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Spring Boot 1.4 Release Notes

Phillip Webb edited this page Nov 14, 2024 · 2 revisions

Upgrading from Spring Boot 1.3

Deprecations from Spring Boot 1.3

Classes, methods and properties that were deprecated in Spring Boot 1.3 have been removed in this release. Please ensure that you aren’t calling deprecated methods before upgrading.

Log4j 1 support has been removed following Apache EOL announcement.

Renamed starters

The following starters have been renamed, the old ones will be removed in Spring Boot 1.5

  • spring-boot-starter-wsspring-boot-starter-web-services

  • spring-boot-starter-redisspring-boot-starter-data-redis

DataSourceProperties get methods

Some get…​ methods from DataSourceProperties have been changed to be more consistent with other @ConfigurationProperties classes. If you previously directly called any of the following methods in your code, you will need to migrate to the new determine…​() equivalents:

  • getDriverClassName()determineDriverClassName()

  • getUrl()determineUrl()

  • getUsername()determineUsername()

  • getPassword()determineUsername()

Note
The get methods are not deprecated but their behavior has changed, make sure that you manually check for usage when upgrading.

DataSource binding

Prior to Spring Boot 1.4, auto-configured datasources were bound to the spring.datasource namespace. In 1.4, we only bind the common settings to spring.datasource (see DataSourceProperties) and we have defined new specific namespaces for the four connections pools we support (in that order):

  • spring.datasource.tomcat for org.apache.tomcat.jdbc.pool.DataSource

  • spring.datasource.hikari for com.zaxxer.hikari.HikariDataSource

  • spring.datasource.dbcp for org.apache.commons.dbcp.BasicDataSource

  • spring.datasource.dbcp2 for org.apache.commons.dbcp2.BasicDataSource

If you were using specific settings of the connection pool implementation that you are using, you will have to move that configuration to the relevant namespace. For instance, if you were using Tomcat’s testOnBorrow flag, you’ll have to move it from spring.datasource.test-on-borrow to spring.datasource.tomcat.test-on-borrow.

If you are using configuration assistance in your IDE, you can now see which settings are available per connection pools rather than having all of them mixed in the spring.datasource namespace. This should make your life much easier figuring out what implementation supports what features.

JTA settings binding

Similarly to DataSource binding, JTA provider-specific configuration properties for Atomikos and Bitronix were bound to spring.jta. They are now bound to spring.jta.atomikos.properties and spring.jta.bitronix.properties respectively; the meta-data for these entries has been greatly improved as well.

Hibernate 5

Hibernate 5.0 is now used as the default JPA persistence provider. If you are upgrading from Spring Boot 1.3 you will be moving from Hibernate 4.3 to Hibernate 5.0. Please refer to Hibernate migration documentation for general upgrade instructions. In addition you should be aware of the following:

Naming Strategy

SpringNamingStrategy is no longer used as Hibernate 5.1 has removed support for the old NamingStrategy interface. A new SpringPhysicalNamingStrategy is now auto-configured which is used in combination with Hibernate’s default ImplicitNamingStrategy. This should be very close to (if not identical) to Spring Boot 1.3 defaults, however, you should check your Database schema is correct when upgrading.

If you were already using Hibernate 5 before upgrading, you may be using Hibernate’s 5 default. If you want to restore them after the upgrade, set this property in your configuration:

spring.jpa.hibernate.naming.physical-strategy=org.hibernate.boot.model.naming.PhysicalNamingStrategyStandardImpl

Generator mappings

In order to minimize upgrade pain, we set hibernate.id.new_generator_mappings to false for Hibernate 5. The Hibernate team generally don’t recommend this setting, so if you’re happy to deal with generator changes, you might want to set spring.jpa.hibernate.use-new-id-generator-mappings to true in your application.properties file.

