Introduction to SpringBoot Starter and usage examples

1. Introduction to Starter

Spring Boot Starter is one of the core components of the Spring Boot framework, and itPredefined dependency collectionsandAutomatic configuration mechanism, greatly simplifies the development and deployment of Spring applications.

The core features of Spring Boot Starter

Auto-Configuration
Spring Boot automatically configures corresponding beans and functions based on the dependencies introduced in the project. For example:

• Introducespring-boot-starter-webEmbedded Tomcat, Spring MVC, etc. will be automatically configured.
• Introducespring-boot-starter-data-jpaThe data source and JPA entity manager will be automatically configured.

Starter Dependencies
Each Starter is a Maven/Gradle dependency that encapsulates all dependencies required to start a feature. For example:

• spring-boot-starter-web: Used to build web applications.
• spring-boot-starter-thymeleaf: Integrated Thymeleaf template engine.
• spring-boot-starter-test: Provide test support (JUnit, Mockito, etc.).

Embedded Server
Starter automatically integrates embedded servers (such as Tomcat, Jetty) and can run directly without deployment to external containers.

Production-Ready Features
passspring-boot-starter-actuatorProvides production environment functions such as health inspection, indicator monitoring, log management, etc.

Out of the box (Out-of-the-Box Configuration)
The default configuration covers most common scenarios, developers only need to passorOverwrite specific configurations.

Example of usage

Goal: Build a web application using Spring Boot Starter

step1. Maven dependency configuration (）

<dependencies>
    <!-- Spring Boot Web Starter -->
    <dependency>
        <groupId></groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-web</artifactId>
    </dependency>
    <!-- Spring Boot Actuator（Optional） -->
    <dependency>
        <groupId></groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-actuator</artifactId>
    </dependency>
</dependencies>

step2. Main class (start class)

import ;
import ;
@SpringBootApplication // Enable automatic configuration and component scanningpublic class DemoApplication {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        (, args); // Start the embedded server    }
}

step3. controller class

import .*;
@RestController
@RequestMapping("/api")
public class HelloController {
    @GetMapping("/hello")
    public String sayHello(@RequestParam(name = "name", defaultValue = "World") String name) {
        return ("Hello, %s!", name);
    }
}

step4. Running effect

After starting the app, access the following URL:

• http://localhost:8080/api/hello→ OutputHello, World!
• http://localhost:8080/api/hello?name=John→ OutputHello, John!

The above code only needs to be introducedspring-boot-starter-web, you can implement a complete REST API service through a few lines of code.

3. Summary

Other common Starter examples:

The core value of Spring Boot Starter isSimplify dependency managementandReduce configuration complexity. By rationally choosing Starter, developers can quickly build complete functions and focus on the implementation of business logic.

This is all about this article about the introduction of SpringBoot Starter. For more related SpringBoot Starter content, please search for my previous articles or continue browsing the related articles below. I hope everyone will support me in the future!