What Is Spring Boot Starter Web?

Spring Boot Starter Web is a module in the Spring Boot framework that simplifies the development of web applications, providing all the necessary dependencies for building a web service or a web-based application. It is part of the Spring Boot Starters, which are pre-configured sets of libraries that help you set up your project with minimal configuration.

Here’s what Spring Boot Starter Web includes and provides:

1. Spring MVC: It includes the Spring MVC framework for building web applications, including RESTful services.
2. Embedded Servlet Container: Spring Boot Starter Web comes with support for embedded servlet containers like Tomcat (by default), Jetty, or Undertow. This eliminates the need to deploy your application to an external web server.
3. Jackson or Gson: Provides libraries to handle JSON binding and serialization/deserialization, which is essential for building REST APIs.
4. Logging: It configures logging libraries, like Logback, which can be easily customized for your application.
5. Other Dependencies: The starter includes other useful dependencies for web applications, such as validation, error handling, and static content serving (like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files).

How to Use It

To add Spring Boot Starter Web to your project, you can simply include it as a dependency in your pom.xml (for Maven) or build.gradle (for Gradle):

Maven (pom.xml):

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

Gradle (build.gradle):

dependencies {
    implementation 'org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-web'
}

Benefits of Using Spring Boot Starter Web:

• Quick Setup: It automatically configures your application with the necessary components to run a web application.
• Embedded Server: You don’t need to set up an external server like Tomcat. Spring Boot’s embedded server is automatically included and configured.
• REST APIs: It simplifies the creation of RESTful web services with annotations like @RestController and @RequestMapping.
• Production Ready: It provides built-in support for metrics, health checks, and application monitoring.

Spring Boot Starter Web is designed to help developers quickly create web applications with minimal setup by bundling the essential dependencies and configurations.