring.lifecycle.timeout-per-shutdown-phase property, as shown in the following example:

spring.lifecycle.timeout-per-shutdown-phase=20s

9. RSocket

RSocket is a binary protocol for use on byte stream transports. It enables symmetric interaction models via async message passing over a single connection.

The spring-messaging module of the Spring Framework provides support for RSocket requesters and responders, both on the client and on the server side. See the RSocket section of the Spring Framework reference for more details, including an overview of the RSocket protocol.

9.1. RSocket Strategies Auto-configuration

Spring Boot auto-configures an RSocketStrategies bean that provides all the required infrastructure for encoding and decoding RSocket payloads. By default, the auto-configuration will try to configure the following (in order):

  1. CBOR codecs with Jackson

  2. JSON codecs with Jackson

The spring-boot-starter-rsocket starter provides both dependencies. Check out the Jackson support section to know more about customization possibilities.

Developers can customize the RSocketStrategies component by creating beans that implement the RSocketStrategiesCustomizer interface. Note that their @Order is important, as it determines the order of codecs.

9.2. RSocket server Auto-configuration

Spring Boot provides RSocket server auto-configuration. The required dependencies are provided by the spring-boot-starter-rsocket.

Spring Boot allows exposing RSocket over WebSocket from a WebFlux server, or standing up an independent RSocket server. This depends on the type of application and its configuration.

For WebFlux application (i.e. of type WebApplicationType.REACTIVE), the RSocket server will be plugged into the Web Server only if the following properties match:

spring.rsocket.server.mapping-path=/rsocket # a mapping path is defined
spring.rsocket.server.transport=websocket # websocket is chosen as a transport
#spring.rsocket.server.port= # no port is defined
Plugging RSocket into a web server is only supported with Reactor Netty, as RSocket itself is built with that library.

Alternatively, an RSocket TCP or websocket server is started as an independent, embedded server. Besides the dependency requirements, the only required configuration is to define a port for that server:

spring.rsocket.server.port=9898 # the only required configuration
spring.rsocket.server.transport=tcp # you're free to configure other properties

9.3. Spring Messaging RSocket support

Spring Boot will auto-configure the Spring Messaging infrastructure for RSocket.

This means that Spring Boot will create a RSocketMessageHandler bean that will handle RSocket requests to your application.

9.4. Calling RSocket Services with RSocketRequester

Once the RSocket channel is established between server and client, any party can send or receive requests to the other.

As a server, you can get injected with an RSocketRequester instance on any handler method of an RSocket @Controller. As a client, you need to configure and establish an RSocket connection first. Spring Boot auto-configures an RSocketRequester.Builder for such cases with the expected codecs.

The RSocketRequester.Builder instance is a prototype bean, meaning each injection point will provide you with a new instance . This is done on purpose since this builder is stateful and you shouldn’t create requesters with different setups using the same instance.

The following code shows a typical example:

@Service
public class MyService {

    private final Mono<RSocketRequester> rsocketRequester;

    public MyService(RSocketRequester.Builder rsocketRequesterBuilder) {
        this.rsocketRequester = rsocketRequesterBuilder
                .connectTcp("example.org", 9898).cache();
    }

    public Mono<User> someRSocketCall(String name) {
        return this.rsocketRequester.flatMap(req ->
                    req.route("user").data(name).retrieveMono(User.class));
    }

}

10. Security

If Spring Security is on the classpath, then web applications are secured by default. Spring Boot relies on Spring Security’s content-negotiation strategy to determine whether to use httpBasic or formLogin. To add method-level security to a web application, you can also add @EnableGlobalMethodSecurity with your desired settings. Additional information can be found in the Spring Security Reference Guide.

The default UserDetailsService has a single user. The user name is user, and the password is random and is printed at INFO level when the application starts, as shown in the following example:

Using generated security password: 78fa095d-3f4c-48b1-ad50-e24c31d5cf35
If you fine-tune your logging configuration, ensure that the org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.security category is set to log INFO-level messages. Otherwise, the default password is not printed.

You can change the username and password by providing a spring.security.user.name and spring.security.user.password.

The basic features you get by default in a web application are:

  • A UserDetailsService (or ReactiveUserDetailsService in case of a WebFlux application) bean with in-memory store and a single user with a generated password (see SecurityProperties.User for the properties of the user).

  • Form-based login or HTTP Basic security (depending on the Accept header in the request) for the entire application (including actuator endpoints if actuator is on the classpath).

  • A DefaultAuthenticationEventPublisher for publishing authentication events.

You can provide a different AuthenticationEventPublisher by adding a bean for it.

10.1. MVC Security

The default security configuration is implemented in SecurityAutoConfiguration and UserDetailsServiceAutoConfiguration. SecurityAutoConfiguration imports SpringBootWebSecurityConfiguration for web security and UserDetailsServiceAutoConfiguration configures authentication, which is also relevant in non-web applications. To switch off the default web application security configuration completely or to combine multiple Spring Security components such as OAuth 2 Client and Resource Server, add a bean of type WebSecurityConfigurerAdapter (doing so does not disable the UserDetailsService configuration or Actuator’s security).

To also switch off the UserDetailsService configuration, you can add a bean of type UserDetailsService, AuthenticationProvider, or AuthenticationManager.

Access rules can be overridden by adding a custom WebSecurityConfigurerAdapter. Spring Boot provides convenience methods that can be used to override access rules for actuator endpoints and static resources. EndpointRequest can be used to create a RequestMatcher that is based on the management.endpoints.web.base-path property. PathRequest can be used to create a RequestMatcher for resources in commonly used locations.

10.2. WebFlux Security

Similar to Spring MVC applications, you can secure your WebFlux applications by adding the spring-boot-starter-security dependency. The default security configuration is implemented in ReactiveSecurityAutoConfiguration and UserDetailsServiceAutoConfiguration. ReactiveSecurityAutoConfiguration imports WebFluxSecurityConfiguration for web security and UserDetailsServiceAutoConfiguration configures authentication, which is also relevant in non-web applications. To switch off the default web application security configuration completely, you can add a bean of type WebFilterChainProxy (doing so does not disable the UserDetailsService configuration or Actuator’s security).

To also switch off the UserDetailsService configuration, you can add a bean of type ReactiveUserDetailsService or ReactiveAuthenticationManager.

Access rules and the use of multiple Spring Security components such as OAuth 2 Client and Resource Server can be configured by adding a custom SecurityWebFilterChain bean. Spring Boot provides convenience methods that can be used to override access rules for actuator endpoints and static resources. EndpointRequest can be used to create a ServerWebExchangeMatcher that is based on the management.endpoints.web.base-path property.

PathRequest can be used to create a ServerWebExchangeMatcher for resources in commonly used locations.

For example, you can customize your security configuration by adding something like:

@Bean
public SecurityWebFilterChain springSecurityFilterChain(ServerHttpSecurity http) {
    return http
        .authorizeExchange()
            .matchers(PathRequest.toStaticResources().atCommonLocations()).permitAll()
            .pathMatchers("/foo", "/bar")
                .authenticated().and()
            .formLogin().and()
        .build();
}

10.3. OAuth2

OAuth2 is a widely used authorization framework that is supported by Spring.

10.3.1. Client

If you have spring-security-oauth2-client on your classpath, you can take advantage of some auto-configuration to set up an OAuth2/Open ID Connect clients. This configuration makes use of the properties under OAuth2ClientProperties. The same properties are applicable to both servlet and reactive applications.

You can register multiple OAuth2 clients and providers under the spring.security.oauth2.client prefix, as shown in the following example:

spring.security.oauth2.client.registration.my-client-1.client-id=abcd
spring.security.oauth2.client.registration.my-client-1.client-secret=password
spring.security.oauth2.client.registration.my-client-1.client-name=Client for user scope
spring.security.oauth2.client.registration.my-client-1.provider=my-oauth-provider
spring.security.oauth2.client.registration.my-client-1.scope=user
spring.security.oauth2.client.registration.my-client-1.redirect-uri=https://my-redirect-uri.com
spring.security.oauth2.client.registration.my-client-1.client-authentication-method=basic
spring.security.oauth2.client.registration.my-client-1.authorization-grant-type=authorization_code

spring.security.oauth2.client.registration.my-client-2.client-id=abcd
spring.security.oauth2.client.registration.my-client-2.client-secret=password
spring.security.oauth2.client.registration.my-client-2.client-name=Client for email scope
spring.security.oauth2.client.registration.my-client-2.provider=my-oauth-provider
spring.security.oauth2.client.registration.my-client-2.scope=email
spring.security.oauth2.client.registration.my-client-2.redirect-uri=https://my-redirect-uri.com
spring.security.oauth2.client.registration.my-client-2.client-authentication-method=basic
spring.security.oauth2.client.registration.my-client-2.authorization-grant-type=authorization_code

spring.security.oauth2.client.provider.my-oauth-provider.authorization-uri=https://my-auth-server/oauth/authorize
spring.security.oauth2.client.provider.my-oauth-provider.token-uri=https://my-auth-server/oauth/token
spring.security.oauth2.client.provider.my-oauth-provider.user-info-uri=https://my-auth-server/userinfo
spring.security.oauth2.client.provider.my-oauth-provider.user-info-authentication-method=header
spring.security.oauth2.client.provider.my-oauth-provider.jwk-set-uri=https://my-auth-server/token_keys
spring.security.oauth2.client.provider.my-oauth-provider.user-name-attribute=name

For OpenID Connect providers that support OpenID Connect discovery, the configuration can be further simplified. The provider needs to be configured with an issuer-uri which is the URI that the it asserts as its Issuer Identifier. For example, if the issuer-uri provided is "https://example.com", then an OpenID Provider Configuration Request will be made to "https://example.com/.well-known/openid-configuration". The result is expected to be an OpenID Provider Configuration Response. The following example shows how an OpenID Connect Provider can be configured with the issuer-uri:

spring.security.oauth2.client.provider.oidc-provider.issuer-uri=https://dev-123456.oktapreview.com/oauth2/default/

By default, Spring Security’s OAuth2LoginAuthenticationFilter only processes URLs matching /login/oauth2/code/*. If you want to customize the redirect-uri to use a different pattern, you need to provide configuration to process that custom pattern. For example, for servlet applications, you can add your own WebSecurityConfigurerAdapter that resembles the following:

public class OAuth2LoginSecurityConfig extends WebSecurityConfigurerAdapter {

    @Override
    protected void configure(HttpSecurity http) throws Exception {
        http
            .authorizeRequests()
                .anyRequest().authenticated()
                .and()
            .oauth2Login()
                .redirectionEndpoint()
                    .baseUri("/custom-callback");
    }
}
OAuth2 client registration for common providers

For common OAuth2 and OpenID providers, including Google, Github, Facebook, and Okta, we provide a set of provider defaults (google, github, facebook, and okta, respectively).

If you do not need to customize these providers, you can set the provider attribute to the one for which you need to infer defaults. Also, if the key for the client registration matches a default supported provider, Spring Boot infers that as well.

In other words, the two configurations in the following example use the Google provider:

spring.security.oauth2.client.registration.my-client.client-id=abcd
spring.security.oauth2.client.registration.my-client.client-secret=password
spring.security.oauth2.client.registration.my-client.provider=google

spring.security.oauth2.client.registration.google.client-id=abcd
spring.security.oauth2.client.registration.google.client-secret=password

10.3.2. Resource Server

If you have spring-security-oauth2-resource-server on your classpath, Spring Boot can set up an OAuth2 Resource Server. For JWT configuration, a JWK Set URI or OIDC Issuer URI needs to be specified, as shown in the following examples:

spring.security.oauth2.resourceserver.jwt.jwk-set-uri=https://example.com/oauth2/default/v1/keys
spring.security.oauth2.resourceserver.jwt.issuer-uri=https://dev-123456.oktapreview.com/oauth2/default/
If the authorization server does not support a JWK Set URI, you can configure the resource server with the Public Key used for verifying the signature of the JWT. This can be done using the spring.security.oauth2.resourceserver.jwt.public-key-location property, where the value needs to point to a file containing the public key in the PEM-encoded x509 format.

The same properties are applicable for both servlet and reactive applications.

Alternatively, you can define your own JwtDecoder bean for servlet applications or a ReactiveJwtDecoder for reactive applications.

In cases where opaque tokens are used instead of JWTs, you can configure the following properties to validate tokens via introspection:

spring.security.oauth2.resourceserver.opaquetoken.introspection-uri=https://example.com/check-token
spring.security.oauth2.resourceserver.opaquetoken.client-id=my-client-id
spring.security.oauth2.resourceserver.opaquetoken.client-secret=my-client-secret

Again, the same properties are applicable for both servlet and reactive applications.

Alternatively, you can define your own OpaqueTokenIntrospector bean for servlet applications or a ReactiveOpaqueTokenIntrospector for reactive applications.

10.3.3. Authorization Server

Currently, Spring Security does not provide support for implementing an OAuth 2.0 Authorization Server. However, this functionality is available from the Spring Security OAuth project, which will eventually be superseded by Spring Security completely. Until then, you can use the spring-security-oauth2-autoconfigure module to easily set up an OAuth 2.0 authorization server; see its documentation for instructions.

10.4. SAML 2.0

10.4.1. Relying Party

If you have spring-security-saml2-service-provider on your classpath, you can take advantage of some auto-configuration to set up a SAML 2.0 Relying Party. This configuration makes use of the properties under Saml2RelyingPartyProperties.

A relying party registration represents a paired configuration between an Identity Provider, IDP, and a Service Provider, SP. You can register multiple relying parties under the spring.security.saml2.relyingparty prefix, as shown in the following example:

spring.security.saml2.relyingparty.registration.my-relying-party1.signing.credentials[0].private-key-location=path-to-private-key
spring.security.saml2.relyingparty.registration.my-relying-party1.signing.credentials[0].certificate-location=path-to-certificate
spring.security.saml2.relyingparty.registration.my-relying-party1.identityprovider.verification.credentials[0].certificate-location=path-to-verification-cert
spring.security.saml2.relyingparty.registration.my-relying-party1.identityprovider.entity-id=remote-idp-entity-id1
spring.security.saml2.relyingparty.registration.my-relying-party1.identityprovider.sso-url=https://remoteidp1.sso.url

spring.security.saml2.relyingparty.registration.my-relying-party2.signing.credentials[0].private-key-location=path-to-private-key
spring.security.saml2.relyingparty.registration.my-relying-party2.signing.credentials[0].certificate-location=path-to-certificate
spring.security.saml2.relyingparty.registration.my-relying-party2.identityprovider.verification.credentials[0].certificate-location=path-to-other-verification-cert
spring.security.saml2.relyingparty.registration.my-relying-party2.identityprovider.entity-id=remote-idp-entity-id2
spring.security.saml2.relyingparty.registration.my-relying-party2.identityprovider.sso-url=https://remoteidp2.sso.url

10.5. Actuator Security

For security purposes, all actuators other than /health and /info are disabled by default. The management.endpoints.web.exposure.include property can be used to enable the actuators.

If Spring Security is on the classpath and no other WebSecurityConfigurerAdapter is present, all actuators other than /health and /info are secured by Spring Boot auto-configuration. If you define a custom WebSecurityConfigurerAdapter, Spring Boot auto-configuration will back off and you will be in full control of actuator access rules.

Before setting the management.endpoints.web.exposure.include, ensure that the exposed actuators do not contain sensitive information and/or are secured by placing them behind a firewall or by something like Spring Security.

10.5.1. Cross Site Request Forgery Protection

Since Spring Boot relies on Spring Security’s defaults, CSRF protection is turned on by default. This means that the actuator endpoints that require a POST (shutdown and loggers endpoints), PUT or DELETE will get a 403 forbidden error when the default security configuration is in use.

We recommend disabling CSRF protection completely only if you are creating a service that is used by non-browser clients.

Additional information about CSRF protection can be found in the Spring Security Reference Guide.

11. Working with SQL Databases

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

11.1. Configure a DataSource

Java’s javax.sql.DataSource interface provides a standard method of working with database connections. Traditionally, a 'DataSource' uses a URL along with some credentials to establish a database connection.

See the “How-to” section for more advanced examples, typically to take full control over the configuration of the DataSource.

11.1.1. Embedded Database Support

It is often convenient to develop applications by using an in-memory embedded database. Obviously, in-memory databases do not provide persistent storage. You need to populate your database when your application starts and be prepared to throw away data when your application ends.

The “How-to” section includes a section on how to initialize a database.

Spring Boot can auto-configure embedded H2, HSQL, and Derby databases. You need not provide any connection URLs. You need only include a build dependency to the embedded database that you want to use.

If you are using this feature in your tests, you may notice that the same database is reused by your whole test suite regardless of the number of application contexts that you use. If you want to make sure that each context has a separate embedded database, you should set spring.datasource.generate-unique-name to true.

For example, the typical POM dependencies would be as follows:

<dependency>
    <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
    <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-data-jpa</artifactId>
</dependency>
<dependency>
    <groupId>org.hsqldb</groupId>
    <artifactId>hsqldb</artifactId>
    <scope>runtime</scope>
</dependency>
You need a dependency on spring-jdbc for an embedded database to be auto-configured. In this example, it is pulled in transitively through spring-boot-starter-data-jpa.
If, for whatever reason, you do configure the connection URL for an embedded database, take care to ensure that the database’s automatic shutdown is disabled. If you use H2, you should use DB_CLOSE_ON_EXIT=FALSE to do so. If you use HSQLDB, you should ensure that shutdown=true is not used. Disabling the database’s automatic shutdown lets Spring Boot control when the database is closed, thereby ensuring that it happens once access to the database is no longer needed.

11.1.2. Connection to a Production Database

Production database connections can also be auto-configured by using a pooling DataSource. Spring Boot uses the following algorithm for choosing a specific implementation:

  1. We prefer HikariCP for its performance and concurrency. If HikariCP is available, we always choose it.

  2. Otherwise, if the Tomcat pooling DataSource is available, we use it.

  3. If neither HikariCP nor the Tomcat pooling datasource are available and if Commons DBCP2 is available, we use it.

If you use the spring-boot-starter-jdbc or spring-boot-starter-data-jpa “starters”, you automatically get a dependency to HikariCP.

You can bypass that algorithm completely and specify the connection pool to use by setting the spring.datasource.type property. This is especially important if you run your application in a Tomcat container, as tomcat-jdbc is provided by default.
Additional connection pools can always be configured manually. If you define your own DataSource bean, auto-configuration does not occur.

DataSource configuration is controlled by external configuration properties in spring.datasource.*. For example, you might declare the following section in application.properties:

spring.datasource.url=jdbc:mysql://localhost/test
spring.datasource.username=dbuser
spring.datasource.password=dbpass
spring.datasource.driver-class-name=com.mysql.jdbc.Driver
You should at least specify the URL by setting the spring.datasource.url property. Otherwise, Spring Boot tries to auto-configure an embedded database.
You often do not need to specify the driver-class-name, since Spring Boot can deduce it for most databases from the url.
For a pooling DataSource to be created, we need to be able to verify that a valid Driver class is available, so we check for that before doing anything. In other words, if you set spring.datasource.driver-class-name=com.mysql.jdbc.Driver, then that class has to be loadable.

See DataSourceProperties for more of the supported options. These are the standard options that work regardless of the actual implementation. It is also possible to fine-tune implementation-specific settings by using their respective prefix (spring.datasource.hikari.*, spring.datasource.tomcat.*, and spring.datasource.dbcp2.*). Refer to the documentation of the connection pool implementation you are using for more details.

For instance, if you use the Tomcat connection pool, you could customize many additional settings, as shown in the following example:

# Number of ms to wait before throwing an exception if no connection is available.
spring.datasource.tomcat.max-wait=10000

# Maximum number of active connections that can be allocated from this pool at the same time.
spring.datasource.tomcat.max-active=50

# Validate the connection before borrowing it from the pool.
spring.datasource.tomcat.test-on-borrow=true

11.1.3. Connection to a JNDI DataSource

If you deploy your Spring Boot application to an Application Server, you might want to configure and manage your DataSource by using your Application Server’s built-in features and access it by using JNDI.

The spring.datasource.jndi-name property can be used as an alternative to the spring.datasource.url, spring.datasource.username, and spring.datasource.password properties to access the DataSource from a specific JNDI location. For example, the following section in application.properties shows how you can access a JBoss AS defined DataSource:

spring.datasource.jndi-name=java:jboss/datasources/customers

11.2. Using JdbcTemplate

Spring’s JdbcTemplate and NamedParameterJdbcTemplate classes are auto-configured, and you can @Autowire them directly into your own beans, as shown in the following example:

import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Autowired;
import org.springframework.jdbc.core.JdbcTemplate;
import org.springframework.stereotype.Component;

@Component
public class MyBean {

    private final JdbcTemplate jdbcTemplate;

    @Autowired
    public MyBean(JdbcTemplate jdbcTemplate) {
        this.jdbcTemplate = jdbcTemplate;
    }

    // ...

}

You can customize some properties of the template by using the spring.jdbc.template.* properties, as shown in the following example:

spring.jdbc.template.max-rows=500
The NamedParameterJdbcTemplate reuses the same JdbcTemplate instance behind the scenes. If more than one JdbcTemplate is defined and no primary candidate exists, the NamedParameterJdbcTemplate is not auto-configured.

11.3. JPA and Spring Data JPA

The Java Persistence API is a standard technology that lets you “map” objects to relational databases. The spring-boot-starter-data-jpa POM provides a quick way to get started. It provides the following key dependencies:

  • Hibernate: One of the most popular JPA implementations.

  • Spring Data JPA: Helps you to implement JPA-based repositories.

  • Spring ORM: Core ORM support from the Spring Framework.

We do not go into too many details of JPA or Spring Data here. You can follow the “Accessing Data with JPA” guide from spring.io and read the Spring Data JPA and Hibernate reference documentation.

11.3.1. Entity Classes

Traditionally, JPA “Entity” classes are specified in a persistence.xml file. With Spring Boot, this file is not necessary and “Entity Scanning” is used instead. By default, all packages below your main configuration class (the one annotated with @EnableAutoConfiguration or @SpringBootApplication) are searched.

