In this blog, I want to look at - and demonstrate - some of the many new features in Spring Boot 1.2 that make the lives of those coming from, or otherwise building on, Java EE easier.

It's worth mentioning that a lot of this support has been possible with Spring before, of course, but now with Spring Boot 1.2, it's just so darned easy!

First, here's an example program with notes after.

package demo;

import org.glassfish.jersey.jackson.JacksonFeature;
import org.glassfish.jersey.server.ResourceConfig;
import org.springframework.boot.SpringApplication;
import org.springframework.boot…

Recently, a friend of mine tweeted out a challenge:

"Name a framework in which you can create a new app expose a REST service with a database and deploy it to the cloud in five minutes. #grails"

The moment I spotted that tweet, I responded, "Spring Boot + Spring Data REST"! I realized he was kindly pointing out how easy it is to build RESTful services with Grails (a great framework). But I couldn't resist showing the ease and power of Spring Data REST.

To prove my point, I couldn't resisting crafting a screencast. In the linked screencast, I show how über easy Spring has made it to pick the parts for your app from http://start.spring.io, define your domain, and then…

On behalf of the Spring XD team, I am very pleased to announce the first milestone release of Spring XD 1.1 and the 1.0.2 maintenance release.

Download Links:

• 1.0.2.RELEASE: zip, 1.1.0.M1 RELEASE: zip

In addition to bug fixes, Spring XD 1.0.2 now supports Apache Hadoop 2.5.1. Pivotal PHD 2.1 and Cloudera CDH 5.1.3.

The 1.1 M1 release includes bug fixes and enhancements as well as several new features:

• Run a Spark Application as a batch job
• Python based processors and sinks
• Kafka source and sink
• HDFS sink supports writing to a Kerberized Hadoop Cluster
• LDAP Authentication
• Modules can be created using Java @Configuration classes as an alternative to XML
• Redis sink and JDBC Source
• Hadoop distribution updates. Support for Apache Hadoop 2,4.1/2.5.1 (default), Pivotal PHD 2.0/2.1, Cloudera CDH 5.2, and Hortonworks HDP 2.1. Apache Hadoop 2.2 support was removed
• Configurable location of Spring XD’s top level node in Zookeeper
…

Welcome to another installment of This Week in Spring! This week I'm in sunny Sofia, Bulgaria for the Java2Days software conference. As usual, this show is way too much fun and the crowd's bigger and better than ever!

1. Spring Boot 1.2.0 RC1 is now available! This release moves embedded Servlet containers to Tomcat 8 or Jetty 9, adds a new @SpringBootApplication annotation, adds JavaMail support, and registers additional Spring Boot actuator support
2. Spring Session 1.0.0.RC1 is here with loads of features!
3. Speaking of using Spring with ZeroTurnaround, join ZeroTurnaround's Adam Koblentz and I on Nov 20th as we look at using JRebel and Spring Boot to deliver a one-two developer productivity punch without equal
4. Want to learn more about the Reactor project and the role of asych I/O in microservices? Check out the upcoming Reactor webinar…

By Josh Long

Spring Integration 4.1 was just released and it includes a lot of great new features! One of my favorites? Smart integration with the Spring 4 WebSocket support. Now you can compose a integration flow whose final destination is a WebSocket client. There is also support for acting as the client to a WebSocket service.

In order to compile it, you will need Java 8 (we make heavy use of lambdas here) and the following Maven dependencies:

• groupId:org.springframework.integration, artifactId:spring-integration-java-dsl, version: 1.0.0.RC1.
• groupId:org.springframework.integration, artifactId:spring-integration-websocket, version: 4.1.0.RELEASE.
• groupId:org.springframework.boot, artifactId:spring-boot-starter-websocket, version: 1.2.0.RC1.
…

Welcome to another installment of This Week in Spring! This week I'm back in Silicon Valley, talking to developers at a handful of large technology-driven companies about taking their first steps with a cloud-native architecture. Interesting feedback, as ever! This week I'll be doing a meetup here in the bay area on building Bootiful microservices with Spring Cloud. Next week, I look forward to seeing people at Java2Days in Sofia, Bulgaria! C'ya there!

1. Spring Integration lead Gary Russell has just announced Spring Integration 4.1.0 and Spring AMQP 1.4.0 final are now available!

• Spring Security OAuth 2.0.4.RELEASE Available Now. The new release contains a few nice additions and a few bug fixes, making it a recommended, easy upgrade.
• Spring lead Juergen Hoeller just announced the availability of Spring Framework 4.1.2, accompanied by 4.0.8 and 3.2.12 maintenance releases.
• I'll be doing a webinar with ZeroTurnaround's Adam Koblentz introducing how to use Spring (and Spring Boot in particular) and JRebel 6…

Sometimes, teh Twitterz is an amazing place. Just last week I spent some time helping clarify the behavior of Spring's @Qualifier annotation, which is both older than JSR 330 and offers a richer superset of JSR 330's @Qualifier annotation. These misguided few seemed to be under the impression that Spring's annotation didn't offer the same degree of type-safety as the JSR 330 annotation. I don't know if it's because they simply hadn't read up on the support (which is fairly new, since it's only been around since 2007), or if it's because they work for companies that make their money if you…

Welcome to another installment of This Week in Spring! This week I'm on the road talking to enthusiastic Spring developers in Casablanca, Morocco at the JMaghreb conference and then it's off to London (again!) for the amazing Spring eXchange. If you're at either, be sure to say hi!

• Artem Bilan, Spring Integration ninja and a personal hero of mine, has just announced the Spring Integration RC1 release. I don't know if you've seen the Java configuration DSL, but it makes writing complex integration flows a breeze! It takes advantage of Java 8's lamba support. Check it out! Remember, microservices aren't exclusively REST centric. If you're trying to build a microservice and expose it over any other mechanism, I'd start with Spring Integration.
• Spring ninja Thomas Risberg just announced Spring for Hadoop 2.0.3…

Hello from New York City! Tonight I'll be addressing the Cloud Foundry User Group on how to build Spring Boot and Spring Cloud-based microservices that run on Cloud Foundry - I hope you'll join us! And if you're in Boston, then come hang out when I give the same talk there on Thursday!

• Spring Social lead and all around Spring ninja Craig Walls announced the Spring Sync project and then wrote up a nice introduction to it, which - this is taken from the post because it's perfectly stated there - addresses efficient communication between client applications and Spring backends by employing patch-based exchanges. So, basically, the one piece of the pie (after basic REST, HATEOAS and hypermedia, OAuth and security in general, all of which Spring supports capably and in a first-class way) missing in client/server communication (like REST) is now here! If you read one…