Spring Boot - Starters

Overview

Spring Boot starters are a set of predefined dependency descriptors which we can include in our Spring Boot project. Each starter focuses on a specific area of functionality (e.g., web, data, security, testing) and provides a curated set of related dependencies. By adding a starter to your project, you automatically get all the required libraries without having to hunt through documentation or sample code. To use a starter, simply add its corresponding dependency to your projects build configuration (Maven or Gradle). For example, in your project's POM.xml (Maven configuration file), you add a starter like:

<dependency>
   <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
   <artifactId>spring-boot-starter</artifactId>
   <version>3.5.6</version>
</dependency>

Spring Boot Starter Parent

Thespring-boot-starter-parentis a project starter provided by Spring Boot. Its primary purpose is to offer default configurations for your application and set up a complete dependency tree. When you use it as the parent in your project'spom.xml, you inherit a wealth of useful features. Once youve declared the starter parent, you can pull any dependency from it directly. For example, if youre building a web project, addspring-boot-starter-webwithout specifying the version.

Some useful Spring Boot starters

Core Starters

WEB/MVC Starters

Data Starters

JMS Starters

AOP Starters

JTA Starters

Integration Starters

Logging Starters

Miscellaneous Starters