The SpringApplication class provides a convenient way to bootstrap a Spring application that is started from a main() method.
In many situations, you can delegate to the static SpringApplication.run method, as shown in the following example:
link:{docs-java}/features/springapplication/MyApplication.java[role=include]When your application starts, you should see something similar to the following output:
. ____ _ __ _ _
/\\ / ___'_ __ _ _(_)_ __ __ _ \ \ \ \
( ( )\___ | '_ | '_| | '_ \/ _` | \ \ \ \
\\/ ___)| |_)| | | | | || (_| | ) ) ) )
' |____| .__|_| |_|_| |_\__, | / / / /
=========|_|==============|___/=/_/_/_/
:: Spring Boot :: v{spring-boot-version}
2021-02-03 10:33:25.224 INFO 17321 --- [ main] o.s.b.d.s.s.SpringApplicationExample : Starting SpringApplicationExample using Java 1.8.0_232 on mycomputer with PID 17321 (/apps/myjar.jar started by pwebb)
2021-02-03 10:33:25.226 INFO 17900 --- [ main] o.s.b.d.s.s.SpringApplicationExample : No active profile set, falling back to default profiles: default
2021-02-03 10:33:26.046 INFO 17321 --- [ main] o.s.b.w.embedded.tomcat.TomcatWebServer : Tomcat initialized with port(s): 8080 (http)
2021-02-03 10:33:26.054 INFO 17900 --- [ main] o.apache.catalina.core.StandardService : Starting service [Tomcat]
2021-02-03 10:33:26.055 INFO 17900 --- [ main] org.apache.catalina.core.StandardEngine : Starting Servlet engine: [Apache Tomcat/9.0.41]
2021-02-03 10:33:26.097 INFO 17900 --- [ main] o.a.c.c.C.[Tomcat].[localhost].[/] : Initializing Spring embedded WebApplicationContext
2021-02-03 10:33:26.097 INFO 17900 --- [ main] w.s.c.ServletWebServerApplicationContext : Root WebApplicationContext: initialization completed in 821 ms
2021-02-03 10:33:26.144 INFO 17900 --- [ main] s.tomcat.SampleTomcatApplication : ServletContext initialized
2021-02-03 10:33:26.376 INFO 17900 --- [ main] o.s.b.w.embedded.tomcat.TomcatWebServer : Tomcat started on port(s): 8080 (http) with context path ''
2021-02-03 10:33:26.384 INFO 17900 --- [ main] o.s.b.d.s.s.SpringApplicationExample : Started SampleTomcatApplication in 1.514 seconds (JVM running for 1.823)
By default, INFO logging messages are shown, including some relevant startup details, such as the user that launched the application.
If you need a log level other than INFO, you can set it, as described in features.adoc.
The application version is determined using the implementation version from the main application class’s package.
Startup information logging can be turned off by setting spring.main.log-startup-info to false.
This will also turn off logging of the application’s active profiles.
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Tip
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To add additional logging during startup, you can override logStartupInfo(boolean) in a subclass of SpringApplication.
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If your application fails to start, registered FailureAnalyzers get a chance to provide a dedicated error message and a concrete action to fix the problem.
For instance, if you start a web application on port 8080 and that port is already in use, you should see something similar to the following message:
*************************** APPLICATION FAILED TO START *************************** Description: Embedded servlet container failed to start. Port 8080 was already in use. Action: Identify and stop the process that is listening on port 8080 or configure this application to listen on another port.
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Note
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Spring Boot provides numerous FailureAnalyzer implementations, and you can add your own.
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If no failure analyzers are able to handle the exception, you can still display the full conditions report to better understand what went wrong.
To do so, you need to enable the debug property or enable DEBUG logging for org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.logging.ConditionEvaluationReportLoggingListener.
For instance, if you are running your application by using java -jar, you can enable the debug property as follows:
$ java -jar myproject-0.0.1-SNAPSHOT.jar --debugSpringApplication allows an application to be initialized lazily.
When lazy initialization is enabled, beans are created as they are needed rather than during application startup.
As a result, enabling lazy initialization can reduce the time that it takes your application to start.
In a web application, enabling lazy initialization will result in many web-related beans not being initialized until an HTTP request is received.