Downgrading to Hibernate 4.3

If you have major problems upgrading to Hibernate 5.0 you can downgrade to the older Hibernate version by overriding the hibernate.version property in your pom.xml:

<properties>
	<hibernate.version>4.3.11.Final</hibernate.version>
</properties>

Or overriding the hibernate.version property in your Gradle script:

ext['hibernate.version'] = '4.3.11.Final'
Note
Hibernate 4.3 will not be supported past Spring Boot 1.4. Please raise an issue if you find a bug that prevents you from upgrading.

@EntityScan

The @org.springframework.boot.orm.jpa.EntityScan annotation has been deprecated and should be replaced with @org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.domain.EntityScan or explicit configuration.

For example, if you have following configuration:

import org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.SpringApplication;
import org.springframework.boot.orm.jpa.EntityScan;

@SpringBootApplication
@EntityScan(basePackageClasses=Customer.class)
public class MyApplication {

	// ....

}

If you’re using an auto-configured LocalContainerEntityManagerFactoryBean, switch to:

import org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.SpringApplication;
import org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.domain.EntityScan;

@SpringBootApplication
@EntityScan(basePackageClasses=Customer.class)
public class MyApplication {

	// ....

}

Or if you’re defining your own LocalContainerEntityManagerFactoryBean drop the @EntityScan annotation entirely and either call LocalContainerEntityManagerFactoryBean.setPackagesToScan(…​) or make use of the EntityManagerFactoryBuilder packages(…​) method:

@Bean
public LocalContainerEntityManagerFactoryBean entityManagerFactory(
			EntityManagerFactoryBuilder builder) {
	return builder
		.dataSource(...)
		.properties(...)
		.packages(Customer.class)
		.build();
}

Test utilities and classes

Spring Boot 1.4 ships with a new spring-boot-test module that contains a completely reorganized org.springframework.boot.test package. When upgrading a Spring Boot 1.3 application you should migrate from the deprecated classes in the old package to the equivalent class in the new structure. If you’re using Linux or OSX, you can use the following command to migrate code:

find . -type f -name '*.java' -exec sed -i '' \
-e s/org.springframework.boot.test.ConfigFileApplicationContextInitializer/org.springframework.boot.test.context.ConfigFileApplicationContextInitializer/g \
-e s/org.springframework.boot.test.EnvironmentTestUtils/org.springframework.boot.test.util.EnvironmentTestUtils/g \
-e s/org.springframework.boot.test.OutputCapture/org.springframework.boot.test.rule.OutputCapture/g \
-e s/org.springframework.boot.test.SpringApplicationContextLoader/org.springframework.boot.test.context.SpringApplicationContextLoader/g \
-e s/org.springframework.boot.test.SpringBootMockServletContext/org.springframework.boot.test.mock.web.SpringBootMockServletContext/g \
-e s/org.springframework.boot.test.TestRestTemplate/org.springframework.boot.test.web.client.TestRestTemplate/g \
{} \;

Additionally, Spring Boot 1.4 attempts to rationalize and simplify the various ways that a Spring Boot test can be run. You should migrate the following to use the new @SpringBootTest annotation:

  • From @SpringApplicationConfiguration(classes=MyConfig.class) to @SpringBootTest(classes=MyConfig.class)

  • From @ContextConfiguration(classes=MyConfig.class, loader=SpringApplicationContextLoader.class) to @SpringBootTest(classes=MyConfig.class)

  • From @IntegrationTest to @SpringBootTest(webEnvironment=WebEnvironment.NONE)

  • From @IntegrationTest with @WebAppConfiguration to @SpringBootTest(webEnvironment=WebEnvironment.DEFINED_PORT) (or RANDOM_PORT)

  • From @WebIntegrationTest to @SpringBootTest(webEnvironment=WebEnvironment.DEFINED_PORT) (or RANDOM_PORT)

Tip
Whilst migrating tests you may also want to replace any @RunWith(SpringJUnit4ClassRunner.class) declarations with Spring 4.3’s more readable @RunWith(SpringRunner.class).

For more details on the @SpringBootTest annotation refer to the updated documentation.