Any classes annotated with @Entity, @Embeddable, or @MappedSuperclass are considered. A typical entity class resembles the following example:

package com.example.myapp.domain;

import java.io.Serializable;
import javax.persistence.*;

@Entity
public class City implements Serializable {

    @Id
    @GeneratedValue
    private Long id;

    @Column(nullable = false)
    private String name;

    @Column(nullable = false)
    private String state;

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

    protected City() {
        // no-args constructor required by JPA spec
        // this one is protected since it shouldn't be used directly
    }

    public City(String name, String state) {
        this.name = name;
        this.state = state;
    }

    public String getName() {
        return this.name;
    }

    public String getState() {
        return this.state;
    }

    // ... etc

}
You can customize entity scanning locations by using the @EntityScan annotation. See the “howto.html” how-to.

11.3.2. Spring Data JPA Repositories

Spring Data JPA repositories are interfaces that you can define to access data. JPA queries are created automatically from your method names. For example, a CityRepository interface might declare a findAllByState(String state) method to find all the cities in a given state.

For more complex queries, you can annotate your method with Spring Data’s Query annotation.

Spring Data repositories usually extend from the Repository or CrudRepository interfaces. If you use auto-configuration, repositories are searched from the package containing your main configuration class (the one annotated with @EnableAutoConfiguration or @SpringBootApplication) down.

The following example shows a typical Spring Data repository interface definition:

package com.example.myapp.domain;

import org.springframework.data.domain.*;
import org.springframework.data.repository.*;

public interface CityRepository extends Repository<City, Long> {

    Page<City> findAll(Pageable pageable);

    City findByNameAndStateAllIgnoringCase(String name, String state);

}

Spring Data JPA repositories support three different modes of bootstrapping: default, deferred, and lazy. To enable deferred or lazy bootstrapping, set the spring.data.jpa.repositories.bootstrap-mode property to deferred or lazy respectively. When using deferred or lazy bootstrapping, the auto-configured EntityManagerFactoryBuilder will use the context’s AsyncTaskExecutor, if any, as the bootstrap executor. If more than one exists, the one named applicationTaskExecutor will be used.

We have barely scratched the surface of Spring Data JPA. For complete details, see the Spring Data JPA reference documentation.

11.3.3. Creating and Dropping JPA Databases

By default, JPA databases are automatically created only if you use an embedded database (H2, HSQL, or Derby). You can explicitly configure JPA settings by using spring.jpa.* properties. For example, to create and drop tables you can add the following line to your application.properties:

spring.jpa.hibernate.ddl-auto=create-drop
Hibernate’s own internal property name for this (if you happen to remember it better) is hibernate.hbm2ddl.auto. You can set it, along with other Hibernate native properties, by using spring.jpa.properties.* (the prefix is stripped before adding them to the entity manager). The following line shows an example of setting JPA properties for Hibernate: 
spring.jpa.properties.hibernate.globally_quoted_identifiers=true

The line in the preceding example passes a value of true for the hibernate.globally_quoted_identifiers property to the Hibernate entity manager.

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

11.3.4. Open EntityManager in View

If you are running a web application, Spring Boot by default registers OpenEntityManagerInViewInterceptor to apply the “Open EntityManager in View” pattern, to allow for lazy loading in web views. If you do not want this behavior, you should set spring.jpa.open-in-view to false in your application.properties.

11.4. Spring Data JDBC

Spring Data includes repository support for JDBC and will automatically generate SQL for the methods on CrudRepository. For more advanced queries, a @Query annotation is provided.

Spring Boot will auto-configure Spring Data’s JDBC repositories when the necessary dependencies are on the classpath. They can be added to your project with a single dependency on spring-boot-starter-data-jdbc. If necessary, you can take control of Spring Data JDBC’s configuration by adding the @EnableJdbcRepositories annotation or a JdbcConfiguration subclass to your application.

For complete details of Spring Data JDBC, please refer to the reference documentation.

11.5. Using H2’s Web Console

The H2 database provides a browser-based console that Spring Boot can auto-configure for you. The console is auto-configured when the following conditions are met:

If you are not using Spring Boot’s developer tools but would still like to make use of H2’s console, you can configure the spring.h2.console.enabled property with a value of true.
The H2 console is only intended for use during development, so you should take care to ensure that spring.h2.console.enabled is not set to true in production.

11.5.1. Changing the H2 Console’s Path

By default, the console is available at /h2-console. You can customize the console’s path by using the spring.h2.console.path property.

11.6. Using jOOQ

jOOQ Object Oriented Querying (jOOQ) is a popular product from Data Geekery which generates Java code from your database and lets you build type-safe SQL queries through its fluent API. Both the commercial and open source editions can be used with Spring Boot.

11.6.1. Code Generation

In order to use jOOQ type-safe queries, you need to generate Java classes from your database schema. You can follow the instructions in the jOOQ user manual. If you use the jooq-codegen-maven plugin and you also use the spring-boot-starter-parent “parent POM”, you can safely omit the plugin’s <version> tag. You can also use Spring Boot-defined version variables (such as h2.version) to declare the plugin’s database dependency. The following listing shows an example:

<plugin>
    <groupId>org.jooq</groupId>
    <artifactId>jooq-codegen-maven</artifactId>
    <executions>
        ...
    </executions>
    <dependencies>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>com.h2database</groupId>
            <artifactId>h2</artifactId>
            <version>${h2.version}</version>
        </dependency>
    </dependencies>
    <configuration>
        <jdbc>
            <driver>org.h2.Driver</driver>
            <url>jdbc:h2:~/yourdatabase</url>
        </jdbc>
        <generator>
            ...
        </generator>
    </configuration>
</plugin>

11.6.2. Using DSLContext

The fluent API offered by jOOQ is initiated through the org.jooq.DSLContext interface. Spring Boot auto-configures a DSLContext as a Spring Bean and connects it to your application DataSource. To use the DSLContext, you can @Autowire it, as shown in the following example:

@Component
public class JooqExample implements CommandLineRunner {

    private final DSLContext create;

    @Autowired
    public JooqExample(DSLContext dslContext) {
        this.create = dslContext;
    }

}
The jOOQ manual tends to use a variable named create to hold the DSLContext.

You can then use the DSLContext to construct your queries, as shown in the following example:

public List<GregorianCalendar> authorsBornAfter1980() {
    return this.create.selectFrom(AUTHOR)
        .where(AUTHOR.DATE_OF_BIRTH.greaterThan(new GregorianCalendar(1980, 0, 1)))
        .fetch(AUTHOR.DATE_OF_BIRTH);
}

11.6.3. jOOQ SQL Dialect

Unless the spring.jooq.sql-dialect property has been configured, Spring Boot determines the SQL dialect to use for your datasource. If Spring Boot could not detect the dialect, it uses DEFAULT.

Spring Boot can only auto-configure dialects supported by the open source version of jOOQ.

11.6.4. Customizing jOOQ

More advanced customizations can be achieved by defining your own @Bean definitions, which is used when the jOOQ Configuration is created. You can define beans for the following jOOQ Types:

  • ConnectionProvider

  • ExecutorProvider

  • TransactionProvider

  • RecordMapperProvider

  • RecordUnmapperProvider

  • Settings

  • RecordListenerProvider

  • ExecuteListenerProvider

  • VisitListenerProvider

  • TransactionListenerProvider

You can also create your own org.jooq.Configuration @Bean if you want to take complete control of the jOOQ configuration.

11.7. Using R2DBC

The Reactive Relational Database Connectivity (R2DBC) project brings reactive programming APIs to relational databases. R2DBC’s io.r2dbc.spi.Connection provides a standard method of working with non-blocking database connections. Connections are provided via a ConnectionFactory, similar to a DataSource with jdbc.

ConnectionFactory configuration is controlled by external configuration properties in spring.r2dbc.*. For example, you might declare the following section in application.properties:

spring.r2dbc.url=r2dbc:postgresql://localhost/test
spring.r2dbc.username=dbuser
spring.r2dbc.password=dbpass
You do not need to specify a driver class name, since Spring Boot obtains the driver from R2DBC’s Connection Factory discovery.
At least the url should be provided. Information specified in the URL takes precedence over individual properties, i.e. name, username, password and pooling options.
The “How-to” section includes a section on how to initialize a database.

To customize the connections created by a ConnectionFactory, i.e., set specific parameters that you do not want (or cannot) configure in your central database configuration, you can use a ConnectionFactoryOptionsBuilderCustomizer @Bean. The following example shows how to manually override the database port while the rest of the options is taken from the application configuration:

@Bean
public ConnectionFactoryOptionsBuilderCustomizer connectionFactoryPortCustomizer() {
    return (builder) -> builder.option(PORT, 5432);
}

The following examples shows how to set some PostgreSQL connection options:

@Bean
public ConnectionFactoryOptionsBuilderCustomizer postgresCustomizer() {
    Map<String, String> options = new HashMap<>();
    options.put("lock_timeout", "30s");
    options.put("statement_timeout", "60s");
    return (builder) -> builder.option(OPTIONS, options);
}

When a ConnectionFactory bean is available, the regular jdbc DataSource auto-configuration backs off.

11.7.1. Embedded Database Support

Similarly to the JDBC support, Spring Boot can automatically configure an embedded database for reactive usage. You need not provide any connection URLs. You need only include a build dependency to the embedded database that you want to use, as shown in the following example:

<dependency>
    <groupId>io.r2dbc</groupId>
    <artifactId>r2dbc-h2</artifactId>
    <scope>runtime</scope>
</dependency>

If you are using this feature in your tests, you may notice that the same database is reused by your whole test suite regardless of the number of application contexts that you use. If you want to make sure that each context has a separate embedded database, you should set spring.r2dbc.generate-unique-name to true.

11.7.2. Using DatabaseClient

Spring Data’s DatabaseClient class is auto-configured, and you can @Autowire it directly into your own beans, as shown in the following example:

import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Autowired;
import org.springframework.data.r2dbc.function.DatabaseClient;
import org.springframework.stereotype.Component;

@Component
public class MyBean {

    private final DatabaseClient databaseClient;

    @Autowired
    public MyBean(DatabaseClient databaseClient) {
        this.databaseClient = databaseClient;
    }

    // ...

}

11.7.3. Spring Data R2DBC Repositories

Spring Data R2DBC repositories are interfaces that you can define to access data. Queries are created automatically from your method names. For example, a CityRepository interface might declare a findAllByState(String state) method to find all the cities in a given state.

For more complex queries, you can annotate your method with Spring Data’s Query annotation.

Spring Data repositories usually extend from the Repository or CrudRepository interfaces. If you use auto-configuration, repositories are searched from the package containing your main configuration class (the one annotated with @EnableAutoConfiguration or @SpringBootApplication) down.

The following example shows a typical Spring Data repository interface definition:

package com.example.myapp.domain;

import org.springframework.data.domain.*;
import org.springframework.data.repository.*;
import reactor.core.publisher.Mono;

public interface CityRepository extends Repository<City, Long> {

    Mono<City> findByNameAndStateAllIgnoringCase(String name, String state);

}
We have barely scratched the surface of Spring Data R2DBC. For complete details, see the Spring Data R2DBC reference documentation.

12. Working with NoSQL Technologies

Spring Data provides additional projects that help you access a variety of NoSQL technologies, including:

Spring Boot provides auto-configuration for Redis, MongoDB, Neo4j, Elasticsearch, Solr Cassandra, Couchbase, and LDAP. You can make use of the other projects, but you must configure them yourself. Refer to the appropriate reference documentation at spring.io/projects/spring-data.

12.1. Redis

Redis is a cache, message broker, and richly-featured key-value store. Spring Boot offers basic auto-configuration for the Lettuce and Jedis client libraries and the abstractions on top of them provided by Spring Data Redis.

There is a spring-boot-starter-data-redis “Starter” for collecting the dependencies in a convenient way. By default, it uses Lettuce. That starter handles both traditional and reactive applications.

we also provide a spring-boot-starter-data-redis-reactive “Starter” for consistency with the other stores with reactive support.

12.1.1. Connecting to Redis

You can inject an auto-configured RedisConnectionFactory, StringRedisTemplate, or vanilla RedisTemplate instance as you would any other Spring Bean. By default, the instance tries to connect to a Redis server at localhost:6379. The following listing shows an example of such a bean:

@Component
public class MyBean {

    private StringRedisTemplate template;

    @Autowired
    public MyBean(StringRedisTemplate template) {
        this.template = template;
    }

    // ...

}
You can also register an arbitrary number of beans that implement LettuceClientConfigurationBuilderCustomizer for more advanced customizations. If you use Jedis, JedisClientConfigurationBuilderCustomizer is also available.

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

12.2. MongoDB

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

12.2.1. Connecting to a MongoDB Database

To access MongoDB databases, you can inject an auto-configured org.springframework.data.mongodb.MongoDatabaseFactory. By default, the instance tries to connect to a MongoDB server at mongodb://localhost/test. The following example shows how to connect to a MongoDB database:

import org.springframework.data.mongodb.MongoDatabaseFactory;
import com.mongodb.client.MongoDatabase;

@Component
public class MyBean {

    private final MongoDatabaseFactory mongo;

    @Autowired
    public MyBean(MongoDatabaseFactory mongo) {
        this.mongo = mongo;
    }

    // ...

    public void example() {
        MongoDatabase db = mongo.getMongoDatabase();
        // ...
    }

}

You can set the spring.data.mongodb.uri property to change the URL and configure additional settings such as the replica set, as shown in the following example:

spring.data.mongodb.uri=mongodb://user:[email protected]:12345,mongo2.example.com:23456/test

Alternatively, you can specify connection details using discrete properties. For example, you might declare the following settings in your application.properties:

spring.data.mongodb.host=mongoserver.example.com
spring.data.mongodb.port=27017
spring.data.mongodb.database=test
spring.data.mongodb.username=user
spring.data.mongodb.password=secret

If you have defined your own MongoClient, it will be used to auto-configure a suitable MongoDatabaseFactory.

If spring.data.mongodb.port is not specified, the default of 27017 is used. You could delete this line from the example shown earlier.
If you do not use Spring Data MongoDB, you can inject a MongoClient bean instead of using MongoDatabaseFactory. If you want to take complete control of establishing the MongoDB connection, you can also declare your own MongoDatabaseFactory or MongoClient bean.
If you are using the reactive driver, Netty is required for SSL. The auto-configuration configures this factory automatically if Netty is available and the factory to use hasn’t been customized already.

12.2.2. MongoTemplate

Spring Data MongoDB provides a MongoTemplate class that is very similar in its design to Spring’s JdbcTemplate. As with JdbcTemplate, Spring Boot auto-configures a bean for you to inject the template, as follows:

import org.springframework.data.mongodb.core.MongoTemplate;
import org.springframework.stereotype.Component;

@Component
public class MyBean {

    private final MongoTemplate mongoTemplate;

    public MyBean(MongoTemplate mongoTemplate) {
        this.mongoTemplate = mongoTemplate;
    }

    // ...

}

See the MongoOperations Javadoc for complete details.

12.2.3. Spring Data MongoDB Repositories

Spring Data includes repository support for MongoDB. As with the JPA repositories discussed earlier, the basic principle is that queries are constructed automatically, based on method names.

In fact, both Spring Data JPA and Spring Data MongoDB share the same common infrastructure. You could take the JPA example from earlier and, assuming that City is now a MongoDB data class rather than a JPA @Entity, it works in the same way, as shown in the following example:

package com.example.myapp.domain;

import org.springframework.data.domain.*;
import org.springframework.data.repository.*;

public interface CityRepository extends Repository<City, Long> {

    Page<City> findAll(Pageable pageable);

    City findByNameAndStateAllIgnoringCase(String name, String state);

}
You can customize document scanning locations by using the @EntityScan annotation.
For complete details of Spring Data MongoDB, including its rich object mapping technologies, refer to its reference documentation.

12.2.4. Embedded Mongo

Spring Boot offers auto-configuration for Embedded Mongo. To use it in your Spring Boot application, add a dependency on de.flapdoodle.embed:de.flapdoodle.embed.mongo.

The port that Mongo listens on can be configured by setting the spring.data.mongodb.port property. To use a randomly allocated free port, use a value of 0. The MongoClient created by MongoAutoConfiguration is automatically configured to use the randomly allocated port.

If you do not configure a custom port, the embedded support uses a random port (rather than 27017) by default.

If you have SLF4J on the classpath, the output produced by Mongo is automatically routed to a logger named org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.mongo.embedded.EmbeddedMongo.

You can declare your own IMongodConfig and IRuntimeConfig beans to take control of the Mongo instance’s configuration and logging routing. The download configuration can be customized by declaring a DownloadConfigBuilderCustomizer bean.

12.3. Neo4j

Neo4j is an open-source NoSQL graph database that uses a rich data model of nodes connected by first class relationships, which is better suited for connected big data than traditional RDBMS approaches. Spring Boot offers several conveniences for working with Neo4j, including the spring-boot-starter-data-neo4j “Starter”.

12.3.1. Connecting to a Neo4j Database

To access a Neo4j server, you can inject an auto-configured org.neo4j.ogm.session.Session. By default, the instance tries to connect to a Neo4j server at localhost:7687 using the Bolt protocol. The following example shows how to inject a Neo4j Session:

@Component
public class MyBean {

    private final Session session;

    @Autowired
    public MyBean(Session session) {
        this.session = session;
    }

    // ...

}

You can configure the uri and credentials to use by setting the spring.data.neo4j.* properties, as shown in the following example:

spring.data.neo4j.uri=bolt://my-server:7687
spring.data.neo4j.username=neo4j
spring.data.neo4j.password=secret

You can take full control over the session creation by adding either an org.neo4j.ogm.config.Configuration bean or an org.neo4j.ogm.session.SessionFactory bean.

12.3.2. Using the Embedded Mode

If you add org.neo4j:neo4j-ogm-embedded-driver to the dependencies of your application, Spring Boot automatically configures an in-process embedded instance of Neo4j that does not persist any data when your application shuts down.

As the embedded Neo4j OGM driver does not provide the Neo4j kernel itself, you have to declare org.neo4j:neo4j as dependency yourself. Refer to the Neo4j OGM documentation for a list of compatible versions.

The embedded driver takes precedence over the other drivers when there are multiple drivers on the classpath. You can explicitly disable the embedded mode by setting spring.data.neo4j.embedded.enabled=false.

Data Neo4j Tests automatically make use of an embedded Neo4j instance if the embedded driver and Neo4j kernel are on the classpath as described above.

You can enable persistence for the embedded mode by providing a path to a database file in your configuration, e.g. spring.data.neo4j.uri=file://var/tmp/graph.db.

12.3.3. Using Native Types

Neo4j-OGM can map some types, like those in java.time.*, to String-based properties or to one of the native types that Neo4j provides. For backwards compatibility reasons the default for Neo4j-OGM is to use a String-based representation. To use native types, add a dependency on either org.neo4j:neo4j-ogm-bolt-native-types or org.neo4j:neo4j-ogm-embedded-native-types, and configure the spring.data.neo4j.use-native-types property as shown in the following example:

spring.data.neo4j.use-native-types=true

12.3.4. Neo4jSession

By default, if you are running a web application, the session is bound to the thread for the entire processing of the request (that is, it uses the "Open Session in View" pattern). If you do not want this behavior, add the following line to your application.properties file:

spring.data.neo4j.open-in-view=false

12.3.5. Spring Data Neo4j Repositories

Spring Data includes repository support for Neo4j.

Spring Data Neo4j shares the common infrastructure with Spring Data JPA as many other Spring Data modules do. You could take the JPA example from earlier and define City as Neo4j OGM @NodeEntity rather than JPA @Entity and the repository abstraction works in the same way, as shown in the following example:

package com.example.myapp.domain;

import java.util.Optional;

import org.springframework.data.neo4j.repository.*;

public interface CityRepository extends Neo4jRepository<City, Long> {

    Optional<City> findOneByNameAndState(String name, String state);

}

The spring-boot-starter-data-neo4j “Starter” enables the repository support as well as transaction management. You can customize the locations to look for repositories and entities by using @EnableNeo4jRepositories and @EntityScan respectively on a @Configuration-bean.

For complete details of Spring Data Neo4j, including its object mapping technologies, refer to the reference documentation.

12.4. Solr

Apache Solr is a search engine. Spring Boot offers basic auto-configuration for the Solr 5 client library and the abstractions on top of it provided by Spring Data Solr. There is a spring-boot-starter-data-solr “Starter” for collecting the dependencies in a convenient way.

12.4.1. Connecting to Solr

You can inject an auto-configured SolrClient instance as you would any other Spring bean. By default, the instance tries to connect to a server at localhost:8983/solr. The following example shows how to inject a Solr bean:

@Component
public class MyBean {

    private SolrClient solr;

    @Autowired
    public MyBean(SolrClient solr) {
        this.solr = solr;
    }

    // ...

}

If you add your own @Bean of type SolrClient, it replaces the default.

12.4.2. Spring Data Solr Repositories

Spring Data includes repository support for Apache Solr. As with the JPA repositories discussed earlier, the basic principle is that queries are automatically constructed for you based on method names.

In fact, both Spring Data JPA and Spring Data Solr share the same common infrastructure. You could take the JPA example from earlier and, assuming that City is now a @SolrDocument class rather than a JPA @Entity, it works in the same way.

IP: For complete details of Spring Data Solr, refer to the reference documentation.

12.5. Elasticsearch

Elasticsearch is an open source, distributed, RESTful search and analytics engine. Spring Boot offers basic auto-configuration for Elasticsearch.

Spring Boot supports several clients:

  • The official Java "Low Level" and "High Level" REST clients

  • The ReactiveElasticsearchClient provided by Spring Data Elasticsearch

Spring Boot provides a dedicated “Starter”, spring-boot-starter-data-elasticsearch.

12.5.1. Connecting to Elasticsearch using REST clients

Elasticsearch ships two different REST clients that you can use to query a cluster: the "Low Level" client and the "High Level" client.

If you have the org.elasticsearch.client:elasticsearch-rest-client dependency on the classpath, Spring Boot will auto-configure and register a RestClient bean that by default targets localhost:9200. You can further tune how RestClient is configured, as shown in the following example:

spring.elasticsearch.rest.uris=https://search.example.com:9200
spring.elasticsearch.rest.read-timeout=10s
spring.elasticsearch.rest.username=user
spring.elasticsearch.rest.password=secret

You can also register an arbitrary number of beans that implement RestClientBuilderCustomizer for more advanced customizations. To take full control over the registration, define a RestClient bean.

If you have the org.elasticsearch.client:elasticsearch-rest-high-level-client dependency on the classpath, Spring Boot will auto-configure a RestHighLevelClient, which wraps any existing RestClient bean, reusing its HTTP configuration.