A downside of lazy initialization is that it can delay the discovery of a problem with the application. If a misconfigured bean is initialized lazily, a failure will no longer occur during startup and the problem will only become apparent when the bean is initialized. Care must also be taken to ensure that the JVM has sufficient memory to accommodate all of the application’s beans and not just those that are initialized during startup. For these reasons, lazy initialization is not enabled by default and it is recommended that fine-tuning of the JVM’s heap size is done before enabling lazy initialization.
Lazy initialization can be enabled programmatically using the lazyInitialization method on SpringApplicationBuilder or the setLazyInitialization method on SpringApplication.
Alternatively, it can be enabled using the configprop:spring.main.lazy-initialization[] property as shown in the following example:
spring:
main:
lazy-initialization: true|
Tip
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If you want to disable lazy initialization for certain beans while using lazy initialization for the rest of the application, you can explicitly set their lazy attribute to false using the @Lazy(false) annotation.
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The banner that is printed on start up can be changed by adding a banner.txt file to your classpath or by setting the configprop:spring.banner.location[] property to the location of such a file.
If the file has an encoding other than UTF-8, you can set spring.banner.charset.
In addition to a text file, you can also add a banner.gif, banner.jpg, or banner.png image file to your classpath or set the configprop:spring.banner.image.location[] property.
Images are converted into an ASCII art representation and printed above any text banner.
Inside your banner.txt file, you can use any key available in the Environment as well as any of the following placeholders:
| Variable | Description |
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The version number of your application, as declared in |
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The version number of your application, as declared in |
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The Spring Boot version that you are using.
For example |
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The Spring Boot version that you are using, formatted for display (surrounded with brackets and prefixed with |
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Where |
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The title of your application, as declared in |
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Tip
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The SpringApplication.setBanner(…) method can be used if you want to generate a banner programmatically.
Use the org.springframework.boot.Banner interface and implement your own printBanner() method.
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You can also use the configprop:spring.main.banner-mode[] property to determine if the banner has to be printed on System.out (console), sent to the configured logger (log), or not produced at all (off).
The printed banner is registered as a singleton bean under the following name: springBootBanner.
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Note
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The This is why we recommend that you always launch unpacked jars using |
If the SpringApplication defaults are not to your taste, you can instead create a local instance and customize it.
For example, to turn off the banner, you could write:
link:{docs-java}/features/springapplication/customizingspringapplication/MyApplication.java[role=include]|
Note
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The constructor arguments passed to SpringApplication are configuration sources for Spring beans.
In most cases, these are references to @Configuration classes, but they could also be direct references @Component classes.
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It is also possible to configure the SpringApplication by using an application.properties file.
See features.adoc for details.
For a complete list of the configuration options, see the {spring-boot-module-api}/SpringApplication.html[SpringApplication Javadoc].
If you need to build an ApplicationContext hierarchy (multiple contexts with a parent/child relationship) or if you prefer using a “fluent” builder API, you can use the SpringApplicationBuilder.
The SpringApplicationBuilder lets you chain together multiple method calls and includes parent and child methods that let you create a hierarchy, as shown in the following example:
link:{docs-java}/features/springapplication/fluentbuilderapi/MyApplication.java[role=include]|
Note
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There are some restrictions when creating an ApplicationContext hierarchy.
For example, Web components must be contained within the child context, and the same Environment is used for both parent and child contexts.
See the {spring-boot-module-api}/builder/SpringApplicationBuilder.html[SpringApplicationBuilder Javadoc] for full details.
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When deployed on platforms, applications can provide information about their availability to the platform using infrastructure such as Kubernetes Probes. Spring Boot includes out-of-the box support for the commonly used “liveness” and “readiness” availability states. If you are using Spring Boot’s “actuator” support then these states are exposed as health endpoint groups.
In addition, you can also obtain availability states by injecting the ApplicationAvailability interface into your own beans.
The “Liveness” state of an application tells whether its internal state allows it to work correctly, or recover by itself if it is currently failing. A broken “Liveness” state means that the application is in a state that it cannot recover from, and the infrastructure should restart the application.
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Note
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In general, the "Liveness" state should not be based on external checks, such as Health checks. If it did, a failing external system (a database, a Web API, an external cache) would trigger massive restarts and cascading failures across the platform. |
The internal state of Spring Boot applications is mostly represented by the Spring ApplicationContext.
If the application context has started successfully, Spring Boot assumes that the application is in a valid state.
An application is considered live as soon as the context has been refreshed, see Spring Boot application lifecycle and related Application Events.