TestRestTemplate

The TestRestTemplate class no longer directly extends RestTemplate (although it continues to offer the same methods). This allows TestRestTemplate to be configured as a bean without it being accidentally injected. If you need access to the actual underlying RestTemplate use the getRestTemplate() method.

Maven spring-boot.version property

The spring-boot.version property has been removed from the spring-boot-dependencies pom. See issue 5104 for details.

Integration Starter

spring-boot-starter-integration has been streamlined by removing four modules that are not necessarily used by a typical Spring Integration application. The four modules removed were:

  • spring-integration-file

  • spring-integration-http

  • spring-integration-ip

  • spring-integration-stream

If your application relies on any of these four modules, you should add an explicit dependency to your pom or build.gradle.

Additionally, spring-integration-java-dsl and spring-integration-jmx have now been added to the starter. Using the DSL is the recommended way to configure Spring Integration in your application.

Spring Batch Starter

The spring-boot-starter-batch starter no longer depends on an embedded database. If you were relying on this arrangement, please add a database (driver) of your choice, e.g.

<dependency>
	<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
	<artifactId>spring-boot-starter-batch</artifactId>
</dependency>
<dependency>
	<groupId>org.hsqldb</groupId>
	<artifactId>hsqldb</artifactId>
	<scope>runtime</scope>
</dependency>

If you had an exclusion on hsqldb as you were already configuring your own, you can now remove the exclusion.

Downgrading Tomcat

As of Tomcat 8.5.4 the tomcat-juli module is now packaged as part of tomcat-embedded. Most users won’t notice this change, however, if you manually downgrade to an older version of Tomcat you’ll now need to add the tomcat-juli module yourself. See the how-to documentation section for updated instructions.

Dispatch Options Request

The default spring.mvc.dispatch-options-request property has changed from false to true to align with Spring Framework’s preferred default. If you don’t want OPTIONS requests to be dispatched to FrameworkServlet.doService you should explicitly set spring.mvc.dispatch-options-request to false.

Forced character encoding

Forced character encoding now only applies to requests (and not responses). If you want to force encoding for both requests and responses set spring.http.encoding.force to true.

Multipart support

The multipart properties have moved from the multipart. namespace to the spring.http.multipart. namespace.

Server header

The Server HTTP response header is no longer set unless the server.server-header property is set.

@ConfigurationProperties default bean names

When a @ConfigurationProperties bean is registered via @EnableConfigurationProperties(SomeBean.class), we used to generate a bean name of the form <prefix>.CONFIGURATION_PROPERTIES. As of Spring Boot 1.4, we have changed that pattern to avoid name clashes if two beans use the same prefix.

The new conventional name is <prefix>-<fqn>, where <prefix> is the environment key prefix specified in the @ConfigurationProperties annotation and <fqn> the fully qualified name of the bean. If the annotation does not provide any prefix, only the fully qualified name of the bean is used.

Jetty JNDI support

The spring-boot-starter-jetty "Starter" no longer includes org.eclipse.jetty:jetty-jndi. If you are using Jetty with JNDI you will now need to directly add this dependency yourself.

Guava caches

Developers using Guava cache support are advised to migrate to Caffeine.

Remote Shell

The CRaSH properties have moved from the shell. namespace to the management.shell. namespace. Also, the authentication type should now be defined via management.shell.auth.type.

Spring Session auto-configuration improvements

Spring Boot supports more backend stores for Spring Session: alongside Redis, JDBC, MongoDB, Hazelcast and in memory concurrent hash maps are also supported. A new spring.session.store-type mandatory property has been introduced to select the store Spring Session should be using.

Launch script identity

When the launch script is determining the application’s default identity, the canonical name of the directory containing the jar will now be used. Previously, if the directory containing the jar was a symlink, the name of the symlink was used. If you require more control over the application’s identity, the APP_NAME environment variable should be used.

MongoDB 3

The default version of Mongo’s Java Driver is now 3.2.2 (from 2.14.2) and spring-boot-starter-data-mongodb has been updated to use the new, preferred mongodb-driver artifact.

