Top 20 Spring Boot Features for Java Developers
Updated on Mar 06, 2025 | 23 min read | 14.5k views
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Updated on Mar 06, 2025 | 23 min read | 14.5k views
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Spring Boot is an important Java framework built on the Spring Framework, launched in 2003. It helps Java developers conceptualize, develop, and deploy web-based applications. The 2025 version of Spring Boot features introduces performance optimizations, enhanced observability, and native image support, significantly boosting development productivity.
Spring Boot is an intelligent ecosystem that addresses various challenges in modern software engineering. It simplifies application development by reducing manual configurations. By combining traditional development models with cloud-native architectures, Spring Boot helps Java developers build efficient and flexible software applications.
Whether you are a beginner or a professional developer, this guide will introduce you to the latest Spring Boot features designed to enhance your application's performance. We will explore its foundational, operational, security, and data management features for optimizing your development workflow.
Spring Boot simplifies Java application development by enabling the rapid creation of production-ready applications. It minimizes redundant or boilerplate code and simplifies application configuration, allowing developers to focus on business logic. Spring Boot manages the technical setup while providing flexibility for customization. Here are some of the foundational features of Spring Framework for rapid development:
Auto-configuration is a core feature of Spring Boot that automatically configures application components based on project requirements. The system evaluates project dependencies and implements standard configurations, reducing manual setup time and configuration errors. This feature simplifies the process of configuring beans in an application by leveraging dependencies present on the classpath.
The process of Auto-configuration in Spring Boot involves the following steps:
The important aspects of auto-configuration in spring boot are:
Embedded servers in Spring Boot provide a self-contained environment for running web applications without requiring an external server installation. This feature packages the server within your application, streamlining deployment and reducing infrastructure requirements.
Tomcat is Spring Boot’s default embedded server. It is a lightweight container for Java web applications that handles Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) requests, manages server-side resources and executes application code. Alternatively, Jetty provides a more lightweight option with reduced resource consumption and efficient request handling.
Both Tomcat and Jetty come with features that depend on the type of application you are building. While Tomcat works well for large applications that need stability and strong memory management, Jetty offers a faster alternative. Jetty uses less memory and processes requests quickly. It is recommended for applications that require speed over a vast list of features.
With embedded servers, Spring Boot enables zero-config deployment, allowing applications to run without manual server setup or configuration files. The embedded server starts automatically with sensible defaults and handles tasks such as:
Spring Initializr is a web-based tool that generates Spring Boot project structures with pre-configured dependencies, including those for Spring Web Services. It provides a complete project foundation, saving developers from manual setup while ensuring consistent project organization. You can create a Spring Project in the following ways by using Spring Initializr:
Project scaffolding, a process of defining the skeleton or structure of your project, can be done through Spring Initializr. This process involves:
Spring Initializr allows customization through:
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Spring Boot 3 introduces optimizations for cloud computing, enhanced security features, and improved performance metrics in Java application development. The framework now supports modern Java features and provides tools for building efficient, cloud-ready applications that align with industry requirements. Here are some of the latest Spring Boot features:
Spring Boot 3 requires Java 17 as its minimum version, marking a significant shift toward modern Java development practices. This requirement allows developers to leverage Java’s latest features while ensuring improved performance, security, and maintainability.
Java 17 support introduces several improvements that enhance Spring Boot applications by enabling cleaner code, improved efficiency, and better performance. To understand these new advancements in the new version of Java, you can refer to our Java Tutorial. Let us discuss these improvements in detail:
Performance benefits of Java 17 are:
Spring Boot 3 integrates with the General Recursive Applicative and Algorithmic Language Virtual Machine (GraalVM) to create native executables of Java applications. GraalVM converts Java code into standalone applications that start faster and use less memory than traditional Java applications.
Ahead-of-time (AOT) compilation converts Java bytecode into native machine code before application deployment. This process fundamentally changes how Spring Boot applications start and run in cloud environments.
Traditional Spring Boot applications use Just-in-Time (JIT) compilation, which compiles code during runtime. This creates startup delays as the application loads classes, scans components, and warms up the JIT compiler. In cloud environments, these delays impact costs and scalability.