12.5.2. Connecting to Elasticsearch using Reactive REST clients

Spring Data Elasticsearch ships ReactiveElasticsearchClient for querying Elasticsearch instances in a reactive fashion. It is built on top of WebFlux’s WebClient, so both spring-boot-starter-elasticsearch and spring-boot-starter-webflux dependencies are useful to enable this support.

By default, Spring Boot will auto-configure and register a ReactiveElasticsearchClient bean that targets localhost:9200. You can further tune how it is configured, as shown in the following example:

spring.data.elasticsearch.client.reactive.endpoints=search.example.com:9200
spring.data.elasticsearch.client.reactive.use-ssl=true
spring.data.elasticsearch.client.reactive.socket-timeout=10s
spring.data.elasticsearch.client.reactive.username=user
spring.data.elasticsearch.client.reactive.password=secret

If the configuration properties are not enough and you’d like to fully control the client configuration, you can register a custom ClientConfiguration bean.

12.5.3. Connecting to Elasticsearch by Using Spring Data

To connect to Elasticsearch, a RestHighLevelClient bean must be defined, auto-configured by Spring Boot or manually provided by the application (see previous sections). With this configuration in place, an ElasticsearchRestTemplate can be injected like any other Spring bean, as shown in the following example:

@Component
public class MyBean {

    private final ElasticsearchRestTemplate template;

    public MyBean(ElasticsearchRestTemplate template) {
        this.template = template;
    }

    // ...

}

In the presence of spring-data-elasticsearch and the required dependencies for using a WebClient (typically spring-boot-starter-webflux), Spring Boot can also auto-configure a ReactiveElasticsearchClient and a ReactiveElasticsearchTemplate as beans. They are the reactive equivalent of the other REST clients.

12.5.4. Spring Data Elasticsearch Repositories

Spring Data includes repository support for Elasticsearch. As with the JPA repositories discussed earlier, the basic principle is that queries are constructed for you automatically based on method names.

In fact, both Spring Data JPA and Spring Data Elasticsearch share the same common infrastructure. You could take the JPA example from earlier and, assuming that City is now an Elasticsearch @Document class rather than a JPA @Entity, it works in the same way.

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

Spring Boot supports both classic and reactive Elasticsearch repositories, using the ElasticsearchRestTemplate or ReactiveElasticsearchTemplate beans. Most likely those beans are auto-configured by Spring Boot given the required dependencies are present.

If you wish to use your own template for backing the Elasticsearch repositories, you can add your own ElasticsearchRestTemplate or ElasticsearchOperations @Bean, as long as it is named "elasticsearchTemplate". Same applies to ReactiveElasticsearchTemplate and ReactiveElasticsearchOperations, with the bean name "reactiveElasticsearchTemplate".

You can choose to disable the repositories support with the following property:

spring.data.elasticsearch.repositories.enabled=false

12.6. Cassandra

Cassandra is an open source, distributed database management system designed to handle large amounts of data across many commodity servers. Spring Boot offers auto-configuration for Cassandra and the abstractions on top of it provided by Spring Data Cassandra. There is a spring-boot-starter-data-cassandra “Starter” for collecting the dependencies in a convenient way.

12.6.1. Connecting to Cassandra

You can inject an auto-configured CassandraTemplate or a Cassandra CqlSession instance as you would with any other Spring Bean. The spring.data.cassandra.* properties can be used to customize the connection. Generally, you provide keyspace-name and contact-points as well the local datacenter name, as shown in the following example:

spring.data.cassandra.keyspace-name=mykeyspace
spring.data.cassandra.contact-points=cassandrahost1:9042,cassandrahost2:9042
spring.data.cassandra.local-datacenter=datacenter1

If the port is the same for all your contact points you can use a shortcut and only specify the host names, as shown in the following example:

spring.data.cassandra.keyspace-name=mykeyspace
spring.data.cassandra.contact-points=cassandrahost1,cassandrahost2
spring.data.cassandra.local-datacenter=datacenter1
Those two examples are identical as the port default to 9042. If you need to configure the port, use spring.data.cassandra.port.

You can also register an arbitrary number of beans that implement DriverConfigLoaderBuilderCustomizer for more advanced driver customizations. The CqlSession can be customized with a bean of type CqlSessionBuilderCustomizer.

If you’re using CqlSessionBuilder to create multiple CqlSession beans, keep in mind the builder is mutable so make sure to inject a fresh copy for each session.

The following code listing shows how to inject a Cassandra bean:

@Component
public class MyBean {

    private final CassandraTemplate template;

    public MyBean(CassandraTemplate template) {
        this.template = template;
    }

    // ...

}

If you add your own @Bean of type CassandraTemplate, it replaces the default.

12.6.2. Spring Data Cassandra Repositories

Spring Data includes basic repository support for Cassandra. Currently, this is more limited than the JPA repositories discussed earlier and needs to annotate finder methods with @Query.

For complete details of Spring Data Cassandra, refer to the reference documentation.

12.7. Couchbase

Couchbase is an open-source, distributed, multi-model NoSQL document-oriented database that is optimized for interactive applications. Spring Boot offers auto-configuration for Couchbase and the abstractions on top of it provided by Spring Data Couchbase. There are spring-boot-starter-data-couchbase and spring-boot-starter-data-couchbase-reactive “Starters” for collecting the dependencies in a convenient way.

12.7.1. Connecting to Couchbase

You can get a Cluster by adding the Couchbase SDK and some configuration. The spring.couchbase.* properties can be used to customize the connection. Generally, you provide the connection string, username, and password, as shown in the following example:

spring.couchbase.connection-string=couchbase://192.168.1.123
spring.couchbase.username=user
spring.couchbase.password=secret

It is also possible to customize some of the ClusterEnvironment settings. For instance, the following configuration changes the timeout to use to open a new Bucket and enables SSL support:

spring.couchbase.env.timeouts.connect=3000
spring.couchbase.env.ssl.key-store=/location/of/keystore.jks
spring.couchbase.env.ssl.key-store-password=secret
Check the spring.couchbase.env.* properties for more details. To take more control, one or more ClusterEnvironmentBuilderCustomizer beans can be used.

12.7.2. Spring Data Couchbase Repositories

Spring Data includes repository support for Couchbase. For complete details of Spring Data Couchbase, refer to the reference documentation.

You can inject an auto-configured CouchbaseTemplate instance as you would with any other Spring Bean, provided a CouchbaseClientFactory bean is available. This happens when a Cluster is availabe, as described above, and a bucket name as been specified:

spring.data.couchbase.bucket-name=my-bucket

The following examples shows how to inject a CouchbaseTemplate bean:

@Component
public class MyBean {

    private final CouchbaseTemplate template;

    @Autowired
    public MyBean(CouchbaseTemplate template) {
        this.template = template;
    }

    // ...

}

There are a few beans that you can define in your own configuration to override those provided by the auto-configuration:

  • A CouchbaseMappingContext @Bean with a name of couchbaseMappingContext.

  • A CustomConversions @Bean with a name of couchbaseCustomConversions.

  • A CouchbaseTemplate @Bean with a name of couchbaseTemplate.

To avoid hard-coding those names in your own config, you can reuse BeanNames provided by Spring Data Couchbase. For instance, you can customize the converters to use, as follows:

@Configuration(proxyBeanMethods = false)
public class SomeConfiguration {

    @Bean(BeanNames.COUCHBASE_CUSTOM_CONVERSIONS)
    public CustomConversions myCustomConversions() {
        return new CustomConversions(...);
    }

    // ...

}

12.8. LDAP

LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) is an open, vendor-neutral, industry standard application protocol for accessing and maintaining distributed directory information services over an IP network. Spring Boot offers auto-configuration for any compliant LDAP server as well as support for the embedded in-memory LDAP server from UnboundID.

LDAP abstractions are provided by Spring Data LDAP. There is a spring-boot-starter-data-ldap “Starter” for collecting the dependencies in a convenient way.

12.8.1. Connecting to an LDAP Server

To connect to an LDAP server, make sure you declare a dependency on the spring-boot-starter-data-ldap “Starter” or spring-ldap-core and then declare the URLs of your server in your application.properties, as shown in the following example:

spring.ldap.urls=ldap://myserver:1235
spring.ldap.username=admin
spring.ldap.password=secret

If you need to customize connection settings, you can use the spring.ldap.base and spring.ldap.base-environment properties.

An LdapContextSource is auto-configured based on these settings. If a DirContextAuthenticationStrategy bean is available, it is associated to the auto-configured LdapContextSource. If you need to customize it, for instance to use a PooledContextSource, you can still inject the auto-configured LdapContextSource. Make sure to flag your customized ContextSource as @Primary so that the auto-configured LdapTemplate uses it.

12.8.2. Spring Data LDAP Repositories

Spring Data includes repository support for LDAP. For complete details of Spring Data LDAP, refer to the reference documentation.

You can also inject an auto-configured LdapTemplate instance as you would with any other Spring Bean, as shown in the following example:

@Component
public class MyBean {

    private final LdapTemplate template;

    @Autowired
    public MyBean(LdapTemplate template) {
        this.template = template;
    }

    // ...

}

12.8.3. Embedded In-memory LDAP Server

For testing purposes, Spring Boot supports auto-configuration of an in-memory LDAP server from UnboundID. To configure the server, add a dependency to com.unboundid:unboundid-ldapsdk and declare a spring.ldap.embedded.base-dn property, as follows:

spring.ldap.embedded.base-dn=dc=spring,dc=io

It is possible to define multiple base-dn values, however, since distinguished names usually contain commas, they must be defined using the correct notation.

In yaml files, you can use the yaml list notation:

spring.ldap.embedded.base-dn:
  - dc=spring,dc=io
  - dc=pivotal,dc=io

In properties files, you must include the index as part of the property name:

spring.ldap.embedded.base-dn[0]=dc=spring,dc=io
spring.ldap.embedded.base-dn[1]=dc=pivotal,dc=io

By default, the server starts on a random port and triggers the regular LDAP support. There is no need to specify a spring.ldap.urls property.

If there is a schema.ldif file on your classpath, it is used to initialize the server. If you want to load the initialization script from a different resource, you can also use the spring.ldap.embedded.ldif property.

By default, a standard schema is used to validate LDIF files. You can turn off validation altogether by setting the spring.ldap.embedded.validation.enabled property. If you have custom attributes, you can use spring.ldap.embedded.validation.schema to define your custom attribute types or object classes.

12.9. InfluxDB

InfluxDB is an open-source time series database optimized for fast, high-availability storage and retrieval of time series data in fields such as operations monitoring, application metrics, Internet-of-Things sensor data, and real-time analytics.

12.9.1. Connecting to InfluxDB

Spring Boot auto-configures an InfluxDB instance, provided the influxdb-java client is on the classpath and the URL of the database is set, as shown in the following example:

spring.influx.url=https://172.0.0.1:8086

If the connection to InfluxDB requires a user and password, you can set the spring.influx.user and spring.influx.password properties accordingly.

InfluxDB relies on OkHttp. If you need to tune the http client InfluxDB uses behind the scenes, you can register an InfluxDbOkHttpClientBuilderProvider bean.

13. Caching

The Spring Framework provides support for transparently adding caching to an application. At its core, the abstraction applies caching to methods, thus reducing the number of executions based on the information available in the cache. The caching logic is applied transparently, without any interference to the invoker. Spring Boot auto-configures the cache infrastructure as long as caching support is enabled via the @EnableCaching annotation.

Check the relevant section of the Spring Framework reference for more details.

In a nutshell, to add caching to an operation of your service add the relevant annotation to its method, as shown in the following example:

import org.springframework.cache.annotation.Cacheable;
import org.springframework.stereotype.Component;

@Component
public class MathService {

    @Cacheable("piDecimals")
    public int computePiDecimal(int i) {
        // ...
    }

}

This example demonstrates the use of caching on a potentially costly operation. Before invoking computePiDecimal, the abstraction looks for an entry in the piDecimals cache that matches the i argument. If an entry is found, the content in the cache is immediately returned to the caller, and the method is not invoked. Otherwise, the method is invoked, and the cache is updated before returning the value.

You can also use the standard JSR-107 (JCache) annotations (such as @CacheResult) transparently. However, we strongly advise you to not mix and match the Spring Cache and JCache annotations.

If you do not add any specific cache library, Spring Boot auto-configures a simple provider that uses concurrent maps in memory. When a cache is required (such as piDecimals in the preceding example), this provider creates it for you. The simple provider is not really recommended for production usage, but it is great for getting started and making sure that you understand the features. When you have made up your mind about the cache provider to use, please make sure to read its documentation to figure out how to configure the caches that your application uses. Nearly all providers require you to explicitly configure every cache that you use in the application. Some offer a way to customize the default caches defined by the spring.cache.cache-names property.

It is also possible to transparently update or evict data from the cache.

13.1. Supported Cache Providers

The cache abstraction does not provide an actual store and relies on abstraction materialized by the org.springframework.cache.Cache and org.springframework.cache.CacheManager interfaces.

If you have not defined a bean of type CacheManager or a CacheResolver named cacheResolver (see CachingConfigurer), Spring Boot tries to detect the following providers (in the indicated order):

  1. Generic

  2. JCache (JSR-107) (EhCache 3, Hazelcast, Infinispan, and others)

  3. EhCache 2.x

  4. Hazelcast

  5. Infinispan

  6. Couchbase

  7. Redis

  8. Caffeine

  9. Simple

It is also possible to force a particular cache provider by setting the spring.cache.type property. Use this property if you need to disable caching altogether in certain environment (such as tests).
Use the spring-boot-starter-cache “Starter” to quickly add basic caching dependencies. The starter brings in spring-context-support. If you add dependencies manually, you must include spring-context-support in order to use the JCache, EhCache 2.x, or Caffeine support.

If the CacheManager is auto-configured by Spring Boot, you can further tune its configuration before it is fully initialized by exposing a bean that implements the CacheManagerCustomizer interface. The following example sets a flag to say that null values should be passed down to the underlying map:

@Bean
public CacheManagerCustomizer<ConcurrentMapCacheManager> cacheManagerCustomizer() {
    return new CacheManagerCustomizer<ConcurrentMapCacheManager>() {
        @Override
        public void customize(ConcurrentMapCacheManager cacheManager) {
            cacheManager.setAllowNullValues(false);
        }
    };
}
In the preceding example, an auto-configured ConcurrentMapCacheManager is expected. If that is not the case (either you provided your own config or a different cache provider was auto-configured), the customizer is not invoked at all. You can have as many customizers as you want, and you can also order them by using @Order or Ordered.

13.1.1. Generic

Generic caching is used if the context defines at least one org.springframework.cache.Cache bean. A CacheManager wrapping all beans of that type is created.

13.1.2. JCache (JSR-107)

JCache is bootstrapped through the presence of a javax.cache.spi.CachingProvider on the classpath (that is, a JSR-107 compliant caching library exists on the classpath), and the JCacheCacheManager is provided by the spring-boot-starter-cache “Starter”. Various compliant libraries are available, and Spring Boot provides dependency management for Ehcache 3, Hazelcast, and Infinispan. Any other compliant library can be added as well.

It might happen that more than one provider is present, in which case the provider must be explicitly specified. Even if the JSR-107 standard does not enforce a standardized way to define the location of the configuration file, Spring Boot does its best to accommodate setting a cache with implementation details, as shown in the following example:

# Only necessary if more than one provider is present
spring.cache.jcache.provider=com.acme.MyCachingProvider
spring.cache.jcache.config=classpath:acme.xml
When a cache library offers both a native implementation and JSR-107 support, Spring Boot prefers the JSR-107 support, so that the same features are available if you switch to a different JSR-107 implementation.
Spring Boot has general support for Hazelcast. If a single HazelcastInstance is available, it is automatically reused for the CacheManager as well, unless the spring.cache.jcache.config property is specified.

There are two ways to customize the underlying javax.cache.cacheManager:

  • Caches can be created on startup by setting the spring.cache.cache-names property. If a custom javax.cache.configuration.Configuration bean is defined, it is used to customize them.

  • org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.cache.JCacheManagerCustomizer beans are invoked with the reference of the CacheManager for full customization.

If a standard javax.cache.CacheManager bean is defined, it is wrapped automatically in an org.springframework.cache.CacheManager implementation that the abstraction expects. No further customization is applied to it.

13.1.3. EhCache 2.x

EhCache 2.x is used if a file named ehcache.xml can be found at the root of the classpath. If EhCache 2.x is found, the EhCacheCacheManager provided by the spring-boot-starter-cache “Starter” is used to bootstrap the cache manager. An alternate configuration file can be provided as well, as shown in the following example:

spring.cache.ehcache.config=classpath:config/another-config.xml

13.1.4. Hazelcast

Spring Boot has general support for Hazelcast. If a HazelcastInstance has been auto-configured, it is automatically wrapped in a CacheManager.

13.1.5. Infinispan

Infinispan has no default configuration file location, so it must be specified explicitly. Otherwise, the default bootstrap is used.

spring.cache.infinispan.config=infinispan.xml

Caches can be created on startup by setting the spring.cache.cache-names property. If a custom ConfigurationBuilder bean is defined, it is used to customize the caches.

The support of Infinispan in Spring Boot is restricted to the embedded mode and is quite basic. If you want more options, you should use the official Infinispan Spring Boot starter instead. See Infinispan’s documentation for more details.

13.1.6. Couchbase

If the Couchbase Java client and the couchbase-spring-cache implementation are available and Couchbase is configured, a CouchbaseCacheManager is auto-configured. It is also possible to create additional caches on startup by setting the spring.cache.cache-names property. These caches operate on the Bucket that was auto-configured. You can also create additional caches on another Bucket by using the customizer. Assume you need two caches (cache1 and cache2) on the "main" Bucket and one (cache3) cache with a custom time to live of 2 seconds on the “another” Bucket. You can create the first two caches through configuration, as follows:

spring.cache.cache-names=cache1,cache2

Then you can define a @Configuration class to configure the extra Bucket and the cache3 cache, as follows:

@Configuration(proxyBeanMethods = false)
public class CouchbaseCacheConfiguration {

    private final Cluster cluster;

    public CouchbaseCacheConfiguration(Cluster cluster) {
        this.cluster = cluster;
    }

    @Bean
    public Bucket anotherBucket() {
        return this.cluster.openBucket("another", "secret");
    }

    @Bean
    public CacheManagerCustomizer<CouchbaseCacheManager> cacheManagerCustomizer() {
        return c -> {
            c.prepareCache("cache3", CacheBuilder.newInstance(anotherBucket())
                    .withExpiration(2));
        };
    }

}

This sample configuration reuses the Cluster that was created through auto-configuration.

13.1.7. Redis

If Redis is available and configured, a RedisCacheManager is auto-configured. It is possible to create additional caches on startup by setting the spring.cache.cache-names property and cache defaults can be configured by using spring.cache.redis.* properties. For instance, the following configuration creates cache1 and cache2 caches with a time to live of 10 minutes:

spring.cache.cache-names=cache1,cache2
spring.cache.redis.time-to-live=600000
By default, a key prefix is added so that, if two separate caches use the same key, Redis does not have overlapping keys and cannot return invalid values. We strongly recommend keeping this setting enabled if you create your own RedisCacheManager.
You can take full control of the default configuration by adding a RedisCacheConfiguration @Bean of your own. This can be useful if you’re looking for customizing the default serialization strategy.

If you need more control over the configuration, consider registering a RedisCacheManagerBuilderCustomizer bean. The following example shows a customizer that configures a specific time to live for cache1 and cache2:

@Bean
public RedisCacheManagerBuilderCustomizer myRedisCacheManagerBuilderCustomizer() {
    return (builder) -> builder
            .withCacheConfiguration("cache1",
                    RedisCacheConfiguration.defaultCacheConfig().entryTtl(Duration.ofSeconds(10)))
            .withCacheConfiguration("cache2",
                    RedisCacheConfiguration.defaultCacheConfig().entryTtl(Duration.ofMinutes(1)));

}

13.1.8. Caffeine

Caffeine is a Java 8 rewrite of Guava’s cache that supersedes support for Guava. If Caffeine is present, a CaffeineCacheManager (provided by the spring-boot-starter-cache “Starter”) is auto-configured. Caches can be created on startup by setting the spring.cache.cache-names property and can be customized by one of the following (in the indicated order):

  1. A cache spec defined by spring.cache.caffeine.spec

  2. A com.github.benmanes.caffeine.cache.CaffeineSpec bean is defined

  3. A com.github.benmanes.caffeine.cache.Caffeine bean is defined

For instance, the following configuration creates cache1 and cache2 caches with a maximum size of 500 and a time to live of 10 minutes

spring.cache.cache-names=cache1,cache2
spring.cache.caffeine.spec=maximumSize=500,expireAfterAccess=600s

If a com.github.benmanes.caffeine.cache.CacheLoader bean is defined, it is automatically associated to the CaffeineCacheManager. Since the CacheLoader is going to be associated with all caches managed by the cache manager, it must be defined as CacheLoader<Object, Object>. The auto-configuration ignores any other generic type.

13.1.9. Simple

If none of the other providers can be found, a simple implementation using a ConcurrentHashMap as the cache store is configured. This is the default if no caching library is present in your application. By default, caches are created as needed, but you can restrict the list of available caches by setting the cache-names property. For instance, if you want only cache1 and cache2 caches, set the cache-names property as follows:

spring.cache.cache-names=cache1,cache2

If you do so and your application uses a cache not listed, then it fails at runtime when the cache is needed, but not on startup. This is similar to the way the "real" cache providers behave if you use an undeclared cache.

13.1.10. None

When @EnableCaching is present in your configuration, a suitable cache configuration is expected as well. If you need to disable caching altogether in certain environments, force the cache type to none to use a no-op implementation, as shown in the following example:

spring.cache.type=none

14. Messaging

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

14.1. JMS

The javax.jms.ConnectionFactory interface provides a standard method of creating a javax.jms.Connection for interacting with a JMS broker. Although Spring needs a ConnectionFactory to work with JMS, you generally need not use it directly yourself and can instead rely on higher level messaging abstractions. (See the relevant section of the Spring Framework reference documentation for details.) Spring Boot also auto-configures the necessary infrastructure to send and receive messages.

14.1.1. ActiveMQ Support

When ActiveMQ is available on the classpath, Spring Boot can also configure a ConnectionFactory. If the broker is present, an embedded broker is automatically started and configured (provided no broker URL is specified through configuration).