The auto-configuration for Embedded MongoDB has also been updated to use 3.2.2 as its default version.

Thymeleaf 3

By default, Spring Boot uses Thymeleaf 2.1 but it is now compatible with Thymeleaf 3 as well, check the updated documentation for more details.

Executable jar layout

The layout of executable jars has changed. If you are using Spring Boot’s Maven, Gradle, or Ant support to build your application this change will not affect you. If you are building an executable archive yourself, please be aware that an application’s dependencies are now packaged in BOOT-INF/lib rather than lib, and an application’s own classes are now packaged in BOOT-INF/classes rather than the root of the jar.

Jersey classpath scanning limitations

The change to the layout of executable jars means that a limitation in Jersey’s classpath scanning now affects executable jar files as well as executable war files. To work around the problem, classes that you wish to be scanned by Jersey should be packaged in a jar and included as a dependency in BOOT-INF/lib. The Spring Boot launcher should then be configured to unpack those jars on start up so that Jersey can scan their contents.

Integration tests with the maven-failsafe-plugin

As of Failsafe 2.19, target/classes is no longer on the classpath and the project’s built jar is used instead. The plugin won’t be able to find your classes due to the change in the executable jar layout. There are two ways to work around this issue:

  1. Downgrade to 2.18.1 so that you use target/classes instead

  2. Configure the spring-boot-maven-plugin to use a classifier for the repackage goal. That way, the original jar will be available and used by the plugin. For example

<plugin>
	<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
	<artifactId>spring-boot-maven-plugin</artifactId>
	<configuration>
		<classifier>exec</classifier>
	</configuration>
</plugin>
Note
If you are using Spring Boot’s dependency management, there is nothing to do as you’ll use 2.18.1 by default.
Tip
Watch SUREFIRE-1198 for updates on this issue.

HornetQ

Support for HornetQ has been deprecated. Users of HornetQ should consider migrating to Artemis.

@Transactional default to cglib proxies

When Boot auto-configures the transaction management, proxyTargetClass is now set to true (meaning that cglib proxies are created rather than requiring your bean to implement an interface). If you want to align that behaviour for other aspects that aren’t auto-configured, you’ll need to explicitly enable the property now:

@EnableCaching(proxyTargetClass = true)
Note
If you happen to use @Transactional on interfaces, you’ll have to be explicit and add @EnableTransactionManagement to your configuration. This will restore the previous behaviour.

New and Noteworthy

Tip
Check the configuration changelog for a complete overview of the changes in configuration.

Spring Framework 4.3

Spring Boot 1.4 builds on and requires Spring Framework 4.3. There are a number of nice refinements in Spring Framework 4.3 including new Spring MVC @RequestMapping annotations. Refer to the Spring Framework reference documentation for details.

Note that the test framework in Spring Framework 4.3 requires JUnit 4.12. See SPR-13275 for further details.

Third-party library upgrades

A number of third party libraries have been upgraded to their latest version. Updates include Jetty 9.3, Tomcat 8.5, Jersey 2.23, Hibernate 5.0, Jackson 2.7, Solr 5.5, Spring Data Hopper, Spring Session 1.2, Hazelcast 3.6, Artemis 1.3, Ehcache 3.1, Elasticsearch 2.3, Spring REST Docs 1.1, Spring AMQP 1.6 & Spring Integration 4.3.

Several Maven plugins were also upgraded.

Couchbase support

Full auto-configuration support is now provided for Couchbase. You can easily access a Bucket and Cluster bean by adding the spring-boot-starter-data-couchbase "Starter" and providing a little configuration:

spring.couchbase.bootstrap-hosts=my-host-1,192.168.1.123
spring.couchbase.bucket.name=my-bucket
spring.couchbase.bucket.password=secret

It’s also possible to use Couchbase as a backing store for a Spring Data Repository or as a CacheManager. Refer to the updated documentation for details.

