Introduction to Spring Boot and Spring Data

Course Objectives

Working in a hands-on learning environment, students will review configuration basics of the Spring framework. The course then moves into Spring Boot, providing in-depth content and experience working with Spring Boot to accomplish a variety of tasks. In addition to working through the Spring Actuator, students work extensively at testing and debugging Spring Boot applications.

Working in a hands-on learning environment, led by our expert practitioner, students will:

• Explain the issues associated with complex frameworks such as JEE and how Spring addresses those issues
• Understand the relationships between Spring and JEE, AOP, IOC and JDBC.
• Write applications that take advantage of the Spring container and the declarative nature of assembling simple components into applications.
• Understand how to configure the Spring Boot framework
• Understand and work on integrating persistence into a Spring application
• Explain Spring's support for transactions and caching
• Work with Spring Boot to facilitate Spring setup and configuration
• Apply Aspect Oriented Programming (AOP) to Spring applications
• Become familiar with the conditionally loading of bean definitions and Application Contexts
• Understand how to leverage the power of Spring Boot
• Use Spring Boot to create and work with JPA repositories
• Define the persistence layer of an application using Spring Data
• Query for data using Spring Data JPA Queries

Need different skills or topics?  If your team requires different topics or tools, additional skills or custom approach, this course may be further adjusted to accommodate.  We offer additional Spring,  Java / JEE / Java for Web programming, Services, REST, TDD / testing, design, application security and other related topics that may be blended with this course for a track that best suits your needs. Our team will collaborate with you to understand your needs and will target the course to focus on your specific learning objectives and goals.

Course Prerequisites

This introduction to Spring development course requires that incoming students possess solid Java programming skills and practical hands-on Java experience.  This class is geared for experienced Java developers who are new to Spring, who wish to understand how and when to use Spring in Java and JEE applications. 

Please see the Related Courses tab for specific Pre-Requisite courses, Related Courses that offer similar skills or topics, and next-step Learning Path recommendations.

Course Agenda

Please note that this list of topics is based on our standard course offering, evolved from typical industry uses and trends. We’ll work with you to tune this course and level of coverage to target the skills you need most.

Session: Introduction to Spring

Lesson: The Spring Framework

• Understand the value of Spring
• Explore Dependency Injection (DI) and Inversion of Control (IoC)
• Introduce different ways of configuring collaborators
• Spring as an Object Factory
• Initializing the Spring IoC Container

Lesson: Configuring Spring Managed Beans

• Introduce Java-based configuration
• The @Configuration and @Bean annotations
• Define bean dependencies
• Bootstrapping Java Config
• Context Injection in Configuration classes
• Using context Profiles
• Conditionally loading beans and configurations
• Bean Life-Cycle Methods
• Lab: Spring Java Config

Lesson: Defining Bean dependencies

• Introduce Spring annotations for defining dependencies
• Explore the @Autowired annotation
• Stereotype Annotations
• Qualifying injection points
• Lifecycle annotations
• Using properties in Java based configuration
• The @Value annotation
• Using the Candidate Components Index
• Lab: Configuring Bean Dependencies using Annotations
• Lab: Creating the Candidate Component Index

Lesson: Introduction to Spring Boot

• Introduce the basics of Spring Boot
• Explain auto-configuration
• Introduce the Spring Initializr application
• Bootstrapping a Spring Boot application
• Lab: Introduction to Spring using Spring Boot

Lesson: Working with Spring Boot

• Provide an overview of Spring Boot
• Introduce starter dependencies
• Introduce auto-configuration
• @Enable... annotations
• Conditional configuration
• Spring Boot Externalized Configuration
• Bootstrapping Spring Boot
• Lab: Create REST Repository using Spring Boot

Session: Spring AOP

Lesson: Introduction to Aspect Oriented Programming

• Aspect Oriented Programming
• Cross Cutting Concerns

Lesson: Spring AOP

• Spring AOP in a Nutshell
• @AspectJ support
• Spring AOP advice types
• AspectJ pointcut designators
• Lab: Spring AOP: Adding Interceptors

Session: Spring Boot 2

Lesson: Spring Boot Actuator

• Understand Spring Boot Actuators
• Work with predefined Actuator endpoints
• Enabling Actuator endpoints
• Securing the Actuator
• Lab: The Spring Actuator
• Lab: Securing the Spring Actuator

Lesson: Developing in Spring Boot

• Introduce Spring Boot Devtools
• Enable the ConditionEvaluationReport
• Debugging Spring Boot applications
• Lab: Discover the Spring DevTools

Lesson: Thymeleaf

• Provide a quick overview of Thymeleaf
• Introduce Thymeleaf templates
• Create and run a Spring Thymeleaf MVC application
• Lab: Add front-end to REST Repository

Session: Spring Data (Introduction)

Lesson: Spring Data Overview

• Spring Data Capabilities and Features
• Spring Data repositories
• The Repository interfaces
• Defining the JPA entity
• Persisting entities using Spring Data JPA
• Bootstrapping the Spring Data application
• Lab: Spring Data JPA Using Spring Boot
• Lab: Spring Data JPA Using Spring Boot (Part 2)
• Lab: Spring Data JPA (Without Spring Boot)

Lesson: Spring Data Query Methods

• Querying data using Query methods
• Query builder mechanism
• Handling an Absence of Value
• Pagination and Ordering
• Asynchronous query methods
• Count and Delete Derived Query methods
• Lab: Spring Data Query Methods

Lesson: Spring Data JPA Queries

• JPA named queries
• @Query and @NamedQuery annotations
• Defining Query parameters
• Executing native queries
• SpEL expressions in queries
• Managing the Persistence Context after updates
• Lab: Spring Data JPA Queries

Course Materials

Each student will receive a Student Guide with course notes, code samples, software tutorials, step-by-step written lab instructions, diagrams and related reference materials and links (as applicable). Students will also receive the project files (or code, if applicable) and solutions required for the hands-on work.

Hands-on Setup Made Simple! Our dedicated tech team will work with you to ensure your student machines and learning environment is setup, tested and ready to go well in advance of the course delivery date, ensuring a smooth start to class and seamless hands-on experience for your students. We offer several flexible student machine setup options including guided manual set up for simple installation directly on student machines, or cloud based / remote hosted lab solutions where students can log in to a complete separate lab environment minus any installations, or we can supply complete turn-key, pre-loaded equipment to bring ready-to-go student machines to your students or in-person facility.  Please inquire for details.