If you use spring-boot-starter-activemq, the necessary dependencies to connect or embed an ActiveMQ instance are provided, as is the Spring infrastructure to integrate with JMS.

ActiveMQ configuration is controlled by external configuration properties in spring.activemq.*. For example, you might declare the following section in application.properties:

spring.activemq.broker-url=tcp://192.168.1.210:9876
spring.activemq.user=admin
spring.activemq.password=secret

By default, a CachingConnectionFactory wraps the native ConnectionFactory with sensible settings that you can control by external configuration properties in spring.jms.*:

spring.jms.cache.session-cache-size=5

If you’d rather use native pooling, you can do so by adding a dependency to org.messaginghub:pooled-jms and configuring the JmsPoolConnectionFactory accordingly, as shown in the following example:

spring.activemq.pool.enabled=true
spring.activemq.pool.max-connections=50
See ActiveMQProperties for more of the supported options. You can also register an arbitrary number of beans that implement ActiveMQConnectionFactoryCustomizer for more advanced customizations.

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

14.1.2. Artemis Support

Spring Boot can auto-configure a ConnectionFactory when it detects that Artemis is available on the classpath. If the broker is present, an embedded broker is automatically started and configured (unless the mode property has been explicitly set). The supported modes are embedded (to make explicit that an embedded broker is required and that an error should occur if the broker is not available on the classpath) and native (to connect to a broker using the netty transport protocol). When the latter is configured, Spring Boot configures a ConnectionFactory that connects to a broker running on the local machine with the default settings.

If you use spring-boot-starter-artemis, the necessary dependencies to connect to an existing Artemis instance are provided, as well as the Spring infrastructure to integrate with JMS. Adding org.apache.activemq:artemis-jms-server to your application lets you use embedded mode.

Artemis configuration is controlled by external configuration properties in spring.artemis.*. For example, you might declare the following section in application.properties:

spring.artemis.mode=native
spring.artemis.host=192.168.1.210
spring.artemis.port=9876
spring.artemis.user=admin
spring.artemis.password=secret

When embedding the broker, you can choose if you want to enable persistence and list the destinations that should be made available. These can be specified as a comma-separated list to create them with the default options, or you can define bean(s) of type org.apache.activemq.artemis.jms.server.config.JMSQueueConfiguration or org.apache.activemq.artemis.jms.server.config.TopicConfiguration, for advanced queue and topic configurations, respectively.

By default, a CachingConnectionFactory wraps the native ConnectionFactory with sensible settings that you can control by external configuration properties in spring.jms.*:

spring.jms.cache.session-cache-size=5

If you’d rather use native pooling, you can do so by adding a dependency to org.messaginghub:pooled-jms and configuring the JmsPoolConnectionFactory accordingly, as shown in the following example:

spring.artemis.pool.enabled=true
spring.artemis.pool.max-connections=50

See ArtemisProperties for more supported options.

No JNDI lookup is involved, and destinations are resolved against their names, using either the name attribute in the Artemis configuration or the names provided through configuration.

14.1.3. Using a JNDI ConnectionFactory

If you are running your application in an application server, Spring Boot tries to locate a JMS ConnectionFactory by using JNDI. By default, the java:/JmsXA and java:/XAConnectionFactory location are checked. You can use the spring.jms.jndi-name property if you need to specify an alternative location, as shown in the following example:

spring.jms.jndi-name=java:/MyConnectionFactory

14.1.4. Sending a Message

Spring’s JmsTemplate is auto-configured, and you can autowire it directly into your own beans, as shown in the following example:

import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Autowired;
import org.springframework.jms.core.JmsTemplate;
import org.springframework.stereotype.Component;

@Component
public class MyBean {

    private final JmsTemplate jmsTemplate;

    @Autowired
    public MyBean(JmsTemplate jmsTemplate) {
        this.jmsTemplate = jmsTemplate;
    }

    // ...

}
JmsMessagingTemplate can be injected in a similar manner. If a DestinationResolver or a MessageConverter bean is defined, it is associated automatically to the auto-configured JmsTemplate.

14.1.5. Receiving a Message

When the JMS infrastructure is present, any bean can be annotated with @JmsListener to create a listener endpoint. If no JmsListenerContainerFactory has been defined, a default one is configured automatically. If a DestinationResolver or a MessageConverter beans is defined, it is associated automatically to the default factory.

By default, the default factory is transactional. If you run in an infrastructure where a JtaTransactionManager is present, it is associated to the listener container by default. If not, the sessionTransacted flag is enabled. In that latter scenario, you can associate your local data store transaction to the processing of an incoming message by adding @Transactional on your listener method (or a delegate thereof). This ensures that the incoming message is acknowledged, once the local transaction has completed. This also includes sending response messages that have been performed on the same JMS session.

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

@Component
public class MyBean {

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

}
See the Javadoc of @EnableJms for more details.

If you need to create more JmsListenerContainerFactory instances or if you want to override the default, Spring Boot provides a DefaultJmsListenerContainerFactoryConfigurer that you can use to initialize a DefaultJmsListenerContainerFactory with the same settings as the one that is auto-configured.

For instance, the following example exposes another factory that uses a specific MessageConverter:

@Configuration(proxyBeanMethods = false)
static class JmsConfiguration {

    @Bean
    public DefaultJmsListenerContainerFactory myFactory(
            DefaultJmsListenerContainerFactoryConfigurer configurer) {
        DefaultJmsListenerContainerFactory factory =
                new DefaultJmsListenerContainerFactory();
        configurer.configure(factory, connectionFactory());
        factory.setMessageConverter(myMessageConverter());
        return factory;
    }

}

Then you can use the factory in any @JmsListener-annotated method as follows:

@Component
public class MyBean {

    @JmsListener(destination = "someQueue", containerFactory="myFactory")
    public void processMessage(String content) {
        // ...
    }

}

14.2. AMQP

The Advanced Message Queuing Protocol (AMQP) is a platform-neutral, wire-level protocol for message-oriented middleware. The Spring AMQP project applies core Spring concepts to the development of AMQP-based messaging solutions. Spring Boot offers several conveniences for working with AMQP through RabbitMQ, including the spring-boot-starter-amqp “Starter”.

14.2.1. RabbitMQ support

RabbitMQ is a lightweight, reliable, scalable, and portable message broker based on the AMQP protocol. Spring uses RabbitMQ to communicate through the AMQP protocol.

RabbitMQ configuration is controlled by external configuration properties in spring.rabbitmq.*. For example, you might declare the following section in application.properties:

spring.rabbitmq.host=localhost
spring.rabbitmq.port=5672
spring.rabbitmq.username=admin
spring.rabbitmq.password=secret

Alternatively, you could configure the same connection using the addresses attribute:

spring.rabbitmq.addresses=amqp://admin:secret@localhost
When specifying addresses that way, the host and port properties are ignored. If the address uses the amqps protocol, SSL support is enabled automatically.

If a ConnectionNameStrategy bean exists in the context, it will be automatically used to name connections created by the auto-configured ConnectionFactory. See RabbitProperties for more of the supported options.

See Understanding AMQP, the protocol used by RabbitMQ for more details.

14.2.2. Sending a Message

Spring’s AmqpTemplate and AmqpAdmin are auto-configured, and you can autowire them directly into your own beans, as shown in the following example:

import org.springframework.amqp.core.AmqpAdmin;
import org.springframework.amqp.core.AmqpTemplate;
import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Autowired;
import org.springframework.stereotype.Component;

@Component
public class MyBean {

    private final AmqpAdmin amqpAdmin;
    private final AmqpTemplate amqpTemplate;

    @Autowired
    public MyBean(AmqpAdmin amqpAdmin, AmqpTemplate amqpTemplate) {
        this.amqpAdmin = amqpAdmin;
        this.amqpTemplate = amqpTemplate;
    }

    // ...

}
RabbitMessagingTemplate can be injected in a similar manner. If a MessageConverter bean is defined, it is associated automatically to the auto-configured AmqpTemplate.

If necessary, any org.springframework.amqp.core.Queue that is defined as a bean is automatically used to declare a corresponding queue on the RabbitMQ instance.

To retry operations, you can enable retries on the AmqpTemplate (for example, in the event that the broker connection is lost):

spring.rabbitmq.template.retry.enabled=true
spring.rabbitmq.template.retry.initial-interval=2s

Retries are disabled by default. You can also customize the RetryTemplate programmatically by declaring a RabbitRetryTemplateCustomizer bean.

If you need to create more RabbitTemplate instances or if you want to override the default, Spring Boot provides a RabbitTemplateConfigurer bean that you can use to initialize a RabbitTemplate with the same settings as the factories used by the auto-configuration.

14.2.3. Receiving a Message

When the Rabbit infrastructure is present, any bean can be annotated with @RabbitListener to create a listener endpoint. If no RabbitListenerContainerFactory has been defined, a default SimpleRabbitListenerContainerFactory is automatically configured and you can switch to a direct container using the spring.rabbitmq.listener.type property. If a MessageConverter or a MessageRecoverer bean is defined, it is automatically associated with the default factory.

The following sample component creates a listener endpoint on the someQueue queue:

@Component
public class MyBean {

    @RabbitListener(queues = "someQueue")
    public void processMessage(String content) {
        // ...
    }

}
See the Javadoc of @EnableRabbit for more details.

If you need to create more RabbitListenerContainerFactory instances or if you want to override the default, Spring Boot provides a SimpleRabbitListenerContainerFactoryConfigurer and a DirectRabbitListenerContainerFactoryConfigurer that you can use to initialize a SimpleRabbitListenerContainerFactory and a DirectRabbitListenerContainerFactory with the same settings as the factories used by the auto-configuration.

It does not matter which container type you chose. Those two beans are exposed by the auto-configuration.

For instance, the following configuration class exposes another factory that uses a specific MessageConverter:

@Configuration(proxyBeanMethods = false)
static class RabbitConfiguration {

    @Bean
    public SimpleRabbitListenerContainerFactory myFactory(
            SimpleRabbitListenerContainerFactoryConfigurer configurer) {
        SimpleRabbitListenerContainerFactory factory =
                new SimpleRabbitListenerContainerFactory();
        configurer.configure(factory, connectionFactory);
        factory.setMessageConverter(myMessageConverter());
        return factory;
    }

}

Then you can use the factory in any @RabbitListener-annotated method, as follows:

@Component
public class MyBean {

    @RabbitListener(queues = "someQueue", containerFactory="myFactory")
    public void processMessage(String content) {
        // ...
    }

}

You can enable retries to handle situations where your listener throws an exception. By default, RejectAndDontRequeueRecoverer is used, but you can define a MessageRecoverer of your own. When retries are exhausted, the message is rejected and either dropped or routed to a dead-letter exchange if the broker is configured to do so. By default, retries are disabled. You can also customize the RetryTemplate programmatically by declaring a RabbitRetryTemplateCustomizer bean.

By default, if retries are disabled and the listener throws an exception, the delivery is retried indefinitely. You can modify this behavior in two ways: Set the defaultRequeueRejected property to false so that zero re-deliveries are attempted or throw an AmqpRejectAndDontRequeueException to signal the message should be rejected. The latter is the mechanism used when retries are enabled and the maximum number of delivery attempts is reached.

14.3. Apache Kafka Support

Apache Kafka is supported by providing auto-configuration of the spring-kafka project.

Kafka configuration is controlled by external configuration properties in spring.kafka.*. For example, you might declare the following section in application.properties:

spring.kafka.bootstrap-servers=localhost:9092
spring.kafka.consumer.group-id=myGroup
To create a topic on startup, add a bean of type NewTopic. If the topic already exists, the bean is ignored.

See KafkaProperties for more supported options.

14.3.1. Sending a Message

Spring’s KafkaTemplate is auto-configured, and you can autowire it directly in your own beans, as shown in the following example:

@Component
public class MyBean {

    private final KafkaTemplate kafkaTemplate;

    @Autowired
    public MyBean(KafkaTemplate kafkaTemplate) {
        this.kafkaTemplate = kafkaTemplate;
    }

    // ...

}
If the property spring.kafka.producer.transaction-id-prefix is defined, a KafkaTransactionManager is automatically configured. Also, if a RecordMessageConverter bean is defined, it is automatically associated to the auto-configured KafkaTemplate.

14.3.2. Receiving a Message

When the Apache Kafka infrastructure is present, any bean can be annotated with @KafkaListener to create a listener endpoint. If no KafkaListenerContainerFactory has been defined, a default one is automatically configured with keys defined in spring.kafka.listener.*.

The following component creates a listener endpoint on the someTopic topic:

@Component
public class MyBean {

    @KafkaListener(topics = "someTopic")
    public void processMessage(String content) {
        // ...
    }

}

If a KafkaTransactionManager bean is defined, it is automatically associated to the container factory. Similarly, if a ErrorHandler, AfterRollbackProcessor or ConsumerAwareRebalanceListener bean is defined, it is automatically associated to the default factory.

Depending on the listener type, a RecordMessageConverter or BatchMessageConverter bean is associated to the default factory. If only a RecordMessageConverter bean is present for a batch listener, it is wrapped in a BatchMessageConverter.

A custom ChainedKafkaTransactionManager must be marked @Primary as it usually references the auto-configured KafkaTransactionManager bean.

14.3.3. Kafka Streams

Spring for Apache Kafka provides a factory bean to create a StreamsBuilder object and manage the lifecycle of its streams. Spring Boot auto-configures the required KafkaStreamsConfiguration bean as long as kafka-streams is on the classpath and Kafka Streams is enabled via the @EnableKafkaStreams annotation.

Enabling Kafka Streams means that the application id and bootstrap servers must be set. The former can be configured using spring.kafka.streams.application-id, defaulting to spring.application.name if not set. The latter can be set globally or specifically overridden only for streams.

Several additional properties are available using dedicated properties; other arbitrary Kafka properties can be set using the spring.kafka.streams.properties namespace. See also Additional Kafka Properties for more information.

To use the factory bean, wire StreamsBuilder into your @Bean as shown in the following example:

@Configuration(proxyBeanMethods = false)
@EnableKafkaStreams
public static class KafkaStreamsExampleConfiguration {

    @Bean
    public KStream<Integer, String> kStream(StreamsBuilder streamsBuilder) {
        KStream<Integer, String> stream = streamsBuilder.stream("ks1In");
        stream.map((k, v) -> new KeyValue<>(k, v.toUpperCase())).to("ks1Out",
                Produced.with(Serdes.Integer(), new JsonSerde<>()));
        return stream;
    }

}

By default, the streams managed by the StreamBuilder object it creates are started automatically. You can customize this behaviour using the spring.kafka.streams.auto-startup property.

14.3.4. Additional Kafka Properties

The properties supported by auto configuration are shown in appendix-application-properties.html. Note that, for the most part, these properties (hyphenated or camelCase) map directly to the Apache Kafka dotted properties. Refer to the Apache Kafka documentation for details.

The first few of these properties apply to all components (producers, consumers, admins, and streams) but can be specified at the component level if you wish to use different values. Apache Kafka designates properties with an importance of HIGH, MEDIUM, or LOW. Spring Boot auto-configuration supports all HIGH importance properties, some selected MEDIUM and LOW properties, and any properties that do not have a default value.

Only a subset of the properties supported by Kafka are available directly through the KafkaProperties class. If you wish to configure the producer or consumer with additional properties that are not directly supported, use the following properties:

spring.kafka.properties.prop.one=first
spring.kafka.admin.properties.prop.two=second
spring.kafka.consumer.properties.prop.three=third
spring.kafka.producer.properties.prop.four=fourth
spring.kafka.streams.properties.prop.five=fifth

This sets the common prop.one Kafka property to first (applies to producers, consumers and admins), the prop.two admin property to second, the prop.three consumer property to third, the prop.four producer property to fourth and the prop.five streams property to fifth.

You can also configure the Spring Kafka JsonDeserializer as follows:

spring.kafka.consumer.value-deserializer=org.springframework.kafka.support.serializer.JsonDeserializer
spring.kafka.consumer.properties.spring.json.value.default.type=com.example.Invoice
spring.kafka.consumer.properties.spring.json.trusted.packages=com.example,org.acme

Similarly, you can disable the JsonSerializer default behavior of sending type information in headers:

spring.kafka.producer.value-serializer=org.springframework.kafka.support.serializer.JsonSerializer
spring.kafka.producer.properties.spring.json.add.type.headers=false
Properties set in this way override any configuration item that Spring Boot explicitly supports.

14.3.5. Testing with Embedded Kafka

Spring for Apache Kafka provides a convenient way to test projects with an embedded Apache Kafka broker. To use this feature, annotate a test class with @EmbeddedKafka from the spring-kafka-test module. For more information, please see the Spring for Apache Kafka reference manual.

To make Spring Boot auto-configuration work with the aforementioned embedded Apache Kafka broker, you need to remap a system property for embedded broker addresses (populated by the EmbeddedKafkaBroker) into the Spring Boot configuration property for Apache Kafka. There are several ways to do that:

  • Provide a system property to map embedded broker addresses into spring.kafka.bootstrap-servers in the test class:

static {
    System.setProperty(EmbeddedKafkaBroker.BROKER_LIST_PROPERTY, "spring.kafka.bootstrap-servers");
}

  • Configure a property name on the @EmbeddedKafka annotation:

@EmbeddedKafka(topics = "someTopic",
        bootstrapServersProperty = "spring.kafka.bootstrap-servers")

  • Use a placeholder in configuration properties:

spring.kafka.bootstrap-servers=${spring.embedded.kafka.brokers}

15. Calling REST Services with RestTemplate

If you need to call remote REST services from your application, you can use the Spring Framework’s RestTemplate class. Since RestTemplate instances often need to be customized before being used, Spring Boot does not provide any single auto-configured RestTemplate bean. It does, however, auto-configure a RestTemplateBuilder, which can be used to create RestTemplate instances when needed. The auto-configured RestTemplateBuilder ensures that sensible HttpMessageConverters are applied to RestTemplate instances.

The following code shows a typical example:

@Service
public class MyService {

    private final RestTemplate restTemplate;

    public MyService(RestTemplateBuilder restTemplateBuilder) {
        this.restTemplate = restTemplateBuilder.build();
    }

    public Details someRestCall(String name) {
        return this.restTemplate.getForObject("/{name}/details", Details.class, name);
    }

}
RestTemplateBuilder includes a number of useful methods that can be used to quickly configure a RestTemplate. For example, to add BASIC auth support, you can use builder.basicAuthentication("user", "password").build().

15.1. RestTemplate Customization

There are three main approaches to RestTemplate customization, depending on how broadly you want the customizations to apply.

To make the scope of any customizations as narrow as possible, inject the auto-configured RestTemplateBuilder and then call its methods as required. Each method call returns a new RestTemplateBuilder instance, so the customizations only affect this use of the builder.

To make an application-wide, additive customization, use a RestTemplateCustomizer bean. All such beans are automatically registered with the auto-configured RestTemplateBuilder and are applied to any templates that are built with it.

The following example shows a customizer that configures the use of a proxy for all hosts except 192.168.0.5:

static class ProxyCustomizer implements RestTemplateCustomizer {

    @Override
    public void customize(RestTemplate restTemplate) {
        HttpHost proxy = new HttpHost("proxy.example.com");
        HttpClient httpClient = HttpClientBuilder.create().setRoutePlanner(new DefaultProxyRoutePlanner(proxy) {

            @Override
            public HttpHost determineProxy(HttpHost target, HttpRequest request, HttpContext context)
                    throws HttpException {
                if (target.getHostName().equals("192.168.0.5")) {
                    return null;
                }
                return super.determineProxy(target, request, context);
            }

        }).build();
        restTemplate.setRequestFactory(new HttpComponentsClientHttpRequestFactory(httpClient));
    }

}

Finally, the most extreme (and rarely used) option is to create your own RestTemplateBuilder bean. Doing so switches off the auto-configuration of a RestTemplateBuilder and prevents any RestTemplateCustomizer beans from being used.

16. Calling REST Services with WebClient

If you have Spring WebFlux on your classpath, you can also choose to use WebClient to call remote REST services. Compared to RestTemplate, this client has a more functional feel and is fully reactive. You can learn more about the WebClient in the dedicated section in the Spring Framework docs.

Spring Boot creates and pre-configures a WebClient.Builder for you; it is strongly advised to inject it in your components and use it to create WebClient instances. Spring Boot is configuring that builder to share HTTP resources, reflect codecs setup in the same fashion as the server ones (see WebFlux HTTP codecs auto-configuration), and more.

The following code shows a typical example:

@Service
public class MyService {

    private final WebClient webClient;

    public MyService(WebClient.Builder webClientBuilder) {
        this.webClient = webClientBuilder.baseUrl("https://example.org").build();
    }

    public Mono<Details> someRestCall(String name) {
        return this.webClient.get().uri("/{name}/details", name)
                        .retrieve().bodyToMono(Details.class);
    }

}

16.1. WebClient Runtime

Spring Boot will auto-detect which ClientHttpConnector to use to drive WebClient, depending on the libraries available on the application classpath. For now, Reactor Netty and Jetty RS client are supported.

The spring-boot-starter-webflux starter depends on io.projectreactor.netty:reactor-netty by default, which brings both server and client implementations. If you choose to use Jetty as a reactive server instead, you should add a dependency on the Jetty Reactive HTTP client library, org.eclipse.jetty:jetty-reactive-httpclient. Using the same technology for server and client has it advantages, as it will automatically share HTTP resources between client and server.

Developers can override the resource configuration for Jetty and Reactor Netty by providing a custom ReactorResourceFactory or JettyResourceFactory bean - this will be applied to both clients and servers.

If you wish to override that choice for the client, you can define your own ClientHttpConnector bean and have full control over the client configuration.

You can learn more about the WebClient configuration options in the Spring Framework reference documentation.

16.2. WebClient Customization

There are three main approaches to WebClient customization, depending on how broadly you want the customizations to apply.

To make the scope of any customizations as narrow as possible, inject the auto-configured WebClient.Builder and then call its methods as required. WebClient.Builder instances are stateful: Any change on the builder is reflected in all clients subsequently created with it. If you want to create several clients with the same builder, you can also consider cloning the builder with WebClient.Builder other = builder.clone();.

To make an application-wide, additive customization to all WebClient.Builder instances, you can declare WebClientCustomizer beans and change the WebClient.Builder locally at the point of injection.