Neo4J Support

Auto-configuration support is now provided for Neo4J. You can connect to a remote server or run an embedded Neo4J server. You can also use Neo4J to back a Spring Data Repository, for example:

public interface CityRepository extends GraphRepository<City> {

	Page<City> findAll(Pageable pageable);

	City findByNameAndCountry(String name, String country);

}

Full details are provided in the Neo4J section of the reference documentation.

Redis Spring Data repositories

Redis can now be used to back Spring Data repositories. See the Spring Data Redis documentation for more details.

Narayana transaction manager support

Auto-configuration support is now included for the Narayana transaction manager. You can choose between Narayana, Bitronix or Atomkos if you need JTA support. See the updated reference guide for details.

Caffeine cache support

Auto-configuration is provided for Caffeine v2.2 (a Java 8 rewrite of Guava’s caching support). Existing Guava cache users should consider migrating to Caffeine as Guava cache support will be dropped in a future release.

Elasticsearch Jest support

Spring Boot auto-configures a JestClient and a dedicated HealthIndicator if Jest is on the classpath. This allows you to use Elasticsearch even when spring-data-elasticsearch isn’t on the classpath.

Analysis of startup failures

Spring Boot will now perform analysis of common startup failures and provide useful diagnostic information rather than simply logging an exception and its stack trace. For example, a startup failure due to the embedded servlet container’s port being in use looked like this in earlier versions of Spring Boot:

2016-02-16 17:46:14.334 ERROR 24753 --- [           main] o.s.boot.SpringApplication               : Application startup failed

java.lang.RuntimeException: java.net.BindException: Address already in use
    at io.undertow.Undertow.start(Undertow.java:181) ~[undertow-core-1.3.14.Final.jar:1.3.14.Final]
    at org.springframework.boot.context.embedded.undertow.UndertowEmbeddedServletContainer.start(UndertowEmbeddedServletContainer.java:121) ~[spring-boot-1.3.2.RELEASE.jar:1.3.2.RELEASE]
    at org.springframework.boot.context.embedded.EmbeddedWebApplicationContext.startEmbeddedServletContainer(EmbeddedWebApplicationContext.java:293) ~[spring-boot-1.3.2.RELEASE.jar:1.3.2.RELEASE]
    at org.springframework.boot.context.embedded.EmbeddedWebApplicationContext.finishRefresh(EmbeddedWebApplicationContext.java:141) ~[spring-boot-1.3.2.RELEASE.jar:1.3.2.RELEASE]
    at org.springframework.context.support.AbstractApplicationContext.refresh(AbstractApplicationContext.java:541) ~[spring-context-4.2.4.RELEASE.jar:4.2.4.RELEASE]
    at org.springframework.boot.context.embedded.EmbeddedWebApplicationContext.refresh(EmbeddedWebApplicationContext.java:118) ~[spring-boot-1.3.2.RELEASE.jar:1.3.2.RELEASE]
    at org.springframework.boot.SpringApplication.refresh(SpringApplication.java:766) [spring-boot-1.3.2.RELEASE.jar:1.3.2.RELEASE]
    at org.springframework.boot.SpringApplication.createAndRefreshContext(SpringApplication.java:361) [spring-boot-1.3.2.RELEASE.jar:1.3.2.RELEASE]
    at org.springframework.boot.SpringApplication.run(SpringApplication.java:307) [spring-boot-1.3.2.RELEASE.jar:1.3.2.RELEASE]
    at org.springframework.boot.SpringApplication.run(SpringApplication.java:1191) [spring-boot-1.3.2.RELEASE.jar:1.3.2.RELEASE]
    at org.springframework.boot.SpringApplication.run(SpringApplication.java:1180) [spring-boot-1.3.2.RELEASE.jar:1.3.2.RELEASE]
    at sample.undertow.SampleUndertowApplication.main(SampleUndertowApplication.java:26) [classes/:na]
Caused by: java.net.BindException: Address already in use
    at sun.nio.ch.Net.bind0(Native Method) ~[na:1.8.0_60]
    at sun.nio.ch.Net.bind(Net.java:433) ~[na:1.8.0_60]
    at sun.nio.ch.Net.bind(Net.java:425) ~[na:1.8.0_60]
    at sun.nio.ch.ServerSocketChannelImpl.bind(ServerSocketChannelImpl.java:223) ~[na:1.8.0_60]
    at sun.nio.ch.ServerSocketAdaptor.bind(ServerSocketAdaptor.java:74) ~[na:1.8.0_60]
    at org.xnio.nio.NioXnioWorker.createTcpConnectionServer(NioXnioWorker.java:190) ~[xnio-nio-3.3.4.Final.jar:3.3.4.Final]
    at org.xnio.XnioWorker.createStreamConnectionServer(XnioWorker.java:243) ~[xnio-api-3.3.4.Final.jar:3.3.4.Final]
    at io.undertow.Undertow.start(Undertow.java:137) ~[undertow-core-1.3.14.Final.jar:1.3.14.Final]
    ... 11 common frames omitted