The “Readiness” state of an application tells whether the application is ready to handle traffic.
A failing “Readiness” state tells the platform that it should not route traffic to the application for now.
This typically happens during startup, while CommandLineRunner and ApplicationRunner components are being processed, or at any time if the application decides that it is too busy for additional traffic.
An application is considered ready as soon as application and command-line runners have been called, see Spring Boot application lifecycle and related Application Events.
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Tip
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Tasks expected to run during startup should be executed by CommandLineRunner and ApplicationRunner components instead of using Spring component lifecycle callbacks such as @PostConstruct.
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Application components can retrieve the current availability state at any time, by injecting the ApplicationAvailability interface and calling methods on it.
More often, applications will want to listen to state updates or update the state of the application.
For example, we can export the "Readiness" state of the application to a file so that a Kubernetes "exec Probe" can look at this file:
link:{docs-java}/features/springapplication/applicationavailability/managing/MyReadinessStateExporter.java[role=include]We can also update the state of the application, when the application breaks and cannot recover:
link:{docs-java}/features/springapplication/applicationavailability/managing/MyLocalCacheVerifier.java[role=include]Spring Boot provides Kubernetes HTTP probes for "Liveness" and "Readiness" with Actuator Health Endpoints. You can get more guidance about deploying Spring Boot applications on Kubernetes in the dedicated section.
In addition to the usual Spring Framework events, such as {spring-framework-api}/context/event/ContextRefreshedEvent.html[ContextRefreshedEvent], a SpringApplication sends some additional application events.
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Note
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Some events are actually triggered before the If you want those listeners to be registered automatically, regardless of the way the application is created, you can add a org.springframework.context.ApplicationListener=com.example.project.MyListener |
Application events are sent in the following order, as your application runs:
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An
ApplicationStartingEventis sent at the start of a run but before any processing, except for the registration of listeners and initializers. -
An
ApplicationEnvironmentPreparedEventis sent when theEnvironmentto be used in the context is known but before the context is created. -
An
ApplicationContextInitializedEventis sent when theApplicationContextis prepared and ApplicationContextInitializers have been called but before any bean definitions are loaded. -
An
ApplicationPreparedEventis sent just before the refresh is started but after bean definitions have been loaded. -
An
ApplicationStartedEventis sent after the context has been refreshed but before any application and command-line runners have been called. -
An
AvailabilityChangeEventis sent right after withLivenessState.CORRECTto indicate that the application is considered as live. -
An
ApplicationReadyEventis sent after any application and command-line runners have been called. -
An
AvailabilityChangeEventis sent right after withReadinessState.ACCEPTING_TRAFFICto indicate that the application is ready to service requests. -
An
ApplicationFailedEventis sent if there is an exception on startup.
The above list only includes SpringApplicationEvents that are tied to a SpringApplication.
In addition to these, the following events are also published after ApplicationPreparedEvent and before ApplicationStartedEvent:
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A
WebServerInitializedEventis sent after theWebServeris ready.ServletWebServerInitializedEventandReactiveWebServerInitializedEventare the servlet and reactive variants respectively. -
A
ContextRefreshedEventis sent when anApplicationContextis refreshed.
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Tip
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You often need not use application events, but it can be handy to know that they exist. Internally, Spring Boot uses events to handle a variety of tasks. |
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Note
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Event listeners should not run potentially lengthy tasks as they execute in the same thread by default. Consider using application and command-line runners instead. |
Application events are sent by using Spring Framework’s event publishing mechanism.
Part of this mechanism ensures that an event published to the listeners in a child context is also published to the listeners in any ancestor contexts.
As a result of this, if your application uses a hierarchy of SpringApplication instances, a listener may receive multiple instances of the same type of application event.
To allow your listener to distinguish between an event for its context and an event for a descendant context, it should request that its application context is injected and then compare the injected context with the context of the event.
The context can be injected by implementing ApplicationContextAware or, if the listener is a bean, by using @Autowired.
A SpringApplication attempts to create the right type of ApplicationContext on your behalf.
The algorithm used to determine a WebApplicationType is the following:
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If Spring MVC is present, an
AnnotationConfigServletWebServerApplicationContextis used -
If Spring MVC is not present and Spring WebFlux is present, an
AnnotationConfigReactiveWebServerApplicationContextis used -
Otherwise,
AnnotationConfigApplicationContextis used
This means that if you are using Spring MVC and the new WebClient from Spring WebFlux in the same application, Spring MVC will be used by default.