Finally, you can fall back to the original API and use WebClient.create(). In that case, no auto-configuration or WebClientCustomizer is applied.

17. Validation

The method validation feature supported by Bean Validation 1.1 is automatically enabled as long as a JSR-303 implementation (such as Hibernate validator) is on the classpath. This lets bean methods be annotated with javax.validation constraints on their parameters and/or on their return value. Target classes with such annotated methods need to be annotated with the @Validated annotation at the type level for their methods to be searched for inline constraint annotations.

For instance, the following service triggers the validation of the first argument, making sure its size is between 8 and 10:

@Service
@Validated
public class MyBean {

    public Archive findByCodeAndAuthor(@Size(min = 8, max = 10) String code,
            Author author) {
        ...
    }

}

18. Sending Email

The Spring Framework provides an abstraction for sending email by using the JavaMailSender interface, and Spring Boot provides auto-configuration for it as well as a starter module.

See the reference documentation for a detailed explanation of how you can use JavaMailSender.

If spring.mail.host and the relevant libraries (as defined by spring-boot-starter-mail) are available, a default JavaMailSender is created if none exists. The sender can be further customized by configuration items from the spring.mail namespace. See MailProperties for more details.

In particular, certain default timeout values are infinite, and you may want to change that to avoid having a thread blocked by an unresponsive mail server, as shown in the following example:

spring.mail.properties.mail.smtp.connectiontimeout=5000
spring.mail.properties.mail.smtp.timeout=3000
spring.mail.properties.mail.smtp.writetimeout=5000

It is also possible to configure a JavaMailSender with an existing Session from JNDI:

spring.mail.jndi-name=mail/Session

When a jndi-name is set, it takes precedence over all other Session-related settings.

19. Distributed Transactions with JTA

Spring Boot supports distributed JTA transactions across multiple XA resources by using an Atomikos embedded transaction manager. Deprecated support for using a Bitronix embedded transaction manager is also provided but it will be removed in a future release. JTA transactions are also supported when deploying to a suitable Java EE Application Server.

When a JTA environment is detected, Spring’s JtaTransactionManager is used to manage transactions. Auto-configured JMS, DataSource, and JPA beans are upgraded to support XA transactions. You can use standard Spring idioms, such as @Transactional, to participate in a distributed transaction. If you are within a JTA environment and still want to use local transactions, you can set the spring.jta.enabled property to false to disable the JTA auto-configuration.

19.1. Using an Atomikos Transaction Manager

Atomikos is a popular open source transaction manager which can be embedded into your Spring Boot application. You can use the spring-boot-starter-jta-atomikos starter to pull in the appropriate Atomikos libraries. Spring Boot auto-configures Atomikos and ensures that appropriate depends-on settings are applied to your Spring beans for correct startup and shutdown ordering.

By default, Atomikos transaction logs are written to a transaction-logs directory in your application’s home directory (the directory in which your application jar file resides). You can customize the location of this directory by setting a spring.jta.log-dir property in your application.properties file. Properties starting with spring.jta.atomikos.properties can also be used to customize the Atomikos UserTransactionServiceImp. See the AtomikosProperties Javadoc for complete details.

To ensure that multiple transaction managers can safely coordinate the same resource managers, each Atomikos instance must be configured with a unique ID. By default, this ID is the IP address of the machine on which Atomikos is running. To ensure uniqueness in production, you should configure the spring.jta.transaction-manager-id property with a different value for each instance of your application.

19.2. Using a Bitronix Transaction Manager

As of Spring Boot 2.3, support for Bitronix has been deprecated and will be removed in a future release.

You can use the spring-boot-starter-jta-bitronix starter to add the appropriate Bitronix dependencies to your project. As with Atomikos, Spring Boot automatically configures Bitronix and post-processes your beans to ensure that startup and shutdown ordering is correct.

By default, Bitronix transaction log files (part1.btm and part2.btm) are written to a transaction-logs directory in your application home directory. You can customize the location of this directory by setting the spring.jta.log-dir property. Properties starting with spring.jta.bitronix.properties are also bound to the bitronix.tm.Configuration bean, allowing for complete customization. See the Bitronix documentation for details.

To ensure that multiple transaction managers can safely coordinate the same resource managers, each Bitronix instance must be configured with a unique ID. By default, this ID is the IP address of the machine on which Bitronix is running. To ensure uniqueness in production, you should configure the spring.jta.transaction-manager-id property with a different value for each instance of your application.

19.3. Using a Java EE Managed Transaction Manager

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

19.4. Mixing XA and Non-XA JMS Connections

When using JTA, the primary JMS ConnectionFactory bean is XA-aware and participates in distributed transactions. In some situations, you might want to process certain JMS messages by using a non-XA ConnectionFactory. For example, your JMS processing logic might take longer than the XA timeout.

If you want to use a non-XA ConnectionFactory, you can inject the nonXaJmsConnectionFactory bean rather than the @Primary jmsConnectionFactory bean. For consistency, the jmsConnectionFactory bean is also provided by using the bean alias xaJmsConnectionFactory.

The following example shows how to inject ConnectionFactory instances:

// Inject the primary (XA aware) ConnectionFactory
@Autowired
private ConnectionFactory defaultConnectionFactory;

// Inject the XA aware ConnectionFactory (uses the alias and injects the same as above)
@Autowired
@Qualifier("xaJmsConnectionFactory")
private ConnectionFactory xaConnectionFactory;

// Inject the non-XA aware ConnectionFactory
@Autowired
@Qualifier("nonXaJmsConnectionFactory")
private ConnectionFactory nonXaConnectionFactory;

19.5. Supporting an Alternative Embedded Transaction Manager

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

The AtomikosXAConnectionFactoryWrapper and AtomikosXADataSourceWrapper provide good examples of how to write XA wrappers.

20. Hazelcast

If Hazelcast is on the classpath and a suitable configuration is found, Spring Boot auto-configures a HazelcastInstance that you can inject in your application.

If you define a com.hazelcast.config.Config bean, Spring Boot uses that. If your configuration defines an instance name, Spring Boot tries to locate an existing instance rather than creating a new one.

You could also specify the Hazelcast configuration file to use through configuration, as shown in the following example:

spring.hazelcast.config=classpath:config/my-hazelcast.xml

Otherwise, Spring Boot tries to find the Hazelcast configuration from the default locations: hazelcast.xml in the working directory or at the root of the classpath, or a .yaml counterpart in the same locations. We also check if the hazelcast.config system property is set. See the Hazelcast documentation for more details.

If hazelcast-client is present on the classpath, Spring Boot first attempts to create a client by checking the following configuration options:

  • The presence of a com.hazelcast.client.config.ClientConfig bean.

  • A configuration file defined by the spring.hazelcast.config property.

  • The presence of the hazelcast.client.config system property.

  • A hazelcast-client.xml in the working directory or at the root of the classpath.

  • A hazelcast-client.yaml in the working directory or at the root of the classpath.

Spring Boot also has explicit caching support for Hazelcast. If caching is enabled, the HazelcastInstance is automatically wrapped in a CacheManager implementation.

21. Quartz Scheduler

Spring Boot offers several conveniences for working with the Quartz scheduler, including the spring-boot-starter-quartz “Starter”. If Quartz is available, a Scheduler is auto-configured (through the SchedulerFactoryBean abstraction).

Beans of the following types are automatically picked up and associated with the Scheduler:

  • JobDetail: defines a particular Job. JobDetail instances can be built with the JobBuilder API.

  • Calendar.

  • Trigger: defines when a particular job is triggered.

By default, an in-memory JobStore is used. However, it is possible to configure a JDBC-based store if a DataSource bean is available in your application and if the spring.quartz.job-store-type property is configured accordingly, as shown in the following example:

spring.quartz.job-store-type=jdbc

When the JDBC store is used, the schema can be initialized on startup, as shown in the following example:

spring.quartz.jdbc.initialize-schema=always
By default, the database is detected and initialized by using the standard scripts provided with the Quartz library. These scripts drop existing tables, deleting all triggers on every restart. It is also possible to provide a custom script by setting the spring.quartz.jdbc.schema property.

To have Quartz use a DataSource other than the application’s main DataSource, declare a DataSource bean, annotating its @Bean method with @QuartzDataSource. Doing so ensures that the Quartz-specific DataSource is used by both the SchedulerFactoryBean and for schema initialization.

By default, jobs created by configuration will not overwrite already registered jobs that have been read from a persistent job store. To enable overwriting existing job definitions set the spring.quartz.overwrite-existing-jobs property.

Quartz Scheduler configuration can be customized using spring.quartz properties and SchedulerFactoryBeanCustomizer beans, which allow programmatic SchedulerFactoryBean customization. Advanced Quartz configuration properties can be customized using spring.quartz.properties.*.

In particular, an Executor bean is not associated with the scheduler as Quartz offers a way to configure the scheduler via spring.quartz.properties. If you need to customize the task executor, consider implementing SchedulerFactoryBeanCustomizer.

Jobs can define setters to inject data map properties. Regular beans can also be injected in a similar manner, as shown in the following example:

public class SampleJob extends QuartzJobBean {

    private MyService myService;

    private String name;

    // Inject "MyService" bean
    public void setMyService(MyService myService) { ... }

    // Inject the "name" job data property
    public void setName(String name) { ... }

    @Override
    protected void executeInternal(JobExecutionContext context)
            throws JobExecutionException {
        ...
    }

}

22. Task Execution and Scheduling

In the absence of an Executor bean in the context, Spring Boot auto-configures a ThreadPoolTaskExecutor with sensible defaults that can be automatically associated to asynchronous task execution (@EnableAsync) and Spring MVC asynchronous request processing.

If you have defined a custom Executor in the context, regular task execution (i.e. @EnableAsync) will use it transparently but the Spring MVC support will not be configured as it requires an AsyncTaskExecutor implementation (named applicationTaskExecutor). Depending on your target arrangement, you could change your Executor into a ThreadPoolTaskExecutor or define both a ThreadPoolTaskExecutor and an AsyncConfigurer wrapping your custom Executor.

The auto-configured TaskExecutorBuilder allows you to easily create instances that reproduce what the auto-configuration does by default.

The thread pool uses 8 core threads that can grow and shrink according to the load. Those default settings can be fine-tuned using the spring.task.execution namespace as shown in the following example:

spring.task.execution.pool.max-size=16
spring.task.execution.pool.queue-capacity=100
spring.task.execution.pool.keep-alive=10s

This changes the thread pool to use a bounded queue so that when the queue is full (100 tasks), the thread pool increases to maximum 16 threads. Shrinking of the pool is more aggressive as threads are reclaimed when they are idle for 10 seconds (rather than 60 seconds by default).

A ThreadPoolTaskScheduler can also be auto-configured if need to be associated to scheduled task execution (@EnableScheduling). The thread pool uses one thread by default and those settings can be fine-tuned using the spring.task.scheduling namespace.

Both a TaskExecutorBuilder bean and a TaskSchedulerBuilder bean are made available in the context if a custom executor or scheduler needs to be created.

23. Spring Integration

Spring Boot offers several conveniences for working with Spring Integration, including the spring-boot-starter-integration “Starter”. Spring Integration provides abstractions over messaging and also other transports such as HTTP, TCP, and others. If Spring Integration is available on your classpath, it is initialized through the @EnableIntegration annotation.

Spring Boot also configures some features that are triggered by the presence of additional Spring Integration modules. If spring-integration-jmx is also on the classpath, message processing statistics are published over JMX. If spring-integration-jdbc is available, the default database schema can be created on startup, as shown in the following line:

spring.integration.jdbc.initialize-schema=always

If spring-integration-rsocket is available, developers can configure an RSocket server using "spring.rsocket.server.*" properties and let it use IntegrationRSocketEndpoint or RSocketOutboundGateway components to handle incoming RSocket messages. This infrastructure can handle Spring Integration RSocket channel adapters and @MessageMapping handlers (given "spring.integration.rsocket.server.message-mapping-enabled" is configured).

Spring Boot can also auto-configure an ClientRSocketConnector using configuration properties:

# Connecting to a RSocket server over TCP
spring.integration.rsocket.client.host=example.org
spring.integration.rsocket.client.port=9898

# Connecting to a RSocket Server over WebSocket
spring.integration.rsocket.client.uri=ws://example.org

See the IntegrationAutoConfiguration and IntegrationProperties classes for more details.

By default, if a Micrometer meterRegistry bean is present, Spring Integration metrics will be managed by Micrometer. If you wish to use legacy Spring Integration metrics, add a DefaultMetricsFactory bean to the application context.

24. Spring Session

Spring Boot provides Spring Session auto-configuration for a wide range of data stores. When building a Servlet web application, the following stores can be auto-configured:

  • JDBC

  • Redis

  • Hazelcast

  • MongoDB

When building a reactive web application, the following stores can be auto-configured:

  • Redis

  • MongoDB

If a single Spring Session module is present on the classpath, Spring Boot uses that store implementation automatically. If you have more than one implementation, you must choose the StoreType that you wish to use to store the sessions. For instance, to use JDBC as the back-end store, you can configure your application as follows:

spring.session.store-type=jdbc
You can disable Spring Session by setting the store-type to none.

Each store has specific additional settings. For instance, it is possible to customize the name of the table for the JDBC store, as shown in the following example:

spring.session.jdbc.table-name=SESSIONS

For setting the timeout of the session you can use the spring.session.timeout property. If that property is not set, the auto-configuration falls back to the value of server.servlet.session.timeout.

25. Monitoring and Management over JMX

Java Management Extensions (JMX) provide a standard mechanism to monitor and manage applications. Spring Boot exposes the most suitable MBeanServer as a bean with an ID of mbeanServer. Any of your beans that are annotated with Spring JMX annotations (@ManagedResource, @ManagedAttribute, or @ManagedOperation) are exposed to it.

If your platform provides a standard MBeanServer, Spring Boot will use that and default to the VM MBeanServer if necessary. If all that fails, a new MBeanServer will be created.

See the JmxAutoConfiguration class for more details.

26. Testing

Spring Boot provides a number of utilities and annotations to help when testing your application. Test support is provided by two modules: spring-boot-test contains core items, and spring-boot-test-autoconfigure supports auto-configuration for tests.

Most developers use the spring-boot-starter-test “Starter”, which imports both Spring Boot test modules as well as JUnit Jupiter, AssertJ, Hamcrest, and a number of other useful libraries.

The starter also brings the vintage engine so that you can run both JUnit 4 and JUnit 5 tests. If you have migrated your tests to JUnit 5, you should exclude JUnit 4 support, as shown in the following example:

<dependency>
    <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
    <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-test</artifactId>
    <scope>test</scope>
    <exclusions>
        <exclusion>
            <groupId>org.junit.vintage</groupId>
            <artifactId>junit-vintage-engine</artifactId>
        </exclusion>
    </exclusions>
</dependency>

26.1. Test Scope Dependencies

The spring-boot-starter-test “Starter” (in the test scope) contains the following provided libraries:

  • JUnit 5 (including the vintage engine for backward compatibility with JUnit 4): The de-facto standard for unit testing Java applications.

  • Spring Test & Spring Boot Test: Utilities and integration test support for Spring Boot applications.

  • AssertJ: A fluent assertion library.

  • Hamcrest: A library of matcher objects (also known as constraints or predicates).

  • Mockito: A Java mocking framework.

  • JSONassert: An assertion library for JSON.

  • JsonPath: XPath for JSON.

We generally find these common libraries to be useful when writing tests. If these libraries do not suit your needs, you can add additional test dependencies of your own.

26.2. Testing Spring Applications

One of the major advantages of dependency injection is that it should make your code easier to unit test. You can instantiate objects by using the new operator without even involving Spring. You can also use mock objects instead of real dependencies.

Often, you need to move beyond unit testing and start integration testing (with a Spring ApplicationContext). It is useful to be able to perform integration testing without requiring deployment of your application or needing to connect to other infrastructure.

The Spring Framework includes a dedicated test module for such integration testing. You can declare a dependency directly to org.springframework:spring-test or use the spring-boot-starter-test “Starter” to pull it in transitively.

If you have not used the spring-test module before, you should start by reading the relevant section of the Spring Framework reference documentation.

26.3. Testing Spring Boot Applications

A Spring Boot application is a Spring ApplicationContext, so nothing very special has to be done to test it beyond what you would normally do with a vanilla Spring context.

External properties, logging, and other features of Spring Boot are installed in the context by default only if you use SpringApplication to create it.

Spring Boot provides a @SpringBootTest annotation, which can be used as an alternative to the standard spring-test @ContextConfiguration annotation when you need Spring Boot features. The annotation works by creating the ApplicationContext used in your tests through SpringApplication. In addition to @SpringBootTest a number of other annotations are also provided for testing more specific slices of an application.

If you are using JUnit 4, don’t forget to also add @RunWith(SpringRunner.class) to your test, otherwise the annotations will be ignored. If you are using JUnit 5, there’s no need to add the equivalent @ExtendWith(SpringExtension.class) as @SpringBootTest and the other @…Test annotations are already annotated with it.

By default, @SpringBootTest will not start a server. You can use the webEnvironment attribute of @SpringBootTest to further refine how your tests run:

  • MOCK(Default) : Loads a web ApplicationContext and provides a mock web environment. Embedded servers are not started when using this annotation. If a web environment is not available on your classpath, this mode transparently falls back to creating a regular non-web ApplicationContext. It can be used in conjunction with @AutoConfigureMockMvc or @AutoConfigureWebTestClient for mock-based testing of your web application.

  • RANDOM_PORT: Loads a WebServerApplicationContext and provides a real web environment. Embedded servers are started and listen on a random port.

  • DEFINED_PORT: Loads a WebServerApplicationContext and provides a real web environment. Embedded servers are started and listen on a defined port (from your application.properties) or on the default port of 8080.

  • NONE: Loads an ApplicationContext by using SpringApplication but does not provide any web environment (mock or otherwise).

If your test is @Transactional, it rolls back the transaction at the end of each test method by default. However, as using this arrangement with either RANDOM_PORT or DEFINED_PORT implicitly provides a real servlet environment, the HTTP client and server run in separate threads and, thus, in separate transactions. Any transaction initiated on the server does not roll back in this case.
@SpringBootTest with webEnvironment = WebEnvironment.RANDOM_PORT will also start the management server on a separate random port if your application uses a different port for the management server.

26.3.1. Detecting Web Application Type

If Spring MVC is available, a regular MVC-based application context is configured. If you have only Spring WebFlux, we’ll detect that and configure a WebFlux-based application context instead.

If both are present, Spring MVC takes precedence. If you want to test a reactive web application in this scenario, you must set the spring.main.web-application-type property:

@SpringBootTest(properties = "spring.main.web-application-type=reactive")
class MyWebFluxTests { ... }

26.3.2. Detecting Test Configuration

If you are familiar with the Spring Test Framework, you may be used to using @ContextConfiguration(classes=…​) in order to specify which Spring @Configuration to load. Alternatively, you might have often used nested @Configuration classes within your test.

When testing Spring Boot applications, this is often not required. Spring Boot’s @*Test annotations search for your primary configuration automatically whenever you do not explicitly define one.

The search algorithm works up from the package that contains the test until it finds a class annotated with @SpringBootApplication or @SpringBootConfiguration. As long as you structured your code in a sensible way, your main configuration is usually found.

If you use a test annotation to test a more specific slice of your application, you should avoid adding configuration settings that are specific to a particular area on the main method’s application class.

The underlying component scan configuration of @SpringBootApplication defines exclude filters that are used to make sure slicing works as expected. If you are using an explicit @ComponentScan directive on your @SpringBootApplication-annotated class, be aware that those filters will be disabled. If you are using slicing, you should define them again.

If you want to customize the primary configuration, you can use a nested @TestConfiguration class. Unlike a nested @Configuration class, which would be used instead of your application’s primary configuration, a nested @TestConfiguration class is used in addition to your application’s primary configuration.

Spring’s test framework caches application contexts between tests. Therefore, as long as your tests share the same configuration (no matter how it is discovered), the potentially time-consuming process of loading the context happens only once.

26.3.3. Excluding Test Configuration

If your application uses component scanning (for example, if you use @SpringBootApplication or @ComponentScan), you may find top-level configuration classes that you created only for specific tests accidentally get picked up everywhere.

As we have seen earlier, @TestConfiguration can be used on an inner class of a test to customize the primary configuration. When placed on a top-level class, @TestConfiguration indicates that classes in src/test/java should not be picked up by scanning. You can then import that class explicitly where it is required, as shown in the following example:

@SpringBootTest
@Import(MyTestsConfiguration.class)
class MyTests {

    @Test
    void exampleTest() {
        ...
    }

}
If you directly use @ComponentScan (that is, not through @SpringBootApplication) you need to register the TypeExcludeFilter with it. See the Javadoc for details.

26.3.4. Using Application Arguments

If your application expects arguments, you can have @SpringBootTest inject them using the args attribute.

@SpringBootTest(args = "--app.test=one")
class ApplicationArgumentsExampleTests {

    @Test
    void applicationArgumentsPopulated(@Autowired ApplicationArguments args) {
        assertThat(args.getOptionNames()).containsOnly("app.test");
        assertThat(args.getOptionValues("app.test")).containsOnly("one");
    }

}

26.3.5. Testing with a mock environment

By default, @SpringBootTest does not start the server. If you have web endpoints that you want to test against this mock environment, you can additionally configure MockMvc as shown in the following example:

import org.junit.jupiter.api.Test;

import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Autowired;
import org.springframework.boot.test.autoconfigure.web.servlet.AutoConfigureMockMvc;
import org.springframework.boot.test.context.SpringBootTest;
import org.springframework.test.web.servlet.MockMvc;

import static org.springframework.test.web.servlet.request.MockMvcRequestBuilders.get;
import static org.springframework.test.web.servlet.result.MockMvcResultMatchers.content;
import static org.springframework.test.web.servlet.result.MockMvcResultMatchers.status;

@SpringBootTest
@AutoConfigureMockMvc
class MockMvcExampleTests {

    @Test
    void exampleTest(@Autowired MockMvc mvc) throws Exception {
        mvc.perform(get("/")).andExpect(status().isOk()).andExpect(content().string("Hello World"));
    }

}
If you want to focus only on the web layer and not start a complete ApplicationContext, consider using @WebMvcTest instead.

