Spring and Spring Boot are widely used for building enterprise-grade applications. Spring Boot enhances Spring by simplifying configurations, reducing setup time, and providing default settings and tools to help developers quickly build and deploy applications. This article explores the difference between Spring and Spring Boot.
What is Spring Framework?
The Spring Framework is a comprehensive and powerful platform for building Java applications, especially at an enterprise level. It provides a broad infrastructure, offering a lightweight container with dependency injection (DI) capabilities that enable developers to build loosely coupled applications.
Key Features and Advantages
- Dependency Injection: Spring IOC container manages object dependencies, making applications more modular by reducing tight coupling between components.
- Modularity and Flexibility: The framework is highly modular, allowing developers to select only the necessary modules, such as Spring MVC for web development or Spring Security for authentication and authorization.
- Rich Ecosystem: Spring offers a vast ecosystem of modules to meet various application needs, including Spring Data for database interaction, Spring Batch for batch processing, and Spring Cloud for microservices.
- Integration with Existing Technologies: Spring integrates well with numerous external tools, databases, and enterprise technologies, making it suitable for large-scale projects with complex infrastructures.
Challenges of Traditional Spring Setup
While Spring offers flexibility, it often requires significant configuration effort, as developers need to set up XML files or Java-based configuration manually. This can make the initial setup process time-consuming and complex, especially for those new to the framework.
What is Spring Boot?
Spring Boot is an extension of the Spring Framework that aims to simplify the development process by providing default configurations and a wide array of tools to help developers start projects faster. By reducing the need for boilerplate code, Spring Boot accelerates the development of applications and is particularly suitable for creating microservices and REST APIs.
Key Features and Advantages
- Autoconfiguration: Spring Boot can automatically configure many aspects of the application based on the dependencies present in the project, which eliminates the need for manual setup of common components.
- Starter Dependencies: Spring Boot provides curated starter dependencies (e.g.,
spring-boot-starter-web) that bundle related libraries and ensure compatibility, helping developers avoid dependency conflicts. - Embedded Server Support: Spring Boot packages applications as “fat JARs” with an embedded web server (such as Tomcat, Jetty, or Undertow), allowing applications to run independently with a single command.
- Spring Initializr: Spring Boot includes Spring Initializr, an online tool for creating new projects with pre-selected dependencies, making it easier to start projects without the need for manual setup.
By reducing configuration requirements and offering out-of-the-box tools, Spring Boot provides a faster and more straightforward development experience on top of the Spring Framework’s powerful foundation.
Comparing Spring and Spring Boot: An Example
To illustrate the differences between Spring and Spring Boot, let’s look at setting up a Spring MVC application.
Traditional Spring Project Setup
Setting up a Spring MVC application with the traditional Spring approach involves multiple steps:
- DispatcherServlet Configuration
Configuring DispatcherServlet can be done either through the web.xml file or using a Java-based approach to handle HTTP requests and route them to the appropriate controllers. I’ve already discussed manual configuration of DispatcherServlet in a previous article, which covers everything you need to know—feel free to refer to it for more details.
- Application Context
Manually defining beans within an application context file, either in XML or as a Java configuration class, is used to activate component scanning and create beans.
- Dependency Management
Each dependency must be added individually to the project’s pom.xml (for Maven) or build.gradle (for Gradle), which increases the potential for version mismatches. For example, to use Spring MVC effectively, we need to add several dependencies, including spring-webmvc, jackson for serialization, servlet-api, and others.
- Tomcat Configuration
To launch the application, we need to configure a Tomcat server and deploy our WAR file to the server’s deployment directory.
This approach provides flexibility but can make the setup more cumbersome and time-consuming.
Spring Boot Project Setup
With Spring Boot, setting up the same Spring MVC application is simpler and faster:
- Autoconfiguration
Spring Boot’s autoconfiguration handles the setup for DispatcherServlet, web server, and other required components automatically.
- FAT JARS
Spring Boot uses this concept by creating a self-contained JAR that includes an embedded web server, typically Tomcat. This means the application can run independently without requiring an external server installation. You can simply execute the JAR, and Spring Boot will launch an embedded Tomcat instance, making it easy to deploy and run in different environments.
- Starter Dependencies
Using spring-boot-starter-web bundles all necessary libraries for Spring MVC, eliminating the need for individual dependency management.
Spring Boot’s setup reduces boilerplate code, allowing developers to focus on application logic.
Happy Coding !!