You can override that easily by calling setWebApplicationType(WebApplicationType).
It is also possible to take complete control of the ApplicationContext type that is used by calling setApplicationContextClass(…).
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Tip
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It is often desirable to call setWebApplicationType(WebApplicationType.NONE) when using SpringApplication within a JUnit test.
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If you need to access the application arguments that were passed to SpringApplication.run(…), you can inject a org.springframework.boot.ApplicationArguments bean.
The ApplicationArguments interface provides access to both the raw String[] arguments as well as parsed option and non-option arguments, as shown in the following example:
link:{docs-java}/features/springapplication/applicationarguments/MyBean.java[role=include]|
Tip
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Spring Boot also registers a CommandLinePropertySource with the Spring Environment.
This lets you also inject single application arguments by using the @Value annotation.
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If you need to run some specific code once the SpringApplication has started, you can implement the ApplicationRunner or CommandLineRunner interfaces.
Both interfaces work in the same way and offer a single run method, which is called just before SpringApplication.run(…) completes.
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Note
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This contract is well suited for tasks that should run after application startup but before it starts accepting traffic. |
The CommandLineRunner interfaces provides access to application arguments as a string array, whereas the ApplicationRunner uses the ApplicationArguments interface discussed earlier.
The following example shows a CommandLineRunner with a run method:
link:{docs-java}/features/springapplication/commandlinerunner/MyCommandLineRunner.java[role=include]If several CommandLineRunner or ApplicationRunner beans are defined that must be called in a specific order, you can additionally implement the org.springframework.core.Ordered interface or use the org.springframework.core.annotation.Order annotation.
Each SpringApplication registers a shutdown hook with the JVM to ensure that the ApplicationContext closes gracefully on exit.
All the standard Spring lifecycle callbacks (such as the DisposableBean interface or the @PreDestroy annotation) can be used.
In addition, beans may implement the org.springframework.boot.ExitCodeGenerator interface if they wish to return a specific exit code when SpringApplication.exit() is called.
This exit code can then be passed to System.exit() to return it as a status code, as shown in the following example:
link:{docs-java}/features/springapplication/applicationexit/MyApplication.java[role=include]Also, the ExitCodeGenerator interface may be implemented by exceptions.
When such an exception is encountered, Spring Boot returns the exit code provided by the implemented getExitCode() method.
It is possible to enable admin-related features for the application by specifying the configprop:spring.application.admin.enabled[] property.
This exposes the {spring-boot-module-code}/admin/SpringApplicationAdminMXBean.java[SpringApplicationAdminMXBean] on the platform MBeanServer.
You could use this feature to administer your Spring Boot application remotely.
This feature could also be useful for any service wrapper implementation.
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Tip
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If you want to know on which HTTP port the application is running, get the property with a key of local.server.port.
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During the application startup, the SpringApplication and the ApplicationContext perform many tasks related to the application lifecycle,
the beans lifecycle or even processing application events.
With {spring-framework-api}/core/metrics/ApplicationStartup.html[ApplicationStartup], Spring Framework {spring-framework-docs}/core.html#context-functionality-startup[allows you to track the application startup sequence with StartupStep objects].
This data can be collected for profiling purposes, or just to have a better understanding of an application startup process.
You can choose an ApplicationStartup implementation when setting up the SpringApplication instance.
For example, to use the BufferingApplicationStartup, you could write:
link:{docs-java}/features/springapplication/startuptracking/MyApplication.java[role=include]The first available implementation, FlightRecorderApplicationStartup is provided by Spring Framework.
It adds Spring-specific startup events to a Java Flight Recorder session and is meant for profiling applications and correlating their Spring context lifecycle with JVM events (such as allocations, GCs, class loading…).
Once configured, you can record data by running the application with the Flight Recorder enabled:
$ java -XX:StartFlightRecording:filename=recording.jfr,duration=10s -jar demo.jarSpring Boot ships with the BufferingApplicationStartup variant; this implementation is meant for buffering the startup steps and draining them into an external metrics system.
Applications can ask for the bean of type BufferingApplicationStartup in any component.
Spring Boot can also be configured to expose a {spring-boot-actuator-restapi-docs}/#startup[startup endpoint] that provides this information as a JSON document.