Alternatively, you can configure a WebTestClient as shown in the following example:

import org.junit.jupiter.api.Test;

import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Autowired;
import org.springframework.boot.test.autoconfigure.web.reactive.AutoConfigureWebTestClient;
import org.springframework.boot.test.context.SpringBootTest;
import org.springframework.test.web.reactive.server.WebTestClient;

@SpringBootTest
@AutoConfigureWebTestClient
class MockWebTestClientExampleTests {

    @Test
    void exampleTest(@Autowired WebTestClient webClient) {
        webClient.get().uri("/").exchange().expectStatus().isOk().expectBody(String.class).isEqualTo("Hello World");
    }

}

Testing within a mocked environment is usually faster than running with a full Servlet container. However, since mocking occurs at the Spring MVC layer, code that relies on lower-level Servlet container behavior cannot be directly tested with MockMvc.

For example, Spring Boot’s error handling is based on the “error page” support provided by the Servlet container. This means that, whilst you can test your MVC layer throws and handles exceptions as expected, you cannot directly test that a specific custom error page is rendered. If you need to test these lower-level concerns, you can start a fully running server as described in the next section.

26.3.6. Testing with a running server

If you need to start a full running server, we recommend that you use random ports. If you use @SpringBootTest(webEnvironment=WebEnvironment.RANDOM_PORT), an available port is picked at random each time your test runs.

The @LocalServerPort annotation can be used to inject the actual port used into your test. For convenience, tests that need to make REST calls to the started server can additionally @Autowire a WebTestClient, which resolves relative links to the running server and comes with a dedicated API for verifying responses, as shown in the following example:

import org.junit.jupiter.api.Test;

import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Autowired;
import org.springframework.boot.test.context.SpringBootTest;
import org.springframework.boot.test.context.SpringBootTest.WebEnvironment;
import org.springframework.test.web.reactive.server.WebTestClient;

@SpringBootTest(webEnvironment = WebEnvironment.RANDOM_PORT)
class RandomPortWebTestClientExampleTests {

    @Test
    void exampleTest(@Autowired WebTestClient webClient) {
        webClient.get().uri("/").exchange().expectStatus().isOk().expectBody(String.class).isEqualTo("Hello World");
    }

}

This setup requires spring-webflux on the classpath. If you can’t or won’t add webflux, Spring Boot also provides a TestRestTemplate facility:

import org.junit.jupiter.api.Test;

import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Autowired;
import org.springframework.boot.test.context.SpringBootTest;
import org.springframework.boot.test.context.SpringBootTest.WebEnvironment;
import org.springframework.boot.test.web.client.TestRestTemplate;

import static org.assertj.core.api.Assertions.assertThat;

@SpringBootTest(webEnvironment = WebEnvironment.RANDOM_PORT)
class RandomPortTestRestTemplateExampleTests {

    @Test
    void exampleTest(@Autowired TestRestTemplate restTemplate) {
        String body = restTemplate.getForObject("/", String.class);
        assertThat(body).isEqualTo("Hello World");
    }

}

26.3.7. Customizing WebTestClient

To customize the WebTestClient bean, configure a WebTestClientBuilderCustomizer bean. Any such beans are called with the WebTestClient.Builder that is used to create the WebTestClient.

26.3.8. Using JMX

As the test context framework caches context, JMX is disabled by default to prevent identical components to register on the same domain. If such test needs access to an MBeanServer, consider marking it dirty as well:

@ExtendWith(SpringExtension.class)
@SpringBootTest(properties = "spring.jmx.enabled=true")
@DirtiesContext
class SampleJmxTests {

    @Autowired
    private MBeanServer mBeanServer;

    @Test
    void exampleTest() {
        // ...
    }

}

26.3.9. Mocking and Spying Beans

When running tests, it is sometimes necessary to mock certain components within your application context. For example, you may have a facade over some remote service that is unavailable during development. Mocking can also be useful when you want to simulate failures that might be hard to trigger in a real environment.

Spring Boot includes a @MockBean annotation that can be used to define a Mockito mock for a bean inside your ApplicationContext. You can use the annotation to add new beans or replace a single existing bean definition. The annotation can be used directly on test classes, on fields within your test, or on @Configuration classes and fields. When used on a field, the instance of the created mock is also injected. Mock beans are automatically reset after each test method.

If your test uses one of Spring Boot’s test annotations (such as @SpringBootTest), this feature is automatically enabled. To use this feature with a different arrangement, a listener must be explicitly added, as shown in the following example:

@TestExecutionListeners(MockitoTestExecutionListener.class)

The following example replaces an existing RemoteService bean with a mock implementation:

import org.junit.jupiter.api.Test;
import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.*;
import org.springframework.boot.test.context.*;
import org.springframework.boot.test.mock.mockito.*;

import static org.assertj.core.api.Assertions.*;
import static org.mockito.BDDMockito.*;

@SpringBootTest
class MyTests {

    @MockBean
    private RemoteService remoteService;

    @Autowired
    private Reverser reverser;

    @Test
    void exampleTest() {
        // RemoteService has been injected into the reverser bean
        given(this.remoteService.someCall()).willReturn("mock");
        String reverse = reverser.reverseSomeCall();
        assertThat(reverse).isEqualTo("kcom");
    }

}
@MockBean cannot be used to mock the behavior of a bean that’s exercised during application context refresh. By the time the test is executed, the application context refresh has completed and it is too late to configure the mocked behavior. We recommend using a @Bean method to create and configure the mock in this situation.

Additionally, you can use @SpyBean to wrap any existing bean with a Mockito spy. See the Javadoc for full details.

CGLib proxies, such as those created for scoped beans, declare the proxied methods as final. This stops Mockito from functioning correctly as it cannot mock or spy on final methods in its default configuration. If you want to mock or spy on such a bean, configure Mockito to use its inline mock maker by adding org.mockito:mockito-inline to your application’s test dependencies. This allows Mockito to mock and spy on final methods.
While Spring’s test framework caches application contexts between tests and reuses a context for tests sharing the same configuration, the use of @MockBean or @SpyBean influences the cache key, which will most likely increase the number of contexts.
If you are using @SpyBean to spy on a bean with @Cacheable methods that refer to parameters by name, your application must be compiled with -parameters. This ensures that the parameter names are available to the caching infrastructure once the bean has been spied upon.

26.3.10. Auto-configured Tests

Spring Boot’s auto-configuration system works well for applications but can sometimes be a little too much for tests. It often helps to load only the parts of the configuration that are required to test a “slice” of your application. For example, you might want to test that Spring MVC controllers are mapping URLs correctly, and you do not want to involve database calls in those tests, or you might want to test JPA entities, and you are not interested in the web layer when those tests run.

The spring-boot-test-autoconfigure module includes a number of annotations that can be used to automatically configure such “slices”. Each of them works in a similar way, providing a @…​Test annotation that loads the ApplicationContext and one or more @AutoConfigure…​ annotations that can be used to customize auto-configuration settings.

Each slice restricts component scan to appropriate components and loads a very restricted set of auto-configuration classes. If you need to exclude one of them, most @…​Test annotations provide an excludeAutoConfiguration attribute. Alternatively, you can use @ImportAutoConfiguration#exclude.
Including multiple “slices” by using several @…​Test annotations in one test is not supported. If you need multiple “slices”, pick one of the @…​Test annotations and include the @AutoConfigure…​ annotations of the other “slices” by hand.
It is also possible to use the @AutoConfigure…​ annotations with the standard @SpringBootTest annotation. You can use this combination if you are not interested in “slicing” your application but you want some of the auto-configured test beans.

26.3.11. Auto-configured JSON Tests

To test that object JSON serialization and deserialization is working as expected, you can use the @JsonTest annotation. @JsonTest auto-configures the available supported JSON mapper, which can be one of the following libraries:

  • Jackson ObjectMapper, any @JsonComponent beans and any Jackson Modules

  • Gson

  • Jsonb

A list of the auto-configurations that are enabled by @JsonTest can be found in the appendix.

If you need to configure elements of the auto-configuration, you can use the @AutoConfigureJsonTesters annotation.

Spring Boot includes AssertJ-based helpers that work with the JSONAssert and JsonPath libraries to check that JSON appears as expected. The JacksonTester, GsonTester, JsonbTester, and BasicJsonTester classes can be used for Jackson, Gson, Jsonb, and Strings respectively. Any helper fields on the test class can be @Autowired when using @JsonTest. The following example shows a test class for Jackson:

import org.junit.jupiter.api.Test;
import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.*;
import org.springframework.boot.test.autoconfigure.json.*;
import org.springframework.boot.test.context.*;
import org.springframework.boot.test.json.*;

import static org.assertj.core.api.Assertions.*;

@JsonTest
class MyJsonTests {

    @Autowired
    private JacksonTester<VehicleDetails> json;

    @Test
    void testSerialize() throws Exception {
        VehicleDetails details = new VehicleDetails("Honda", "Civic");
        // Assert against a `.json` file in the same package as the test
        assertThat(this.json.write(details)).isEqualToJson("expected.json");
        // Or use JSON path based assertions
        assertThat(this.json.write(details)).hasJsonPathStringValue("@.make");
        assertThat(this.json.write(details)).extractingJsonPathStringValue("@.make")
                .isEqualTo("Honda");
    }

    @Test
    void testDeserialize() throws Exception {
        String content = "{\"make\":\"Ford\",\"model\":\"Focus\"}";
        assertThat(this.json.parse(content))
                .isEqualTo(new VehicleDetails("Ford", "Focus"));
        assertThat(this.json.parseObject(content).getMake()).isEqualTo("Ford");
    }

}
JSON helper classes can also be used directly in standard unit tests. To do so, call the initFields method of the helper in your @Before method if you do not use @JsonTest.

If you’re using Spring Boot’s AssertJ-based helpers to assert on a number value at a given JSON path, you might not be able to use isEqualTo depending on the type. Instead, you can use AssertJ’s satisfies to assert that the value matches the given condition. For instance, the following example asserts that the actual number is a float value close to 0.15 within an offset of 0.01.

assertThat(json.write(message))
    .extractingJsonPathNumberValue("@.test.numberValue")
    .satisfies((number) -> assertThat(number.floatValue()).isCloseTo(0.15f, within(0.01f)));

26.3.12. Auto-configured Spring MVC Tests

To test whether Spring MVC controllers are working as expected, use the @WebMvcTest annotation. @WebMvcTest auto-configures the Spring MVC infrastructure and limits scanned beans to @Controller, @ControllerAdvice, @JsonComponent, Converter, GenericConverter, Filter, HandlerInterceptor, WebMvcConfigurer, and HandlerMethodArgumentResolver. Regular @Component beans are not scanned when using this annotation.

A list of the auto-configuration settings that are enabled by @WebMvcTest can be found in the appendix.
If you need to register extra components, such as the Jackson Module, you can import additional configuration classes by using @Import on your test.

Often, @WebMvcTest is limited to a single controller and is used in combination with @MockBean to provide mock implementations for required collaborators.

@WebMvcTest also auto-configures MockMvc. Mock MVC offers a powerful way to quickly test MVC controllers without needing to start a full HTTP server.

You can also auto-configure MockMvc in a non-@WebMvcTest (such as @SpringBootTest) by annotating it with @AutoConfigureMockMvc. The following example uses MockMvc: 
import org.junit.jupiter.api.*;
import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.*;
import org.springframework.boot.test.autoconfigure.web.servlet.*;
import org.springframework.boot.test.mock.mockito.*;

import static org.assertj.core.api.Assertions.*;
import static org.mockito.BDDMockito.*;
import static org.springframework.test.web.servlet.request.MockMvcRequestBuilders.*;
import static org.springframework.test.web.servlet.result.MockMvcResultMatchers.*;

@WebMvcTest(UserVehicleController.class)
class MyControllerTests {

    @Autowired
    private MockMvc mvc;

    @MockBean
    private UserVehicleService userVehicleService;

    @Test
    void testExample() throws Exception {
        given(this.userVehicleService.getVehicleDetails("sboot"))
                .willReturn(new VehicleDetails("Honda", "Civic"));
        this.mvc.perform(get("/sboot/vehicle").accept(MediaType.TEXT_PLAIN))
                .andExpect(status().isOk()).andExpect(content().string("Honda Civic"));
    }

}
If you need to configure elements of the auto-configuration (for example, when servlet filters should be applied) you can use attributes in the @AutoConfigureMockMvc annotation.

If you use HtmlUnit or Selenium, auto-configuration also provides an HtmlUnit WebClient bean and/or a Selenium WebDriver bean. The following example uses HtmlUnit:

import com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.*;
import org.junit.jupiter.api.*;
import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.*;
import org.springframework.boot.test.autoconfigure.web.servlet.*;
import org.springframework.boot.test.mock.mockito.*;

import static org.assertj.core.api.Assertions.*;
import static org.mockito.BDDMockito.*;

@WebMvcTest(UserVehicleController.class)
class MyHtmlUnitTests {

    @Autowired
    private WebClient webClient;

    @MockBean
    private UserVehicleService userVehicleService;

    @Test
    void testExample() throws Exception {
        given(this.userVehicleService.getVehicleDetails("sboot"))
                .willReturn(new VehicleDetails("Honda", "Civic"));
        HtmlPage page = this.webClient.getPage("/sboot/vehicle.html");
        assertThat(page.getBody().getTextContent()).isEqualTo("Honda Civic");
    }

}
By default, Spring Boot puts WebDriver beans in a special “scope” to ensure that the driver exits after each test and that a new instance is injected. If you do not want this behavior, you can add @Scope("singleton") to your WebDriver @Bean definition.
The webDriver scope created by Spring Boot will replace any user defined scope of the same name. If you define your own webDriver scope you may find it stops working when you use @WebMvcTest.

If you have Spring Security on the classpath, @WebMvcTest will also scan WebSecurityConfigurer beans. Instead of disabling security completely for such tests, you can use Spring Security’s test support. More details on how to use Spring Security’s MockMvc support can be found in this howto.html how-to section.

Sometimes writing Spring MVC tests is not enough; Spring Boot can help you run full end-to-end tests with an actual server.

26.3.13. Auto-configured Spring WebFlux Tests

To test that Spring WebFlux controllers are working as expected, you can use the @WebFluxTest annotation. @WebFluxTest auto-configures the Spring WebFlux infrastructure and limits scanned beans to @Controller, @ControllerAdvice, @JsonComponent, Converter, GenericConverter, WebFilter, and WebFluxConfigurer. Regular @Component beans are not scanned when the @WebFluxTest annotation is used.

A list of the auto-configurations that are enabled by @WebFluxTest can be found in the appendix.
If you need to register extra components, such as Jackson Module, you can import additional configuration classes using @Import on your test.

Often, @WebFluxTest is limited to a single controller and used in combination with the @MockBean annotation to provide mock implementations for required collaborators.

@WebFluxTest also auto-configures WebTestClient, which offers a powerful way to quickly test WebFlux controllers without needing to start a full HTTP server.

You can also auto-configure WebTestClient in a non-@WebFluxTest (such as @SpringBootTest) by annotating it with @AutoConfigureWebTestClient. The following example shows a class that uses both @WebFluxTest and a WebTestClient: 
import org.junit.jupiter.api.Test;

import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Autowired;
import org.springframework.boot.test.autoconfigure.web.reactive.WebFluxTest;
import org.springframework.http.MediaType;
import org.springframework.test.web.reactive.server.WebTestClient;

@WebFluxTest(UserVehicleController.class)
class MyControllerTests {

    @Autowired
    private WebTestClient webClient;

    @MockBean
    private UserVehicleService userVehicleService;

    @Test
    void testExample() throws Exception {
        given(this.userVehicleService.getVehicleDetails("sboot"))
                .willReturn(new VehicleDetails("Honda", "Civic"));
        this.webClient.get().uri("/sboot/vehicle").accept(MediaType.TEXT_PLAIN)
                .exchange()
                .expectStatus().isOk()
                .expectBody(String.class).isEqualTo("Honda Civic");
    }

}
This setup is only supported by WebFlux applications as using WebTestClient in a mocked web application only works with WebFlux at the moment.
@WebFluxTest cannot detect routes registered via the functional web framework. For testing RouterFunction beans in the context, consider importing your RouterFunction yourself via @Import or using @SpringBootTest.
@WebFluxTest cannot detect custom security configuration registered via a @Bean of type SecurityWebFilterChain. To include that in your test, you will need to import the configuration that registers the bean via @Import or use @SpringBootTest.
Sometimes writing Spring WebFlux tests is not enough; Spring Boot can help you run full end-to-end tests with an actual server.

26.3.14. Auto-configured Data JPA Tests

You can use the @DataJpaTest annotation to test JPA applications. By default, it scans for @Entity classes and configures Spring Data JPA repositories. If an embedded database is available on the classpath, it configures one as well. Regular @Component beans are not loaded into the ApplicationContext.

A list of the auto-configuration settings that are enabled by @DataJpaTest can be found in the appendix.

By default, data JPA tests are transactional and roll back at the end of each test. See the relevant section in the Spring Framework Reference Documentation for more details. If that is not what you want, you can disable transaction management for a test or for the whole class as follows:

import org.junit.jupiter.api.Test;
import org.springframework.boot.test.autoconfigure.orm.jpa.DataJpaTest;
import org.springframework.transaction.annotation.Propagation;
import org.springframework.transaction.annotation.Transactional;

@DataJpaTest
@Transactional(propagation = Propagation.NOT_SUPPORTED)
class ExampleNonTransactionalTests {

}

Data JPA tests may also inject a TestEntityManager bean, which provides an alternative to the standard JPA EntityManager that is specifically designed for tests. If you want to use TestEntityManager outside of @DataJpaTest instances, you can also use the @AutoConfigureTestEntityManager annotation. A JdbcTemplate is also available if you need that. The following example shows the @DataJpaTest annotation in use:

import org.junit.jupiter.api.Test;
import org.springframework.boot.test.autoconfigure.orm.jpa.*;

import static org.assertj.core.api.Assertions.*;

@DataJpaTest
class ExampleRepositoryTests {

    @Autowired
    private TestEntityManager entityManager;

    @Autowired
    private UserRepository repository;

    @Test
    void testExample() throws Exception {
        this.entityManager.persist(new User("sboot", "1234"));
        User user = this.repository.findByUsername("sboot");
        assertThat(user.getUsername()).isEqualTo("sboot");
        assertThat(user.getVin()).isEqualTo("1234");
    }

}

In-memory embedded databases generally work well for tests, since they are fast and do not require any installation. If, however, you prefer to run tests against a real database you can use the @AutoConfigureTestDatabase annotation, as shown in the following example:

@DataJpaTest
@AutoConfigureTestDatabase(replace=Replace.NONE)
class ExampleRepositoryTests {

    // ...

}

26.3.15. Auto-configured JDBC Tests

@JdbcTest is similar to @DataJpaTest but is for tests that only require a DataSource and do not use Spring Data JDBC. By default, it configures an in-memory embedded database and a JdbcTemplate. Regular @Component beans are not loaded into the ApplicationContext.

A list of the auto-configurations that are enabled by @JdbcTest can be found in the appendix.

By default, JDBC tests are transactional and roll back at the end of each test. See the relevant section in the Spring Framework Reference Documentation for more details. If that is not what you want, you can disable transaction management for a test or for the whole class, as follows:

import org.junit.jupiter.api.Test;
import org.springframework.boot.test.autoconfigure.jdbc.JdbcTest;
import org.springframework.transaction.annotation.Propagation;
import org.springframework.transaction.annotation.Transactional;

@JdbcTest
@Transactional(propagation = Propagation.NOT_SUPPORTED)
class ExampleNonTransactionalTests {

}

If you prefer your test to run against a real database, you can use the @AutoConfigureTestDatabase annotation in the same way as for DataJpaTest. (See "Auto-configured Data JPA Tests".)

26.3.16. Auto-configured Data JDBC Tests

@DataJdbcTest is similar to @JdbcTest but is for tests that use Spring Data JDBC repositories. By default, it configures an in-memory embedded database, a JdbcTemplate, and Spring Data JDBC repositories. Regular @Component beans are not loaded into the ApplicationContext.

A list of the auto-configurations that are enabled by @DataJdbcTest can be found in the appendix.

By default, Data JDBC tests are transactional and roll back at the end of each test. See the relevant section in the Spring Framework Reference Documentation for more details. If that is not what you want, you can disable transaction management for a test or for the whole test class as shown in the JDBC example.

If you prefer your test to run against a real database, you can use the @AutoConfigureTestDatabase annotation in the same way as for DataJpaTest. (See "Auto-configured Data JPA Tests".)

26.3.17. Auto-configured jOOQ Tests

You can use @JooqTest in a similar fashion as @JdbcTest but for jOOQ-related tests. As jOOQ relies heavily on a Java-based schema that corresponds with the database schema, the existing DataSource is used. If you want to replace it with an in-memory database, you can use @AutoConfigureTestDatabase to override those settings. (For more about using jOOQ with Spring Boot, see "Using jOOQ", earlier in this chapter.) Regular @Component beans are not loaded into the ApplicationContext.

A list of the auto-configurations that are enabled by @JooqTest can be found in the appendix.

@JooqTest configures a DSLContext. Regular @Component beans are not loaded into the ApplicationContext. The following example shows the @JooqTest annotation in use:

import org.jooq.DSLContext;
import org.junit.jupiter.api.Test;
import org.springframework.boot.test.autoconfigure.jooq.JooqTest;

@JooqTest
class ExampleJooqTests {

    @Autowired
    private DSLContext dslContext;
}

JOOQ tests are transactional and roll back at the end of each test by default. If that is not what you want, you can disable transaction management for a test or for the whole test class as shown in the JDBC example.

26.3.18. Auto-configured Data MongoDB Tests

You can use @DataMongoTest to test MongoDB applications. By default, it configures an in-memory embedded MongoDB (if available), configures a MongoTemplate, scans for @Document classes, and configures Spring Data MongoDB repositories. Regular @Component beans are not loaded into the ApplicationContext. (For more about using MongoDB with Spring Boot, see "MongoDB", earlier in this chapter.)

A list of the auto-configuration settings that are enabled by @DataMongoTest can be found in the appendix.