In 1.4, it will look like this:

2016-02-16 17:44:49.179 ERROR 24745 --- [           main] o.s.b.d.LoggingFailureAnalysisReporter   :

***************************
APPLICATION FAILED TO START
***************************

Description:

Embedded servlet container failed to start. Port 8080 was already in use.

Action:

Identify and stop the process that's listening on port 8080 or configure this application to listen on another port.

If you still want to see the stacktrace of the underlying cause, enable debug logging for org.springframework.boot.diagnostics.LoggingFailureAnalysisReporter.

Image Banners

You can now use image files to render ASCII art banners. Drop a banner.gif, banner.jpg or banner.png file into src/main/resources to have it automatically converted to ASCII. You can use the banner.image.width and banner.image.height properties to tweak the size, or use banner.image.invert to invert the colors.

banner image

RestTemplate builder

A new RestTemplateBuilder can be used to easily create a RestTemplate with sensible defaults. By default, the built RestTemplate will attempt to use the most suitable ClientHttpRequestFactory available on the classpath and will be aware of the MessageConverter instances to use (including Jackson). The builder includes a number of useful methods that can be used to quickly configure a RestTemplate. For example, to add BASIC auth support you can use:

@Bean
public RestTemplate restTemplate(RestTemplateBuilder builder) {
	return builder.basicAuthorization("user", "secret").build();
}

The auto-configured TestRestTemplate now uses the RestTemplateBuilder as well.

JSON Components

A new @JsonComponent annotation is now provided for custom Jackson JsonSerializer and/or JsonDeserializer registration. This can be a useful way to decouple JSON serialization logic:

@JsonComponent
public class Example {

	public static class Serializer extends JsonSerializer<SomeObject> {
		// ...
	}

	public static class Deserializer extends JsonDeserializer<SomeObject> {
		// ...
	}

}

Additionally, Spring Boot also now provides JsonObjectSerializer and JsonObjectDeserializer base classes which provide useful alternatives to the standard Jackson versions when serializing objects. See the updated documentation for details.

Convention based error pages

Custom error pages for a given status code can now be created by following a convention based approach. Create a static HTML file in /public/error or add a template to /templates/error using the status code as the filename. For example, to register a custom 404 file you could add src/main/resource/public/error/404.html. See the updated reference documentation for details.

Unified @EntityScan annotation

org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.domain.EntityScan can now be used to specify the packages to use for JPA, Neo4J, MongoDB, Cassandra and Couchbase. As a result, the JPA-specific org.springframework.boot.orm.jpa.EntityScan is now deprecated.

ErrorPageRegistry

New ErrorPageRegistry and ErrorPageRegistrar interfaces allow error pages to be registered in a consistent way regardless of the use of an embedded servlet container. The ErrorPageFilter class has been updated to that it is now a ErrorPageRegistry and not a fake ConfigurableEmbeddedServletContainer.

PrincipalExtractor

The PrincipalExtractor interface can now be used if you need to extract the OAuth2 Principal using custom logic.

