As we know, the Spring Framework makes development very easy for both core and enterprise Java applications. Spring has settled, and is now a very popular framework. The Spring team is continuously inventing something new to enhance software development and they are focused on making software development easy. The Spring team released one of its major projects for the Spring Framework in 2013, Spring Boot.

This project from the Spring team makes software development with Java easy. Spring Boot is built on top of the existing Spring Framework. So basically, Spring Boot is not a separate framework, but it is similar. It's a collection of ready-made things to just pick and use without taking any overhead configuration.

The Spring team is introducing many exciting things to the Spring ecosystem to sustain it in the market. There are many new things such as cloud computing, big data, schemaless data persistence, and reactive programming. But one of the most exciting and game changing features has come with Spring Boot in the past year. Spring Boot is a great invention for the Spring Framework by the Spring team. That is why Spring has settled for a long time and is winning major laurels.

Spring Boot is a tricky framework to understand. This chapter will help you to understand Spring Boot 2.0 and the underlying important concepts—starter projects, auto-configuration, and starter parents. You will also understand how Spring Boot makes software development easy. As a bonus, I will discuss the story behind the success of Spring Boot. This chapter will cover a demo application with Spring Boot and create a REST service.

At the end of this chapter, you will understand how Spring Boot develops Spring applications with agility and provides an already prepared menu for creating a REST service. You will learn how Spring Boot solves common problems at the configuration level of an enterprise application by using auto-configure.

This chapter will cover the following points:

• Introducing Spring Boot
• Simplifying Spring application development using Spring Boot
• The essential key components of Spring Boot
  • Spring Boot Starter projects
  • Auto-configuration
  • Spring Boot CLI
  • Spring Boot Actuator
• Setting up a Spring Boot workspace
• Developing your first Spring Boot application
• New features in Spring Boot 2.0

Let's look at these topics in detail.