Spring Boot starters enable developers to build Java applications more quickly and easily. They feature specific predefined dependencies that are essential in building and running Java programs. These dependencies contain modules, frameworks, and libraries that enable particular functionalities. These dependencies can perform specific functionalities, allowing programmers to implement them automatically instead of building them from scratch.
When referring to dependencies in Spring Boot, two key concepts are particularly relevant. While the first concept relates to building system dependencies that use Gradle or Maven, the second one refers to dependency injection types that are part of the Spring Framework.
The build system dependencies contain all the commonly required libraries in a bundle. As a result, developers can easily access all those dependencies without needing to add each one individually.
What are the Critical Features of Spring Boot Starters?
They particularly ease the workflow of the programmers during application development. Without these dependencies or starters, the work of a developer is lengthy, as they need to search for the compatible and correct version of a library from a set of many libraries, as well as add and manage them. In contrast, Spring Boot Starters can automatically extract all the necessary libraries that demonstrate compatibility by simply adding a single dependency.
How Does these Dependencies Work?
These are standard Java libraries, but publicized to Maven Central. Here, Maven Central plays a crucial role in dependency management when developing Spring Boot applications. It is a community-led, public repository and is a primary source for accessing open-source Java Libraries.
Importantly, while naming the Spring Boot Starter, there is a specific format. The format includes spring-boot-starter-<feature>. For example, when building web applications, the format should be similar to spring-boot-starter-web. By doing so, it adds all the required libraries, frameworks, and servers, such as Jackson, Spring MVC, and Tomcat, that are necessary to build a web application.
As such, these Spring Boot Starters are off-the-shelf toolkits that can perform various tasks. Such as configuring correctly and ensuring that everything works well, while saving time.
Introduction of Starters:
Although the Spring team introduced the basic version of Spring apps in 2013, the improved version, which included starters, was introduced in 2014 with the Spring Boot 1.0 release. Since then, Starters have played an important role in deploying Java applications using Spring Boot. With such revisions, the process of developing Java applications became much easier and faster due to the lessening of extensive configuration.
Are Spring Boot Starters Extending the Scope of Java Applications?
Since the introduction of Spring Boot 1.0 in 2014, the official integration of Spring Boot starters with Java applications has been in place. With that introduction, the scope for Java applications widened, extending to various domains while simplifying the workflows.
Cloud and Microservices:
With Spring Cloud, Java capabilities widened even for cloud-native microservices. As a result, Java applications for enterprise microservices architectures, such as Kubernetes, GCP, Azure, and AWS, have become popular.
For example, the starter type, spring-boot-starter-actuator, includes health checks, metrics, and monitoring tools.
Data-Oriented Applications:
With the inclusion of various Spring Boot Starters, such as spring-boot-starter-data-redis and spring-boot-starter-data-jpa, among others, Java capabilities are extended with minimal setup. As a result, Java is making it competitive for database apps like Express (Node.js) and frameworks such as Django (Python).
Secured Applications:
With these dependencies, developers are more equipped to address security issues across Java applications effectively. Making them a more reliable alternative while developing applications for various enterprise systems, such as fintech companies that demand more secure solutions. Starters such as spring-boot-starter-security offer encryption, authorization, and authentication, significantly, even with minimal setup.
Web Applications:
Before the introduction of Spring Boot Starters, it was a mandatory step for Java programmers to manually configure specific toolkits such as servlet containers, JSON libraries, and Spring MVC. Making the entire web development process a more exhaustive task. However, after the introduction of Spring Boot Starters, it simplified the entire web development process. With several toolkits bundled in a single starter. From then, Java grew in speed, particularly for building scalable web services.