Test improvements

Spring Boot 1.4 includes a major overhaul of testing support. Test classes and utilities are now provided in dedicated spring-boot-test and spring-boot-test-autoconfigure jars (although most users will continue to pick them up via the spring-boot-starter-test "Starter"). We’ve added AssertJ, JSONassert and JsonPath dependencies to the test starter.

@SpringBootTest

With Spring Boot 1.3 there were multiple ways of writing a Spring Boot test. You could use @SpringApplicationConfiguration, @ContextConfiguration with the SpringApplicationContextLoader, @IntegrationTest or @WebIntegrationTest. With Spring Boot 1.4, a single @SpringBootTest annotation replaces all of those.

Use @SpringBootTest in combination with @RunWith(SpringRunner.class) and set the webEnvironment attribute depending on the type of test you want to write.

A classic integration test, with a mocked servlet environment:

@RunWith(SpringRunner.class)
@SpringBootTest
public class MyTest {

	// ...

}

A web integration test, running a live server listening on a defined port:

@RunWith(SpringRunner.class)
@SpringBootTest(webEnvironment=WebEnvionment.DEFINED_PORT)
public class MyTest {

	// ...

}

A web integration test, running a live server listening on a random port:

@RunWith(SpringRunner.class)
@SpringBootTest(webEnvironment=WebEnvionment.RANDOM_PORT)
public class MyTest {

	@LocalServerPort
	private int actualPort;

	// ...

}

See the updated reference documentation for details.

Auto-detection of test configuration

Test configuration can now be automatically detected for most tests. If you follow the Spring Boot recommended conventions for structuring your code the @SpringBootApplication class will be loaded when no explicit configuration is defined. If you need to load a different @Configuration class you can either include it as a nested inner-class in your test, or use the classes attribute of @SpringBootTest.

See Detecting test configuration for details.

Mocking and spying beans

It’s quite common to want to replace a single bean in your ApplicationContext with a mock for testing purposes. With Spring Boot 1.4 this now as easy as annotating a field in your test with @MockBean:

@RunWith(SpringRunner.class)
@SpringBootTest
public class MyTest {

	@MockBean
	private RemoteService remoteService;

	@Autowired
	private Reverser reverser;

	@Test
	public void exampleTest() {
		// RemoteService has been injected into the reverser bean
		given(this.remoteService.someCall()).willReturn("mock");
		String reverse = reverser.reverseSomeCall();
		assertThat(reverse).isEqualTo("kcom");
	}

}

You can also use @SpyBean if you want to spy on an existing bean rather than using a full mock.

See the mocking section of the reference documentation for more details.

Auto-configured tests

Full application auto-configuration is sometime overkill for tests, you often only want to auto-configure a specific "slice" of your application. Spring Boot 1.4 introduces a number of specialized test annotations that can be used for testing specific parts of your application:

  • @JsonTest - For testing JSON marshalling and unmarshalling.

  • @WebMvcTest - For testing Spring MVC @Controllers using MockMVC.

  • @RestClientTest - For testing RestTemplate calls.

  • @DataJpaTest - For testing Spring Data JPA elements

Many of the annotations provide additional auto-configuration that’s specific to testing. For example, if you use @WebMvcTest you can @Autowire a fully configured MockMvc instance.

See the reference documentation for details.

JSON AssertJ assertions

New JacksonTester, GsonTester and BasicJsonTester classes can be used in combination with AssertJ to test JSON marshalling and unmarshalling. Testers can be used with the @JsonTest annotation or directly on a test class:

@RunWith(SpringRunner.class)
@JsonTest
public class MyJsonTests {

	private JacksonTester<VehicleDetails> json;

	@Test
	public void testSerialize() throws Exception {
		VehicleDetails details = new VehicleDetails("Honda", "Civic");
		assertThat(this.json.write(details)).isEqualToJson("expected.json");
		assertThat(this.json.write(details)).hasJsonPathStringValue("@.make");
	}

}

See the JSON section of the reference documentation or the Javadocs for details.

