Top-Ranked Web Framework During The Age Of React, Vue.js, Django
Spring Boot 101 — Introduction
Spring Boot — A Widely Used Java Framework
Now a days Spring Boot became widely used Java Framework around the world because it provides a lot of features compared to other frameworks in the market. After Spring, now everyone is moving to Spring Boot because of its advantages like Auto Configuration, Embedded Serves, Embedded Data Sources, Dependency Management and many more. So in this series of Spring Boot Blogs, all the concepts of Spring Boot are covered from basic to advance level with their Project Implementation.
To start with the Series of Spring Boot Blogs, In this article will give an introduction to Spring Boot and explaination to some of its basic concepts.
Do not get upset if you do not know about the terms mentioned above, in the next series of blogs all of these are explained in very simple language with the help of examples. Just make sure that you read the full blogs and implement the projects by forking them.
Later, once you will be familier with all the modules of Spring Boot, start contributing to open source projects which will help to gain in depth knowledge and achieve mastery. I have also shared the list of some open source projects, with complete details of the features/modules which one can learn from each projects.
Before jumping directly into the concepts of Spring Boot let’s understand How the world was before the introduction of Spring Boot —
World Before Spring Boot —
At the beginning of 21st century, organizations were using Java Enterprise Framework for Web Application developments, where the limitations were —
- It was cumbersome
- It needed heavy configuration
- It has high initial setup time to create simple application like “Hello World”
To overcome all the Java EE limitations, Rod Johnson created Spring framework as an Inversion of Control, Server Side Web framework in 2002.
Also with Spring framework, it requires defining maven dependencies and manage versions for frameworks, defining web.xml file, defining Spring context XML, configuration of web server.
DON’T AFRAID as the more detailed explanation of all these limitations are covered in next blogs of this Spring Boot series.
The primary and main features of Spring framework are Dependency Injection and Inversion of Control, which helps to develop loosely coupled applications.
Spring has also grown with time and now the primary web framework in Java based application development after the introduction of Spring Boot module. OR we can say Spring Boot as an extension of Spring framework, because it is actually built on the top of conventional Spring framework.
The primary freatue of Spring Boot is Auto-configuration, which helps to automatically configures the classes based on the requirement.
To know more about Spring and Spring Boot, there is a separate dedicated blog for that in this series of Spring Boot blogs. Let’s have a quick look on the history of Spring and Spring Boot Frameworks —
What Is Spring Boot ?
Spring Boot is a Open-Source Java based framework which is built on the top of Spring framework and is used to create a micro service.
Spring Boot is actually built to provide the Rapid Application Development feature to the Spring framework.
Spring Boot is developed by Pivotal team and is used to build stand-alone and production ready spring applications as it provides an easier and faster way to set-up, configure and run both simple and web-based applications.
Why To Use Spring Boot Framework ?
Due to the features and benefits which Spring Boot offers, it makes easy and fast to develop applications. Spring Boot gives us everything what we need while building an application. Some of its features are -
- It is highly innovative and popularized Inversion of Control, Dependency Injection and Annotation. Many other frameworks later used these concepts.
- Its Rapid Application Development features are one of the best in the application development landscape as it reduces Development Time, Developer Efforts and increases productivity.
- It reduces the cost and development time of the applications.
- It provides a more flexible way to configure Java Beans, XML Configurations and Database Transactions (as it has powerful database transaction management capabilities).
- In Spring Boot, everything is auto configured, no manual configurations are needed.
- It simplifies integration with other Java frameworks like JPA/Hibernate ORM, Struts, etc.
Along with Spring Boot framework, there are many other side projects which helps to address real life problems. Some of the side projects are — Spring Data, Spring Batch, Spring Security, Spring Social, Spring Integration. etc.
Overall it is an amazing framework for building applciations, whether we want to build Backend Application or a Full Stack Application using Java or Kotlin, Spring Boot is the framework to go.
Closing Thoughts —
Although Java and Spring are not getting hyped, they are still the number one choice in enterprise software development. As a result, Spring Boot is still one of the top-ranked Web framework during the age of React, Vue.js, Django.
Stay Tuned for Upcoming Blogs on Spring Boot, Don’t Go Away, Will be Right back 😊
Sumit Sharma