The benefits of GraalVM Native Support over traditional Spring Boot applications are:
The Problem Details API defines how REST APIs should structure their error responses. It creates consistent error responses that humans and machines can easily understand. The API follows internet standards to ensure compatibility across different systems. This standardization is useful in microservices architectures, where multiple services must handle errors consistently.
Spring Boot simplifies RFC 7807 implementation through its Problem Details API. RFC 7807 defines a standard format for API error responses. Spring Boot 3 features use this standard to help developers create better error messages that provide information about what went wrong and how to fix it.
The benefits of standardized error handling are:
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Spring Boot provides tools to monitor and maintain applications in production environments. These tools help development teams track application health, performance metrics, and potential issues. The framework integrates monitoring capabilities that support both development and operations teams in maintaining reliable applications.
The Spring Boot features that offer operational excellence and monitoring are:
Spring Boot Actuator adds monitoring and management capabilities to Spring Boot applications. It provides operational data about running applications through HTTP endpoints or Java Management Extensions (JMX). These endpoints offer information about application health, metrics, configurations, and environment properties.
The image explains the functions of the Spring Boot Actuator. Its two components, Monitor and Configuration, work in the following ways:
Production monitoring requires visibility into application behavior. Spring Boot Actuator provides this visibility through built-in endpoints that expose operational data. The information helps teams identify and resolve issues before they impact users.
To activate the Spring Actuator feature, you must include the ‘spring-boot-starter-actuator’ dependency in your pom.xml file:
<dependency>
<groupId> org.springframework.boot</groupId>
<artifactId> spring-boot-starter-actuator </artifactId>
</dependency>
The monitoring and management features of a Spring Boot Actuator are:
A micrometer is a backend metrics facade or abstraction layer that provides a consistent API across various monitoring platforms. It enables Spring Boot applications to send metrics to multiple monitoring systems without code changes. Thus, it helps teams monitor system health, detect bottlenecks, and optimize performance.
Modern applications require careful monitoring across distributed systems. Micrometer Observability provides a unified monitoring and tracing framework for Java applications. It connects distributed systems by collecting performance metrics, tracking request flows, and enabling system visibility.
Micrometer connects applications to monitoring systems through a consistent API. The framework links three key components:
By standardizing observability across various monitoring systems, Micrometer simplifies tracking mechanisms.
The benefits of Micrometer Observability are:
Kubernetes probes determine application availability and readiness to serve traffic. The Spring Boot Actuator provides built-in endpoints that facilitate Kubernetes integration with Spring Boot for readiness probe. These endpoints further help Kubernetes give the status of application health and monitor container deployment
Refer to our Kubernetes guide to learn more about this open-source platform and its architecture.
The health endpoint (/actuator/health) serves as an integration point between Spring Boot applications and Kubernetes. This endpoint provides detailed health information through several check types. The health check components are:
Spring Boot supports building cloud-native applications and microservices architectures. These tools help developers create scalable applications that work efficiently in cloud environments. The framework includes features for handling high-traffic loads, managing distributed systems, and monitoring application behavior across multiple services.
Let us learn about these Spring Boot features in detail:
Spring WebFlux is part of the Spring Boot framework, which builds reactive web applications with the Project Reactor framework. It supports reactive programming by introducing non-blocking web endpoints and using reactive types Mono and Flux to handle web requests. This model differs from the traditional Spring Web Model-View-Controller (MVC) by processing multiple requests concurrently without waiting for each to complete.
In traditional Spring MVC, each incoming request gets its own thread. When the application receives a request, it dedicates a thread to processing it from start to finish. This works well for applications with moderate traffic. However, it becomes a limitation when dealing with thousands of concurrent users or time-consuming operations like calling external services.
WebFlux improves this model by using event loops. Instead of assigning one thread per request, it uses a small number of threads to handle many requests. When a request comes in, WebFlux processes it until it needs to wait for something (like a database query). Instead of keeping the thread idle during this wait, WebFlux continues to process other requests. When the wait completes, WebFlux returns to finish processing the original request.