The following class shows the @DataMongoTest annotation in use:

import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Autowired;
import org.springframework.boot.test.autoconfigure.data.mongo.DataMongoTest;
import org.springframework.data.mongodb.core.MongoTemplate;

@DataMongoTest
class ExampleDataMongoTests {

    @Autowired
    private MongoTemplate mongoTemplate;

    //
}

In-memory embedded MongoDB generally works well for tests, since it is fast and does not require any developer installation. If, however, you prefer to run tests against a real MongoDB server, you should exclude the embedded MongoDB auto-configuration, as shown in the following example:

import org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.mongo.embedded.EmbeddedMongoAutoConfiguration;
import org.springframework.boot.test.autoconfigure.data.mongo.DataMongoTest;

@DataMongoTest(excludeAutoConfiguration = EmbeddedMongoAutoConfiguration.class)
class ExampleDataMongoNonEmbeddedTests {

}

26.3.19. Auto-configured Data Neo4j Tests

You can use @DataNeo4jTest to test Neo4j applications. By default, it uses an in-memory embedded Neo4j (if the embedded driver is available), scans for @NodeEntity classes, and configures Spring Data Neo4j repositories. Regular @Component beans are not loaded into the ApplicationContext. (For more about using Neo4J with Spring Boot, see "Neo4j", earlier in this chapter.)

A list of the auto-configuration settings that are enabled by @DataNeo4jTest can be found in the appendix.

The following example shows a typical setup for using Neo4J tests in Spring Boot:

import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Autowired;
import org.springframework.boot.test.autoconfigure.data.neo4j.DataNeo4jTest;

@DataNeo4jTest
class ExampleDataNeo4jTests {

    @Autowired
    private YourRepository repository;

    //
}

By default, Data Neo4j tests are transactional and roll back at the end of each test. See the relevant section in the Spring Framework Reference Documentation for more details. If that is not what you want, you can disable transaction management for a test or for the whole class, as follows:

import org.springframework.boot.test.autoconfigure.data.neo4j.DataNeo4jTest;
import org.springframework.transaction.annotation.Propagation;
import org.springframework.transaction.annotation.Transactional;

@DataNeo4jTest
@Transactional(propagation = Propagation.NOT_SUPPORTED)
class ExampleNonTransactionalTests {

}

26.3.20. Auto-configured Data Redis Tests

You can use @DataRedisTest to test Redis applications. By default, it scans for @RedisHash classes and configures Spring Data Redis repositories. Regular @Component beans are not loaded into the ApplicationContext. (For more about using Redis with Spring Boot, see "Redis", earlier in this chapter.)

A list of the auto-configuration settings that are enabled by @DataRedisTest can be found in the appendix.

The following example shows the @DataRedisTest annotation in use:

import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Autowired;
import org.springframework.boot.test.autoconfigure.data.redis.DataRedisTest;

@DataRedisTest
class ExampleDataRedisTests {

    @Autowired
    private YourRepository repository;

    //
}

26.3.21. Auto-configured Data LDAP Tests

You can use @DataLdapTest to test LDAP applications. By default, it configures an in-memory embedded LDAP (if available), configures an LdapTemplate, scans for @Entry classes, and configures Spring Data LDAP repositories. Regular @Component beans are not loaded into the ApplicationContext. (For more about using LDAP with Spring Boot, see "LDAP", earlier in this chapter.)

A list of the auto-configuration settings that are enabled by @DataLdapTest can be found in the appendix.

The following example shows the @DataLdapTest annotation in use:

import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Autowired;
import org.springframework.boot.test.autoconfigure.data.ldap.DataLdapTest;
import org.springframework.ldap.core.LdapTemplate;

@DataLdapTest
class ExampleDataLdapTests {

    @Autowired
    private LdapTemplate ldapTemplate;

    //
}

In-memory embedded LDAP generally works well for tests, since it is fast and does not require any developer installation. If, however, you prefer to run tests against a real LDAP server, you should exclude the embedded LDAP auto-configuration, as shown in the following example:

import org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.ldap.embedded.EmbeddedLdapAutoConfiguration;
import org.springframework.boot.test.autoconfigure.data.ldap.DataLdapTest;

@DataLdapTest(excludeAutoConfiguration = EmbeddedLdapAutoConfiguration.class)
class ExampleDataLdapNonEmbeddedTests {

}

26.3.22. Auto-configured REST Clients

You can use the @RestClientTest annotation to test REST clients. By default, it auto-configures Jackson, GSON, and Jsonb support, configures a RestTemplateBuilder, and adds support for MockRestServiceServer. Regular @Component beans are not loaded into the ApplicationContext.

A list of the auto-configuration settings that are enabled by @RestClientTest can be found in the appendix.

The specific beans that you want to test should be specified by using the value or components attribute of @RestClientTest, as shown in the following example:

@RestClientTest(RemoteVehicleDetailsService.class)
class ExampleRestClientTest {

    @Autowired
    private RemoteVehicleDetailsService service;

    @Autowired
    private MockRestServiceServer server;

    @Test
    void getVehicleDetailsWhenResultIsSuccessShouldReturnDetails()
            throws Exception {
        this.server.expect(requestTo("/greet/details"))
                .andRespond(withSuccess("hello", MediaType.TEXT_PLAIN));
        String greeting = this.service.callRestService();
        assertThat(greeting).isEqualTo("hello");
    }

}

26.3.23. Auto-configured Spring REST Docs Tests

You can use the @AutoConfigureRestDocs annotation to use Spring REST Docs in your tests with Mock MVC, REST Assured, or WebTestClient. It removes the need for the JUnit extension in Spring REST Docs.

@AutoConfigureRestDocs can be used to override the default output directory (target/generated-snippets if you are using Maven or build/generated-snippets if you are using Gradle). It can also be used to configure the host, scheme, and port that appears in any documented URIs.

Auto-configured Spring REST Docs Tests with Mock MVC

@AutoConfigureRestDocs customizes the MockMvc bean to use Spring REST Docs. You can inject it by using @Autowired and use it in your tests as you normally would when using Mock MVC and Spring REST Docs, as shown in the following example:

import org.junit.jupiter.api.Test;

import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Autowired;
import org.springframework.boot.test.autoconfigure.web.servlet.WebMvcTest;
import org.springframework.http.MediaType;
import org.springframework.test.web.servlet.MockMvc;

import static org.springframework.restdocs.mockmvc.MockMvcRestDocumentation.document;
import static org.springframework.test.web.servlet.request.MockMvcRequestBuilders.get;
import static org.springframework.test.web.servlet.result.MockMvcResultMatchers.*;

@WebMvcTest(UserController.class)
@AutoConfigureRestDocs
class UserDocumentationTests {

    @Autowired
    private MockMvc mvc;

    @Test
    void listUsers() throws Exception {
        this.mvc.perform(get("/users").accept(MediaType.TEXT_PLAIN))
                .andExpect(status().isOk())
                .andDo(document("list-users"));
    }

}

If you require more control over Spring REST Docs configuration than offered by the attributes of @AutoConfigureRestDocs, you can use a RestDocsMockMvcConfigurationCustomizer bean, as shown in the following example:

@TestConfiguration
static class CustomizationConfiguration
        implements RestDocsMockMvcConfigurationCustomizer {

    @Override
    public void customize(MockMvcRestDocumentationConfigurer configurer) {
        configurer.snippets().withTemplateFormat(TemplateFormats.markdown());
    }

}

If you want to make use of Spring REST Docs support for a parameterized output directory, you can create a RestDocumentationResultHandler bean. The auto-configuration calls alwaysDo with this result handler, thereby causing each MockMvc call to automatically generate the default snippets. The following example shows a RestDocumentationResultHandler being defined:

@TestConfiguration(proxyBeanMethods = false)
static class ResultHandlerConfiguration {

    @Bean
    public RestDocumentationResultHandler restDocumentation() {
        return MockMvcRestDocumentation.document("{method-name}");
    }

}
Auto-configured Spring REST Docs Tests with WebTestClient

@AutoConfigureRestDocs can also be used with WebTestClient. You can inject it by using @Autowired and use it in your tests as you normally would when using @WebFluxTest and Spring REST Docs, as shown in the following example:

import org.junit.jupiter.api.Test;

import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Autowired;
import org.springframework.boot.test.autoconfigure.restdocs.AutoConfigureRestDocs;
import org.springframework.boot.test.autoconfigure.web.reactive.WebFluxTest;
import org.springframework.test.web.reactive.server.WebTestClient;

import static org.springframework.restdocs.webtestclient.WebTestClientRestDocumentation.document;

@WebFluxTest
@AutoConfigureRestDocs
class UsersDocumentationTests {

    @Autowired
    private WebTestClient webTestClient;

    @Test
    void listUsers() {
        this.webTestClient.get().uri("/").exchange().expectStatus().isOk().expectBody()
                .consumeWith(document("list-users"));
    }

}

If you require more control over Spring REST Docs configuration than offered by the attributes of @AutoConfigureRestDocs, you can use a RestDocsWebTestClientConfigurationCustomizer bean, as shown in the following example:

@TestConfiguration(proxyBeanMethods = false)
public static class CustomizationConfiguration implements RestDocsWebTestClientConfigurationCustomizer {

    @Override
    public void customize(WebTestClientRestDocumentationConfigurer configurer) {
        configurer.snippets().withEncoding("UTF-8");
    }

}
Auto-configured Spring REST Docs Tests with REST Assured

@AutoConfigureRestDocs makes a RequestSpecification bean, preconfigured to use Spring REST Docs, available to your tests. You can inject it by using @Autowired and use it in your tests as you normally would when using REST Assured and Spring REST Docs, as shown in the following example:

import io.restassured.specification.RequestSpecification;
import org.junit.jupiter.api.Test;

import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Autowired;
import org.springframework.boot.test.autoconfigure.restdocs.AutoConfigureRestDocs;
import org.springframework.boot.test.context.SpringBootTest;
import org.springframework.boot.test.context.SpringBootTest.WebEnvironment;
import org.springframework.boot.web.server.LocalServerPort;

import static io.restassured.RestAssured.given;
import static org.hamcrest.Matchers.is;
import static org.springframework.restdocs.restassured3.RestAssuredRestDocumentation.document;

@SpringBootTest(webEnvironment = WebEnvironment.RANDOM_PORT)
@AutoConfigureRestDocs
class UserDocumentationTests {

    @Test
    void listUsers(@Autowired RequestSpecification documentationSpec, @LocalServerPort int port) {
        given(documentationSpec).filter(document("list-users")).when().port(port).get("/").then().assertThat()
                .statusCode(is(200));
    }

}

If you require more control over Spring REST Docs configuration than offered by the attributes of @AutoConfigureRestDocs, a RestDocsRestAssuredConfigurationCustomizer bean can be used, as shown in the following example:

@TestConfiguration(proxyBeanMethods = false)
public static class CustomizationConfiguration implements RestDocsRestAssuredConfigurationCustomizer {

    @Override
    public void customize(RestAssuredRestDocumentationConfigurer configurer) {
        configurer.snippets().withTemplateFormat(TemplateFormats.markdown());
    }

}

26.3.24. Auto-configured Spring Web Services Tests

You can use @WebServiceClientTest to test applications that use call web services using the Spring Web Services project. By default, it configures a mock WebServiceServer bean and automatically customizes your WebServiceTemplateBuilder. (For more about using Web Services with Spring Boot, see "Web Services", earlier in this chapter.)

A list of the auto-configuration settings that are enabled by @WebServiceClientTest can be found in the appendix.

The following example shows the @WebServiceClientTest annotation in use:

@WebServiceClientTest(ExampleWebServiceClient.class)
class WebServiceClientIntegrationTests {

    @Autowired
    private MockWebServiceServer server;

    @Autowired
    private ExampleWebServiceClient client;

    @Test
    void mockServerCall() {
        this.server.expect(payload(new StringSource("<request/>"))).andRespond(
                withPayload(new StringSource("<response><status>200</status></response>")));
        assertThat(this.client.test()).extracting(Response::getStatus).isEqualTo(200);
    }

}

26.3.25. Additional Auto-configuration and Slicing

Each slice provides one or more @AutoConfigure…​ annotations that namely defines the auto-configurations that should be included as part of a slice. Additional auto-configurations can be added by creating a custom @AutoConfigure…​ annotation or by adding @ImportAutoConfiguration to the test as shown in the following example:

@JdbcTest
@ImportAutoConfiguration(IntegrationAutoConfiguration.class)
class ExampleJdbcTests {

}
Make sure to not use the regular @Import annotation to import auto-configurations as they are handled in a specific way by Spring Boot.

26.3.26. User Configuration and Slicing

If you structure your code in a sensible way, your @SpringBootApplication class is used by default as the configuration of your tests.

It then becomes important not to litter the application’s main class with configuration settings that are specific to a particular area of its functionality.

Assume that you are using Spring Batch and you rely on the auto-configuration for it. You could define your @SpringBootApplication as follows:

@SpringBootApplication
@EnableBatchProcessing
public class SampleApplication { ... }

Because this class is the source configuration for the test, any slice test actually tries to start Spring Batch, which is definitely not what you want to do. A recommended approach is to move that area-specific configuration to a separate @Configuration class at the same level as your application, as shown in the following example:

@Configuration(proxyBeanMethods = false)
@EnableBatchProcessing
public class BatchConfiguration { ... }
Depending on the complexity of your application, you may either have a single @Configuration class for your customizations or one class per domain area. The latter approach lets you enable it in one of your tests, if necessary, with the @Import annotation.

Test slices exclude @Configuration classes from scanning. For example, for a @WebMvcTest, the following configuration will not include the given WebMvcConfigurer bean in the application context loaded by the test slice:

@Configuration
public class WebConfiguration {
    @Bean
    public WebMvcConfigurer testConfigurer() {
        return new WebMvcConfigurer() {
            ...
        };
    }
}

The configuration below will, however, cause the custom WebMvcConfigurer to be loaded by the test slice.

@Component
public class TestWebMvcConfigurer implements WebMvcConfigurer {
    ...
}

Another source of confusion is classpath scanning. Assume that, while you structured your code in a sensible way, you need to scan an additional package. Your application may resemble the following code:

@SpringBootApplication
@ComponentScan({ "com.example.app", "org.acme.another" })
public class SampleApplication { ... }

Doing so effectively overrides the default component scan directive with the side effect of scanning those two packages regardless of the slice that you chose. For instance, a @DataJpaTest seems to suddenly scan components and user configurations of your application. Again, moving the custom directive to a separate class is a good way to fix this issue.

If this is not an option for you, you can create a @SpringBootConfiguration somewhere in the hierarchy of your test so that it is used instead. Alternatively, you can specify a source for your test, which disables the behavior of finding a default one.

26.3.27. Using Spock to Test Spring Boot Applications

If you wish to use Spock to test a Spring Boot application, you should add a dependency on Spock’s spock-spring module to your application’s build. spock-spring integrates Spring’s test framework into Spock. It is recommended that you use Spock 1.2 or later to benefit from a number of improvements to Spock’s Spring Framework and Spring Boot integration. See the documentation for Spock’s Spring module for further details.

26.4. Test Utilities

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

26.4.1. ConfigFileApplicationContextInitializer

ConfigFileApplicationContextInitializer is an ApplicationContextInitializer that you can apply to your tests to load Spring Boot application.properties files. You can use it when you do not need the full set of features provided by @SpringBootTest, as shown in the following example:

@ContextConfiguration(classes = Config.class,
    initializers = ConfigFileApplicationContextInitializer.class)
Using ConfigFileApplicationContextInitializer alone does not provide support for @Value("${…​}") injection. Its only job is to ensure that application.properties files are loaded into Spring’s Environment. For @Value support, you need to either additionally configure a PropertySourcesPlaceholderConfigurer or use @SpringBootTest, which auto-configures one for you.

26.4.2. TestPropertyValues

TestPropertyValues lets you quickly add properties to a ConfigurableEnvironment or ConfigurableApplicationContext. You can call it with key=value strings, as follows:

TestPropertyValues.of("org=Spring", "name=Boot").applyTo(env);

26.4.3. OutputCapture

OutputCapture is a JUnit Extension that you can use to capture System.out and System.err output. To use add @ExtendWith(OutputCaptureExtension.class) and inject CapturedOutput as an argument to your test class constructor or test method as follows:

@ExtendWith(OutputCaptureExtension.class)
class OutputCaptureTests {

    @Test
    void testName(CapturedOutput output) {
        System.out.println("Hello World!");
        assertThat(output).contains("World");
    }

}

26.4.4. TestRestTemplate

TestRestTemplate is a convenience alternative to Spring’s RestTemplate that is useful in integration tests. You can get a vanilla template or one that sends Basic HTTP authentication (with a username and password). In either case, the template behaves in a test-friendly way by not throwing exceptions on server-side errors.

Spring Framework 5.0 provides a new WebTestClient that works for WebFlux integration tests and both WebFlux and MVC end-to-end testing. It provides a fluent API for assertions, unlike TestRestTemplate.

It is recommended, but not mandatory, to use the Apache HTTP Client (version 4.3.2 or better). If you have that on your classpath, the TestRestTemplate responds by configuring the client appropriately. If you do use Apache’s HTTP client, some additional test-friendly features are enabled:

  • Redirects are not followed (so you can assert the response location).

  • Cookies are ignored (so the template is stateless).

TestRestTemplate can be instantiated directly in your integration tests, as shown in the following example:

public class MyTest {

    private TestRestTemplate template = new TestRestTemplate();

    @Test
    public void testRequest() throws Exception {
        HttpHeaders headers = this.template.getForEntity(
                "https://myhost.example.com/example", String.class).getHeaders();
        assertThat(headers.getLocation()).hasHost("other.example.com");
    }

}

Alternatively, if you use the @SpringBootTest annotation with WebEnvironment.RANDOM_PORT or WebEnvironment.DEFINED_PORT, you can inject a fully configured TestRestTemplate and start using it. If necessary, additional customizations can be applied through the RestTemplateBuilder bean. Any URLs that do not specify a host and port automatically connect to the embedded server, as shown in the following example:

@SpringBootTest(webEnvironment = WebEnvironment.RANDOM_PORT)
class SampleWebClientTests {

    @Autowired
    private TestRestTemplate template;

    @Test
    void testRequest() {
        HttpHeaders headers = this.template.getForEntity("/example", String.class).getHeaders();
        assertThat(headers.getLocation()).hasHost("other.example.com");
    }

    @TestConfiguration(proxyBeanMethods = false)
    static class Config {

        @Bean
        RestTemplateBuilder restTemplateBuilder() {
            return new RestTemplateBuilder().setConnectTimeout(Duration.ofSeconds(1))
                    .setReadTimeout(Duration.ofSeconds(1));
        }

    }

}

27. WebSockets

Spring Boot provides WebSockets auto-configuration for embedded Tomcat, Jetty, and Undertow. If you deploy a war file to a standalone container, Spring Boot assumes that the container is responsible for the configuration of its WebSocket support.

Spring Framework provides rich WebSocket support for MVC web applications that can be easily accessed through the spring-boot-starter-websocket module.

WebSocket support is also available for reactive web applications and requires to include the WebSocket API alongside spring-boot-starter-webflux:

<dependency>
    <groupId>javax.websocket</groupId>
    <artifactId>javax.websocket-api</artifactId>
</dependency>

28. Web Services

Spring Boot provides Web Services auto-configuration so that all you must do is define your Endpoints.

The Spring Web Services features can be easily accessed with the spring-boot-starter-webservices module.

SimpleWsdl11Definition and SimpleXsdSchema beans can be automatically created for your WSDLs and XSDs respectively. To do so, configure their location, as shown in the following example:

spring.webservices.wsdl-locations=classpath:/wsdl

28.1. Calling Web Services with WebServiceTemplate

If you need to call remote Web services from your application, you can use the WebServiceTemplate class. Since WebServiceTemplate instances often need to be customized before being used, Spring Boot does not provide any single auto-configured WebServiceTemplate bean. It does, however, auto-configure a WebServiceTemplateBuilder, which can be used to create WebServiceTemplate instances when needed.

The following code shows a typical example:

@Service
public class MyService {

    private final WebServiceTemplate webServiceTemplate;

    public MyService(WebServiceTemplateBuilder webServiceTemplateBuilder) {
        this.webServiceTemplate = webServiceTemplateBuilder.build();
    }

    public DetailsResp someWsCall(DetailsReq detailsReq) {
         return (DetailsResp) this.webServiceTemplate.marshalSendAndReceive(detailsReq, new SoapActionCallback(ACTION));
    }

}

By default, WebServiceTemplateBuilder detects a suitable HTTP-based WebServiceMessageSender using the available HTTP client libraries on the classpath. You can also customize read and connection timeouts as follows:

@Bean
public WebServiceTemplate webServiceTemplate(WebServiceTemplateBuilder builder) {
    return builder.messageSenders(new HttpWebServiceMessageSenderBuilder()
            .setConnectTimeout(5000).setReadTimeout(2000).build()).build();
}

29. Creating Your Own Auto-configuration

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

Auto-configuration can be associated to a “starter” that provides the auto-configuration code as well as the typical libraries that you would use with it. We first cover what you need to know to build your own auto-configuration and then we move on to the typical steps required to create a custom starter.

A demo project is available to showcase how you can create a starter step-by-step.

29.1. Understanding Auto-configured Beans

Under the hood, auto-configuration is implemented with standard @Configuration classes. Additional @Conditional annotations are used to constrain when the auto-configuration should apply. Usually, auto-configuration classes use @ConditionalOnClass and @ConditionalOnMissingBean annotations. This ensures that auto-configuration applies only when relevant classes are found and when you have not declared your own @Configuration.

You can browse the source code of spring-boot-autoconfigure to see the @Configuration classes that Spring provides (see the META-INF/spring.factories file).

29.2. Locating Auto-configuration Candidates

Spring Boot checks for the presence of a META-INF/spring.factories file within your published jar. The file should list your configuration classes under the EnableAutoConfiguration key, as shown in the following example:

org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.EnableAutoConfiguration=\
com.mycorp.libx.autoconfigure.LibXAutoConfiguration,\
com.mycorp.libx.autoconfigure.LibXWebAutoConfiguration
Auto-configurations must be loaded that way only. Make sure that they are defined in a specific package space and that they are never the target of component scanning. Furthermore, auto-configuration classes should not enable component scanning to find additional components. Specific @Imports should be used instead.

You can use the @AutoConfigureAfter or @AutoConfigureBefore annotations if your configuration needs to be applied in a specific order. For example, if you provide web-specific configuration, your class may need to be applied after WebMvcAutoConfiguration.

If you want to order certain auto-configurations that should not have any direct knowledge of each other, you can also use @AutoConfigureOrder. That annotation has the same semantic as the regular @Order annotation but provides a dedicated order for auto-configuration classes.

