Spring Framework Guru

Chuck Norris for Spring Boot Actuator

In case you’ve been living under a rock for the last couple years, Spring Boot Actuator is an awesome set of tools for monitoring and managing your Spring Boot applications. Spring Boot Actuator exposes information via ‘endpoints’. One of the Spring Boot Actuator endpoints is an information endpoint, which is available at the ‘/info’ url from the root of your application.

The information URL is…

Testing Spring MVC with Spring Boot 1.4: Part 1

In my earlier Integration Testing with Spring and JUnit post, I discussed how to test a service bean facade with JUnit. I also posted a video, titled Testing Spring with JUnit on YouTube. In post, Spring Boot Web Application – Part 3 – Spring Data JPA, I showed how to test a Spring Data JPA repository of a Spring MVC application.

It has been more than a year now since I wrote these posts and…

Running Spring Boot in A Docker Container #springboot #docker

Containers based deployments are rapidly gaining popularity in the enterprise. One of the more popular container solutions is Docker.

Many view containers as virtual machines. They’re not. Well kind of not. A container is a virtual walled environment for your application. It’s literally a ‘container’ inside the host OS. Thus your application works like it is in it’s own self contained…

I’ve been playing with Docker a lot recently to deploy Spring Boot applications.  Docker is very cool. I’ve been learning a lot about it.

This is my unofficial Docker Cheat sheet. Use with caution!

Got any tips and tricks? Comment below, and I’ll try to update this.

List all Docker Images

docker images -a

List All Running Docker Containers

docker ps

List All Docker Containers

docker ps -a

Start a…

Accessing the Database from a Thymeleaf Template #antipattern

This week, I had a student ask me how they could use a Java function to access the database from a Thymeleaf template. Thymeleaf is a modern templating engine. And accessing the database directly from Thymeleaf is certainly something you could do. But is it really something you want to do?

I’ve worked for a couple major retailers which had JSP templates accessing the database with static Java…

Processing JSON with Jackson

Its not uncommon for computers to need to communicate with each other. In the early days this was done with simple string messages. Which was problematic. There was no standard language. XML evolved to address this. XML provides a very structured way of sharing data between systems. XML is so structured, many find it too restrictive. JSONis a popular alternative to XML. JSON offers a lighter and…

Jackson Dependency Issue in Spring Boot with Maven Build

Recently while working with Jackson within a Spring Boot project, I encountered an issue I’d like to share with you.

Jacksonis currently the leading option for parsing JSON in Java. The Jackson library is composed of three components: Jackson Databind, Core, and Annotation. Jackson Databind has internal dependencies on Jackson Core and Annotation. Therefore, adding Jackson Databind to your Maven…

Using YAML in Spring Boot to Configure Logback #Springboot #springframework

When it comes to logging in enterprise applications, logback makes an excellent choice – it’s simple and fast, has powerful configuration options, and comes with a small memory footprint. I have introduced logback in my introductory post, Logback Introduction: An Enterprise Logging Framework. YAML is just one option you can use for Spring Boot configuration. In a series of posts on logback, I’ve…

Configuring Logback with Spring Boot is crazy easy. #springboot

Logback makes an excellent logging framework for enterprise applications – it’s fast, have simple but powerful configuration options, and comes with a small memory footprint. I introduced logback in my introductory post, Logback Introduction: An Enterprise Logging Framework. In a series of posts on Logback, I’ve also discussed how to configure logback using XML and Groovy. The posts are available…

Logback Configuration: Using Groovy - How to use Groovy to configure Logback logging properties.

Logback is designed to be faster and have a smaller memory footprint than the other logging frameworks around. If you are new to Logback, you should checkout my introductory post on Logback: Logback Introduction: An Enterprise Logging Framework.

Logback supports configuration through XML and Groovy. I explained XML configuration in my previous post, Logback Configuration: using XML. We’ll use…

Logback Configuration: Using XML #java

The whole purpose of logging gets defeated when the underlying logging framework becomes a bottleneck. Logging frameworks need to be fast, have a small memory footprint, and easily configurable. Logback is a logging framework with those qualities. If you are new to Logback, I suggest going through my introductory post on Logback: Logback Introduction: An Enterprise Logging Framework.

Logback…

Speaking at Devoxx Poland #devoxx

I’m happy to announce I’ll be speaking at Devoxx Poland this June.

I’ve proposed a talk on getting hip with JHipster. I’ve been using JHipsteron a client project, and really like it. The team behind JHipster has done a really nice job of bringing together complex but leading and best of breed technologies. On the front end of JHipster is Angular JS, on the backend is Spring Boot. Wrapping it all…

Iterating Java Map Entries #java

The majority of the time when you’re working with Maps in Java, you’ll be accessing the map values via the key. There are times you need to walk the map like a list. There’s a number of ways to do this in Java, which have grown over time as the language has evolved.

Let’s take a closer look at walking over Map entries in Java using JUnit. For the series of examples below, I’m going to prepare a…

Logback Introduction: An Enterprise Logging Framework #java

Monitoring, diagnosing, and troubleshooting are key activities in any enterprise application lifecycle, and logging is the core part of these activities. Through logging you get to see what the application code is actually doing during these activities at runtime. Using System.out to print messages to the console is simply not sufficient for enterprise applications. Enterprise applications have…

Using Log4J 2 with Spring Boot #springboot #java

Similar to accompanying application development activities, such as unit testing and documentation, logging is an integral part of any enterprise application and Spring Boot applications are no different. Through logging, you get to see what the application code is really doing during monitoring, troubleshooting, and debugging a Spring Boot application. Spring Boot makes using a logging framework…

Asynchronous Logging with Log4J 2 #java

Log4J 2 is a logging framework designed to address the logging requirements of enterprise applications. If you are new to Log4J2, I suggest going through my introductory post on Log4J 2, Introducing Log4J 2 – Enterprise Class Logging.

Log4J 2 introduces configuration support via JSON and YAML in addition to properties file and XML. I’ve written about the different Log4J 2 configuration options in…

Log4J 2 Configuration: Using YAML #java

Log4J 2 introduces configuration support through JSON and YAML in addition to properties file and XML. If you are new to Log4J2, I suggest going through my introductory post on Log4J 2, Introducing Log4J 2 – Enterprise Class Logging.

For the different Log4J 2 configuration options, you can explore these related posts:

Log4J 2 Configuration: Using Properties File

Log4J 2 Configuration: Using XML

L…