This approach brings significant benefits to the performance of applications, such as:
Spring Cloud provides tools for building distributed systems. These tools help manage the complexity of running multiple services that must work together reliably. It addresses common challenges that arise when moving from monolithic to microservices architectures.
Spring Cloud Configuration Server solves complex configuration challenges by providing a central location to store all configuration data. When services start, they connect to this server to get their settings. The server can update these settings without restarting services, making it easier to manage different environments, such as development, testing, and production.
Spring Cloud simplifies service delivery and communication in distributed systems. Services must communicate, handle failures, and distribute load effectively. Spring Cloud includes several components that work together to achieve this:
Distributed tracing provides visibility into how requests flow through a microservices system. This feature helps teams understand request paths and identify performance challenges. As systems have become more complex with many interconnected services, distributed tracing has become an essential feature of Spring Boot.
When a request enters the system, it receives a unique identifier that follows it through every service. Each service adds information about what it did, how long it took, and any errors it encountered, creating a complete picture of the request's journey through the system.
Sleuth and Zipkin help in this tracing process:
This distributed tracing information helps teams understand system behavior and resolve issues. When users report problems, teams can look up the trace ID and see exactly what happened at each step. This makes it much easier to find the root cause of issues and identify performance bottlenecks.
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Spring Boot provides tools for securing applications and managing data efficiently. These features help developers protect sensitive information and interact with databases seamlessly. The framework simplifies complex security configurations and database operations, allowing teams to focus on building core application functionality.
Let us discuss the security and data management Spring Boot features in detail:
Spring Security aids in application protection with minimal configuration. It helps developers implement security measures without writing extensive boilerplate code. Hackers often seek vulnerabilities in authentication systems, session management, and data protection. Spring Security addresses these challenges through built-in mechanisms that protect applications from common threats.
Modern web applications require multiple layers of security. Three components help protect applications:
1. OAuth2 for secure authorization
The OAuth2 framework automatically configures authentication flows, token management, and user role assignments. It solves the problem of secure authorization without sharing passwords. When a user tries to access an application:
2. JWT for token-based authentication
JSON Web Token (JWT) support enables stateless authentication for microservices and web applications. JWT acts like a secure, tamper-proof ID card for users. It contains:
3. CSRF protection to prevent cross-site attacks
A Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) attack occurs when an attacker tricks an authenticated user into performing unintended actions. CSRF protection prevents malicious websites from making unauthorized requests on behalf of authenticated users. It ensures that the application’s HTTP methods are read-only. Spring Boot enables CSRF protection by default.
Data repositories connect applications with databases. Spring Data JPA (Java Persistence API) simplifies database interactions by automatically generating database operations. Instead of writing repetitive database queries, developers define simple interfaces that Spring automatically implements.
By extending the JpaRepository interface, developers can easily create repositories that handle basic CRUD functions without writing boilerplate code:
Other features of Spring Data JPA Repository include:
The OAuth2 Resource Server provides secure API access management. It validates incoming requests using access tokens, ensuring only authorized users can interact with protected resources.
Spring Security 6+ implements token-based security with enhanced features. The framework validates tokens, extracts user information, and enforces access controls. Before accessing protected endpoints, each request undergoes a comprehensive verification process.
In the OAuth2 ecosystem, a token functions like a digital passport, proving a user's identity and authorized access levels. Spring Security 6+ provides the best support for implementing this security model with minimal configuration. It includes components such as:
The security workflow of Spring Security 6+'s OAuth2 Resource Server is as follows:
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Spring Boot offers powerful features that improve developer workflow. It simplifies configuration, reduces repetitive code, and provides built-in tools that enhance development processes. This allows developers to focus more on writing core business logic and less on complex setup and configuration management.
Let us discuss the Spring Boot features that increase the productivity of developers:
LiveReload is a development tool that automatically refreshes web applications when code changes occur. It eliminates the need for manual server restarts, and browser reloads during development. LiveReload monitors project files and triggers instant code/UI updates when developers make modifications.