As with standard @Configuration classes, the order in which auto-configuration classes are applied only affects the order in which their beans are defined. The order in which those beans are subsequently created is unaffected and is determined by each bean’s dependencies and any @DependsOn relationships.

29.3. Condition Annotations

You almost always want to include one or more @Conditional annotations on your auto-configuration class. The @ConditionalOnMissingBean annotation is one common example that is used to allow developers to override auto-configuration if they are not happy with your defaults.

Spring Boot includes a number of @Conditional annotations that you can reuse in your own code by annotating @Configuration classes or individual @Bean methods. These annotations include:

29.3.1. Class Conditions

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

This mechanism does not apply the same way to @Bean methods where typically the return type is the target of the condition: before the condition on the method applies, the JVM will have loaded the class and potentially processed method references which will fail if the class is not present.

To handle this scenario, a separate @Configuration class can be used to isolate the condition, as shown in the following example:

@Configuration(proxyBeanMethods = false)
// Some conditions
public class MyAutoConfiguration {

    // Auto-configured beans

    @Configuration(proxyBeanMethods = false)
    @ConditionalOnClass(EmbeddedAcmeService.class)
    static class EmbeddedConfiguration {

        @Bean
        @ConditionalOnMissingBean
        public EmbeddedAcmeService embeddedAcmeService() { ... }

    }

}
If you use @ConditionalOnClass or @ConditionalOnMissingClass as a part of a meta-annotation to compose your own composed annotations, you must use name as referring to the class in such a case is not handled.

29.3.2. Bean Conditions

The @ConditionalOnBean and @ConditionalOnMissingBean annotations let a bean be included based on the presence or absence of specific beans. You can use the value attribute to specify beans by type or name to specify beans by name. The search attribute lets you limit the ApplicationContext hierarchy that should be considered when searching for beans.

When placed on a @Bean method, the target type defaults to the return type of the method, as shown in the following example:

@Configuration(proxyBeanMethods = false)
public class MyAutoConfiguration {

    @Bean
    @ConditionalOnMissingBean
    public MyService myService() { ... }

}

In the preceding example, the myService bean is going to be created if no bean of type MyService is already contained in the ApplicationContext.

You need to be very careful about the order in which bean definitions are added, as these conditions are evaluated based on what has been processed so far. For this reason, we recommend using only @ConditionalOnBean and @ConditionalOnMissingBean annotations on auto-configuration classes (since these are guaranteed to load after any user-defined bean definitions have been added).
@ConditionalOnBean and @ConditionalOnMissingBean do not prevent @Configuration classes from being created. The only difference between using these conditions at the class level and marking each contained @Bean method with the annotation is that the former prevents registration of the @Configuration class as a bean if the condition does not match.

29.3.3. Property Conditions

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

29.3.4. Resource Conditions

The @ConditionalOnResource annotation lets configuration be included only when a specific resource is present. Resources can be specified by using the usual Spring conventions, as shown in the following example: file:/home/user/test.dat.

29.3.5. Web Application Conditions

The @ConditionalOnWebApplication and @ConditionalOnNotWebApplication annotations let configuration be included depending on whether the application is a “web application”. A servlet-based web application is any application that uses a Spring WebApplicationContext, defines a session scope, or has a ConfigurableWebEnvironment. A reactive web application is any application that uses a ReactiveWebApplicationContext, or has a ConfigurableReactiveWebEnvironment.

The @ConditionalOnWarDeployment annotation lets configuration be included depending on whether the application is a traditional WAR application that is deployed to a container. This condition will not match for applications that are run with an embedded server.

29.3.6. SpEL Expression Conditions

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

29.4. Testing your Auto-configuration

An auto-configuration can be affected by many factors: user configuration (@Bean definition and Environment customization), condition evaluation (presence of a particular library), and others. Concretely, each test should create a well defined ApplicationContext that represents a combination of those customizations. ApplicationContextRunner provides a great way to achieve that.

ApplicationContextRunner is usually defined as a field of the test class to gather the base, common configuration. The following example makes sure that UserServiceAutoConfiguration is always invoked:

private final ApplicationContextRunner contextRunner = new ApplicationContextRunner()
        .withConfiguration(AutoConfigurations.of(UserServiceAutoConfiguration.class));
If multiple auto-configurations have to be defined, there is no need to order their declarations as they are invoked in the exact same order as when running the application.

Each test can use the runner to represent a particular use case. For instance, the sample below invokes a user configuration (UserConfiguration) and checks that the auto-configuration backs off properly. Invoking run provides a callback context that can be used with Assert4J.

@Test
void defaultServiceBacksOff() {
    this.contextRunner.withUserConfiguration(UserConfiguration.class).run((context) -> {
        assertThat(context).hasSingleBean(UserService.class);
        assertThat(context).getBean("myUserService").isSameAs(context.getBean(UserService.class));
    });
}

@Configuration(proxyBeanMethods = false)
static class UserConfiguration {

    @Bean
    UserService myUserService() {
        return new UserService("mine");
    }

}

It is also possible to easily customize the Environment, as shown in the following example:

@Test
void serviceNameCanBeConfigured() {
    this.contextRunner.withPropertyValues("user.name=test123").run((context) -> {
        assertThat(context).hasSingleBean(UserService.class);
        assertThat(context.getBean(UserService.class).getName()).isEqualTo("test123");
    });
}

The runner can also be used to display the ConditionEvaluationReport. The report can be printed at INFO or DEBUG level. The following example shows how to use the ConditionEvaluationReportLoggingListener to print the report in auto-configuration tests.

@Test
public void autoConfigTest {
    ConditionEvaluationReportLoggingListener initializer = new ConditionEvaluationReportLoggingListener(
            LogLevel.INFO);
    ApplicationContextRunner contextRunner = new ApplicationContextRunner()
            .withInitializer(initializer).run((context) -> {
                    // Do something...
            });
}

29.4.1. Simulating a Web Context

If you need to test an auto-configuration that only operates in a Servlet or Reactive web application context, use the WebApplicationContextRunner or ReactiveWebApplicationContextRunner respectively.

29.4.2. Overriding the Classpath

It is also possible to test what happens when a particular class and/or package is not present at runtime. Spring Boot ships with a FilteredClassLoader that can easily be used by the runner. In the following example, we assert that if UserService is not present, the auto-configuration is properly disabled:

@Test
void serviceIsIgnoredIfLibraryIsNotPresent() {
    this.contextRunner.withClassLoader(new FilteredClassLoader(UserService.class))
            .run((context) -> assertThat(context).doesNotHaveBean("userService"));
}

29.5. Creating Your Own Starter

A typical Spring Boot starter contains code to auto-configure and customize the infrastructure of a given technology, let’s call that "acme". To make it easily extensible, a number of configuration keys in a dedicated namespace can be exposed to the environment. Finally, a single "starter" dependency is provided to help users get started as easily as possible.

Concretely, a custom starter can contain the following:

  • The autoconfigure module that contains the auto-configuration code for "acme".

  • The starter module that provides a dependency to the autoconfigure module as well as "acme" and any additional dependencies that are typically useful. In a nutshell, adding the starter should provide everything needed to start using that library.

This separation in two modules is in no way necessary. If "acme" has several flavours, options or optional features, then it is better to separate the auto-configuration as you can clearly express the fact some features are optional. Besides, you have the ability to craft a starter that provides an opinion about those optional dependencies. At the same time, others can rely only on the autoconfigure module and craft their own starter with different opinions.

If the auto-configuration is relatively straightforward and does not have optional feature, merging the two modules in the starter is definitely an option.

29.5.1. Naming

You should make sure to provide a proper namespace for your starter. Do not start your module names with spring-boot, even if you use a different Maven groupId. We may offer official support for the thing you auto-configure in the future.

As a rule of thumb, you should name a combined module after the starter. For example, assume that you are creating a starter for "acme" and that you name the auto-configure module acme-spring-boot and the starter acme-spring-boot-starter. If you only have one module that combines the two, name it acme-spring-boot-starter.

29.5.2. Configuration keys

If your starter provides configuration keys, use a unique namespace for them. In particular, do not include your keys in the namespaces that Spring Boot uses (such as server, management, spring, and so on). If you use the same namespace, we may modify these namespaces in the future in ways that break your modules. As a rule of thumb, prefix all your keys with a namespace that you own (e.g. acme).

Make sure that configuration keys are documented by adding field javadoc for each property, as shown in the following example:

@ConfigurationProperties("acme")
public class AcmeProperties {

    /**
     * Whether to check the location of acme resources.
     */
    private boolean checkLocation = true;

    /**
     * Timeout for establishing a connection to the acme server.
     */
    private Duration loginTimeout = Duration.ofSeconds(3);

    // getters & setters

}
You should only use plain text with @ConfigurationProperties field Javadoc, since they are not processed before being added to the JSON.

Here are some rules we follow internally to make sure descriptions are consistent:

  • Do not start the description by "The" or "A".

  • For boolean types, start the description with "Whether" or "Enable".

  • For collection-based types, start the description with "Comma-separated list"

  • Use java.time.Duration rather than long and describe the default unit if it differs from milliseconds, e.g. "If a duration suffix is not specified, seconds will be used".

  • Do not provide the default value in the description unless it has to be determined at runtime.

Make sure to trigger meta-data generation so that IDE assistance is available for your keys as well. You may want to review the generated metadata (META-INF/spring-configuration-metadata.json) to make sure your keys are properly documented. Using your own starter in a compatible IDE is also a good idea to validate that quality of the metadata.

29.5.3. The “autoconfigure” Module

The autoconfigure module contains everything that is necessary to get started with the library. It may also contain configuration key definitions (such as @ConfigurationProperties) and any callback interface that can be used to further customize how the components are initialized.

You should mark the dependencies to the library as optional so that you can include the autoconfigure module in your projects more easily. If you do it that way, the library is not provided and, by default, Spring Boot backs off.

Spring Boot uses an annotation processor to collect the conditions on auto-configurations in a metadata file (META-INF/spring-autoconfigure-metadata.properties). If that file is present, it is used to eagerly filter auto-configurations that do not match, which will improve startup time. It is recommended to add the following dependency in a module that contains auto-configurations:

<dependency>
    <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
    <artifactId>spring-boot-autoconfigure-processor</artifactId>
    <optional>true</optional>
</dependency>

If you have defined auto-configurations directly in your application, make sure to configure the spring-boot-maven-plugin to prevent the repackage goal from adding the dependency into the fat jar:

<project>
    <build>
        <plugins>
            <plugin>
                <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
                <artifactId>spring-boot-maven-plugin</artifactId>
                <configuration>
                    <excludes>
                        <exclude>
                            <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
                            <artifactId>spring-boot-autoconfigure-processor</artifactId>
                        </exclude>
                    </excludes>
                </configuration>
            </plugin>
        </plugins>
    </build>
</project>

With Gradle 4.5 and earlier, the dependency should be declared in the compileOnly configuration, as shown in the following example:

dependencies {
    compileOnly "org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-autoconfigure-processor"
}

With Gradle 4.6 and later, the dependency should be declared in the annotationProcessor configuration, as shown in the following example:

dependencies {
    annotationProcessor "org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-autoconfigure-processor"
}

29.5.4. Starter Module

The starter is really an empty jar. Its only purpose is to provide the necessary dependencies to work with the library. You can think of it as an opinionated view of what is required to get started.

Do not make assumptions about the project in which your starter is added. If the library you are auto-configuring typically requires other starters, mention them as well. Providing a proper set of default dependencies may be hard if the number of optional dependencies is high, as you should avoid including dependencies that are unnecessary for a typical usage of the library. In other words, you should not include optional dependencies.

Either way, your starter must reference the core Spring Boot starter (spring-boot-starter) directly or indirectly (i.e. no need to add it if your starter relies on another starter). If a project is created with only your custom starter, Spring Boot’s core features will be honoured by the presence of the core starter.

30. Kotlin support

Kotlin is a statically-typed language targeting the JVM (and other platforms) which allows writing concise and elegant code while providing interoperability with existing libraries written in Java.

Spring Boot provides Kotlin support by leveraging the support in other Spring projects such as Spring Framework, Spring Data, and Reactor. See the Spring Framework Kotlin support documentation for more information.

The easiest way to start with Spring Boot and Kotlin is to follow this comprehensive tutorial. You can create new Kotlin projects via start.spring.io. Feel free to join the #spring channel of Kotlin Slack or ask a question with the spring and kotlin tags on Stack Overflow if you need support.

30.1. Requirements

Spring Boot supports Kotlin 1.3.x. To use Kotlin, org.jetbrains.kotlin:kotlin-stdlib and org.jetbrains.kotlin:kotlin-reflect must be present on the classpath. The kotlin-stdlib variants kotlin-stdlib-jdk7 and kotlin-stdlib-jdk8 can also be used.

Since Kotlin classes are final by default, you are likely to want to configure kotlin-spring plugin in order to automatically open Spring-annotated classes so that they can be proxied.

Jackson’s Kotlin module is required for serializing / deserializing JSON data in Kotlin. It is automatically registered when found on the classpath. A warning message is logged if Jackson and Kotlin are present but the Jackson Kotlin module is not.

These dependencies and plugins are provided by default if one bootstraps a Kotlin project on start.spring.io.

30.2. Null-safety

One of Kotlin’s key features is null-safety. It deals with null values at compile time rather than deferring the problem to runtime and encountering a NullPointerException. This helps to eliminate a common source of bugs without paying the cost of wrappers like Optional. Kotlin also allows using functional constructs with nullable values as described in this comprehensive guide to null-safety in Kotlin.

Although Java does not allow one to express null-safety in its type system, Spring Framework, Spring Data, and Reactor now provide null-safety of their API via tooling-friendly annotations. By default, types from Java APIs used in Kotlin are recognized as platform types for which null-checks are relaxed. Kotlin’s support for JSR 305 annotations combined with nullability annotations provide null-safety for the related Spring API in Kotlin.

The JSR 305 checks can be configured by adding the -Xjsr305 compiler flag with the following options: -Xjsr305={strict|warn|ignore}. The default behavior is the same as -Xjsr305=warn. The strict value is required to have null-safety taken in account in Kotlin types inferred from Spring API but should be used with the knowledge that Spring API nullability declaration could evolve even between minor releases and more checks may be added in the future).

Generic type arguments, varargs and array elements nullability are not yet supported. See SPR-15942 for up-to-date information. Also be aware that Spring Boot’s own API is not yet annotated.

30.3. Kotlin API

30.3.1. runApplication

Spring Boot provides an idiomatic way to run an application with runApplication<MyApplication>(*args) as shown in the following example:

import org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.SpringBootApplication
import org.springframework.boot.runApplication

@SpringBootApplication
class MyApplication

fun main(args: Array<String>) {
    runApplication<MyApplication>(*args)
}

This is a drop-in replacement for SpringApplication.run(MyApplication::class.java, *args). It also allows customization of the application as shown in the following example:

runApplication<MyApplication>(*args) {
    setBannerMode(OFF)
}

30.3.2. Extensions

Kotlin extensions provide the ability to extend existing classes with additional functionality. The Spring Boot Kotlin API makes use of these extensions to add new Kotlin specific conveniences to existing APIs.

TestRestTemplate extensions, similar to those provided by Spring Framework for RestOperations in Spring Framework, are provided. Among other things, the extensions make it possible to take advantage of Kotlin reified type parameters.

30.4. Dependency management

In order to avoid mixing different versions of Kotlin dependencies on the classpath, Spring Boot imports the Kotlin BOM.

With Maven, the Kotlin version can be customized via the kotlin.version property and plugin management is provided for kotlin-maven-plugin. With Gradle, the Spring Boot plugin automatically aligns the kotlin.version with the version of the Kotlin plugin.

Spring Boot also manages the version of Coroutines dependencies by importing the Kotlin Coroutines BOM. The version can be customized via the kotlin-coroutines.version property.

org.jetbrains.kotlinx:kotlinx-coroutines-reactor dependency is provided by default if one bootstraps a Kotlin project with at least one reactive dependency on start.spring.io.

30.5. @ConfigurationProperties

@ConfigurationProperties when used in combination with @ConstructorBinding supports classes with immutable val properties as shown in the following example:

@ConstructorBinding
@ConfigurationProperties("example.kotlin")
data class KotlinExampleProperties(
        val name: String,
        val description: String,
        val myService: MyService) {

    data class MyService(
            val apiToken: String,
            val uri: URI
    )
}
To generate your own metadata using the annotation processor, kapt should be configured with the spring-boot-configuration-processor dependency. Note that some features (such as detecting the default value or deprecated items) are not working due to limitations in the model kapt provides.

30.6. Testing

While it is possible to use JUnit 4 to test Kotlin code, JUnit 5 is provided by default and is recommended. JUnit 5 enables a test class to be instantiated once and reused for all of the class’s tests. This makes it possible to use @BeforeClass and @AfterClass annotations on non-static methods, which is a good fit for Kotlin.

JUnit 5 is the default and the vintage engine is provided for backward compatibility with JUnit 4. If you don’t use it, exclude org.junit.vintage:junit-vintage-engine. You also need to switch test instance lifecycle to "per-class".

To mock Kotlin classes, MockK is recommended. If you need the Mockk equivalent of the Mockito specific @MockBean and @SpyBean annotations, you can use SpringMockK which provides similar @MockkBean and @SpykBean annotations.

30.7. Resources

30.7.1. Further reading

30.7.2. Examples

31. Building Container Images

Spring Boot applications can be containerized either by packaging them into Docker images, or by using Buildpacks to create docker compatible container images that you can run anywhere.

31.1. Building Docker images

A typical Spring Boot fat jar can be converted into a Docker image by adding just a few lines to a Dockerfile that can be used to build the image. However, there are various downsides to copying and running the fat jar as is in the docker image. There’s always a certain amount of overhead when running a fat jar without unpacking it, and in a containerized environment this can be noticeable. The other issue is that putting your application’s code and all its dependencies in one layer in the Docker image is sub-optimal. Since you probably recompile your code more often than you upgrade the version of Spring Boot you use, it’s often better to separate things a bit more. If you put jar files in the layer before your application classes, Docker often only needs to change the very bottom layer and can pick others up from its cache.

31.1.1. Layering Docker Images

To make it easier to create optimized Docker images that can be built with a dockerfile, Spring Boot supports adding a layer index file to the jar. It provides a list of layers and the parts of the jar that should be contained within them. The list of layers in the index is ordered based on the order in which the layers should be added to the Docker/OCI image. Out-of-the-box, the following layers are supported:

  • dependencies (for regular released dependencies)

  • spring-boot-loader (for everything under org/springframework/boot/loader)

  • snapshot-dependencies (for snapshot dependencies)

  • application (for application classes and resources)

The following shows an example of a layers.idx file:

- "dependencies":
  - BOOT-INF/lib/library1.jar
  - BOOT-INF/lib/library2.jar
- "spring-boot-loader":
  - org/springframework/boot/loader/JarLauncher.class
  - org/springframework/boot/loader/jar/JarEntry.class
- "snapshot-dependencies":
  - BOOT-INF/lib/library3-SNAPSHOT.jar
- "application":
  - META-INF/MANIFEST.MF
  - BOOT-INF/classes/a/b/C.class

This layering is designed to separate code based on how likely it is to change between application builds. Library code is less likely to change between builds, so it is placed in its own layers to allow tooling to re-use the layers from cache. Application code is more likely to change between builds so it is isolated in a separate layer.

For Maven, refer to the packaging layered jars section for more details on adding a layer index to the jar. For Gradle, refer to the packaging layered jars section of the Gradle plugin documentation.

31.1.2. Writing the Dockerfile

When you create a jar containing the layers index file, the spring-boot-jarmode-layertools jar will be added as a dependency to your jar. With this jar on the classpath, you can launch your application in a special mode which allows the bootstrap code to run something entirely different from your application, for example, something that extracts the layers. Here’s how you can launch your jar with a layertools jar mode:

$ java -Djarmode=layertools -jar my-app.jar

This will provide the following output:

Usage:
  java -Djarmode=layertools -jar my-app.jar

Available commands:
  list     List layers from the jar that can be extracted
  extract  Extracts layers from the jar for image creation
  help     Help about any command

The extract command can be used to easily split the application into layers to be added to the dockerfile. Here’s an example of a Dockerfile using jarmode.

FROM adoptopenjdk:11-jre-hotspot as builder
WORKDIR application
ARG JAR_FILE=target/*.jar
COPY ${JAR_FILE} application.jar
RUN java -Djarmode=layertools -jar application.jar extract

FROM adoptopenjdk:11-jre-hotspot
WORKDIR application
COPY --from=builder application/dependencies/ ./
COPY --from=builder application/spring-boot-loader/ ./
COPY --from=builder application/snapshot-dependencies/ ./
COPY --from=builder application/application/ ./
ENTRYPOINT ["java", "org.springframework.boot.loader.JarLauncher"]

Assuming the above Dockerfile is in the current directory, your docker image can be built with docker build ., or optionally specifying the path to your application jar, as shown in the following example:

docker build --build-arg JAR_FILE=path/to/myapp.jar .

This is a multi-stage dockerfile. The builder stage extracts the directories that are needed later. Each of the COPY commands relates to the layers extracted by the jarmode.

Of course, a Dockerfile can be written without using the jarmode. You can use some combination of unzip and mv to move things to the right layer but jarmode simplifies that.

31.2. Buildpacks

Dockerfiles are just one way to build docker images. Another way to build docker images is directly from your Maven or Gradle plugin, using buildpacks. If you’ve ever used an application platform such as Cloud Foundry or Heroku then you’ve probably used a buildpack. Buildpacks are the part of the platform that takes your application and converts it into something that the platform can actually run. For example, Cloud Foundry’s Java buildpack will notice that you’re pushing a .jar file and automatically add a relevant JRE.

With Cloud Native Buildpacks, you can create Docker compatible images that you can run anywhere. Spring Boot includes buildpack support directly for both Maven and Gradle. This means you can just type a single command and quickly get a sensible image into your locally running Docker daemon.

Refer to the individual plugin documentation on how to use buildpacks with Maven and Gradle.

32. What to Read Next

If you want to learn more about any of the classes discussed in this section, you can check out the Spring Boot API documentation or you can browse the source code directly. If you have specific questions, take a look at the how-to section.

If you are comfortable with Spring Boot’s core features, you can continue on and read about production-ready features.