Quick Intro

Spring Boot is a popular open-source Java-based framework used to create stand-alone, production-grade Spring-based applications. It simplifies the process of building and deploying Java applications by providing a set of conventions and defaults for common tasks. Spring Boot is built on top of the Spring framework and is designed to be opinionated, meaning it comes with sensible defaults and conventions that help developers get started quickly.

Here are some key features and concepts of the Spring Boot framework:

Convention over Configuration: Spring Boot follows the principle of convention over configuration, which means that developers are not required to provide a lot of configuration settings. It comes with sensible defaults and automatically configures many components based on the project's structure.
Embedded Server Support: Spring Boot includes support for embedded web servers like Tomcat, Jetty, and Undertow. This allows you to package your application as a self-contained JAR or WAR file that includes an embedded server, making it easy to deploy and run.
Auto-Configuration: Spring Boot uses auto-configuration to automatically configure your application based on the dependencies you have in your project. For example, if you include the Spring Data JPA dependency, Spring Boot will automatically configure a data source and an EntityManager.
Spring Boot Starters: Starters are a set of convenient dependency descriptors that you can include in your application. They provide pre-configured setups for common use cases, such as web development, data access, messaging, etc.

Now, let's go through a simple example of creating a basic Spring Boot application:

Step 1: Set up your development environment

Ensure you have Java and an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) like IntelliJ IDEA or Eclipse installed.

Step 2: Create a new Spring Boot project

You can use Spring Initializr (https://start.spring.io/) to generate a basic project structure. Select the dependencies you need, and click "Generate" to download the project zip file.

Step 3: Import the project into your IDE

Unzip the downloaded file and import the project into your IDE.

Step 4: Write a simple Spring Boot application

Create a new class with a main method and annotate it with @SpringBootApplication. This annotation combines @Configuration, @EnableAutoConfiguration, and @ComponentScan.

import org.springframework.boot.SpringApplication;
import org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.SpringBootApplication;

@SpringBootApplication
public class MyApplication {

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        SpringApplication.run(MyApplication.class, args);
    }
}