When a change is detected, it:
Developers can configure LiveReload through application properties, enabling or disabling the feature based on project requirements. It provides instant visual feedback, reduces development time, and makes code iteration seamless.
Profile-based configuration is one of the best Spring Boot features. It allows developers to manage environment-specific settings efficiently. Spring Boot supports multiple configuration profiles, enabling seamless transitions between development, testing, and production environments.
Profiles help separate configurations for different environments with:
Profile selection allows targeted configuration. It helps switch between different application settings for each environment without modifying the application's code. Developers can define both default and specific configurations, with profile-specific settings overriding default values when activated.
The advantages of profile-based configuration include:
Spring Boot improves testing strategies by providing tools that simplify test creation and execution. The framework integrates multiple testing frameworks and utilities, reducing test complexity and development time. Developers can write comprehensive tests with minimal configuration, ensuring code quality and reliability. This approach helps teams achieve greater test coverage, catch issues early, and maintain high-quality software implementations.
Spring Boot offers powerful testing strategies and tools through the following frameworks:
1. JUnit 5
JUnit 5 is the latest version of the Java unit-testing framework. It is easy to set up and comes with the following features:
2. Testcontainers
Testcontainers is an open-source library that uses a Docker container environment to test Spring Boot applications. It integrates with JUnit 5 to write test classes that communicate with backend services such as MySQL and MongoDB.
The features of the Testcontainers library include:
3. @SpringBootTest Annotation
The @SpringBootTest annotation in Spring Boot allows developers to test the full integration of components. It makes it easier to verify how different parts of the application work together in real-world scenarios.
Sample Code Snippet:
@SpringBootTest
class UserServiceTest {
@Test
void testUserCreation()
}
Features of the @SpringBootTest annotation in Spring Boot:
The advanced observability features of Spring Framework help developers monitor and understand system behavior. The framework provides tools for tracking application performance, detecting issues, and generating meaningful insights. By integrating metrics, logs, and tracing mechanisms, developers gain in-depth visibility into application internals and runtime characteristics.
Spring Boot implements observability through the Micrometer Observation API, a library that provides a consistent way to collect, manage, and analyze performance data across different monitoring systems.
Its key features include:
The Micrometer Observation API allows automatic context propagation for tracking requests across different system components. It supports multiple monitoring backends, enabling seamless integration with tools like Prometheus, Zipkin, and OpenTelemetry.
Developers can configure detailed observability settings through application properties, tailoring monitoring to specific project requirements. This helps teams understand and optimize application behavior, making system monitoring more accessible and actionable.
Native image support is crucial to Spring Boot’s overall performance optimization strategy. This technology converts Java applications into standalone executables that run directly on machine hardware. Traditional Java applications depend on the Java Virtual Machine (JVM), which introduces startup overhead and consumes significant memory resources.
GraalVM native image compilation addresses these challenges by precompiling application code into machine-specific binary executables during build time. This process eliminates runtime interpretation and compilation, allowing developers to benefit from faster startup times, reduced memory consumption, and improved overall application efficiency.
Native image compilation enhances performance by:
Applications compiled as native images start almost instantaneously, within milliseconds, compared to traditional JVM applications, which may take seconds. The compiled executable contains only necessary runtime components, eliminating the overhead of loading complete JVM infrastructure. This approach is useful for microservices, serverless functions, and cloud-native applications, where scaling and resource efficiency are very important.
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Java development continues to evolve with frameworks that anticipate and address technological challenges. The Spring Boot features in 2025 cater to Java developers' changing needs. Tools like LiveReload provide quicker feedback during coding, while profile-based configuration streamlines environment management. Testing enhancements improve code reliability, and observability features offer valuable insights into application performance.
Adopting these features of the Spring framework leads to better collaboration, faster deployments, and lower operational costs. These capabilities help Java developers stand out in the job market by enabling them to build high-performance, scalable applications.
If you want to become an expert in Spring Boot and related technologies, upGrad offers a comprehensive training course. You can also connect with our career counselors and industry experts to kickstart your journey in software development.
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