@RestClientTest

The @RestClientTest annotation can be used if you want to test REST clients. By default it will auto-configure Jackson and GSON support, configure a RestTemplateBuilder and add support for MockRestServiceServer.

Auto-configuration for Spring REST Docs

Combined with the support for auto-configuring MockMvc described above, auto-configuration for Spring REST Docs has been introduced. REST Docs can be enabled using the new @AutoConfigureRestDocs annotation. This will result in the MockMvc instance being automatically configured to use REST Docs and also removes the need to use REST Docs' JUnit rule. Please see the relevant section of the reference documentation for further details.

Test utilities

spring-boot-starter-test now brings the AssertJ assertions library.

Test utilities from the org.springframework.boot.test package have been moved to a spring-boot-test dedicated artifact.

Actuator info endpoint improvements

You can now use the InfoContributor interface to register beans that expose information to the /info actuator endpoint. Out of the box support is provided for:

  • Full or partial Git information generated from the git-commit-id-plugin Maven or gradle-git-properties Gradle plugin (set management.info.git.mode=full to expose full details)

  • Build information generated from the Spring Boot Maven or Gradle plugin.

  • Custom information from the Environment (any property starting info.*)

Details are documented in the "Application information" section of the reference docs.

MetricsFilter improvements

The MetricsFilter can now submit metrics in both the classic "merged" form, or grouped per HTTP method. Use endpoints.metrics.filter properties to change the configuration:

endpoints.metrics.filter.gauge-submissions=per-http-method
endpoints.metrics.filter.counter-submissions=per-http-method,merged

Spring Session JDBC Initializer

If Spring Session is configured to use the JDBC store, the schema is now created automatically on startup.

Secured connection for Artemis/HornetQ

Spring Boot now allows to connect against a secured Artemis/HornetQ broker.

Annotation processing

Apache HttpCore 4.4.5 removed a handful of annotations. This is a binary incompatible change if you are using an annotation processor and are sub-classing a class that uses one of the removed annotations. For example, if the class was using @Immutable you will see compile-time annotation processing fail with [ERROR] diagnostic: error: cannot access org.apache.http.annotation.Immutable.

The problem can be avoided by downgrading to HttpCore 4.4.4 or, preferably, by structuring your code so that the problematic class is not subject to compile-time annotation processing.

Miscellaneous

  • server.jetty.acceptors and server.jetty.selectors properties have been added to configure the number of Jetty acceptors and selectors.

  • server.max-http-header-size and server.max-http-post-size can be used to constrain maximum sizes for HTTP headers and HTTP POSTs. Settings work on Tomcat, Jetty and Undertow.

  • The minimum number of spare threads for Tomcat can now be configured using server.tomcat.min-spare-threads

  • Profile negation in now supported in application.yml files. Use the familiar ! prefix in spring.profiles values

  • The actuator exposes a new headdump endpoint that returns a GZip compressed hprof heap dump file

  • Spring Mobile is now auto-configured for all supported template engines

  • The Spring Boot maven plugin allows to bundle system scoped artifacts using the new includeSystemScope attribute

  • spring.mvc.log-resolved-exception enables the automatic logging of a warning when an exception is resolved by a HandlerExceptionResolver

  • spring.data.cassandra.schema-action you be used to customize the schema action to take on startup

  • Spring Boot’s fat jar format should now consume much less memory

  • Locale to Charset mapping is now supported via the spring.http.encoding.mapping.<locale>=<charset> property

  • By default, the locale configured using spring.mvc.locale is now overridden by a request’s Accept-Language header. To restore 1.3’s behaviour where the header is ignored, set spring.mvc.locale-resolver to fixed.

Deprecations in Spring Boot 1.4

  • Velocity support has been deprecated since support has been deprecated as of Spring Framework 4.3.

  • Some constructors in UndertowEmbeddedServletContainer have been deprecated (most uses should be unaffected).

  • The locations and merge attributes of the @ConfigurationProperties annotation have been deprecated in favor of directly configuring the Environment.

  • The protected SpringApplication.printBanner method should no longer be used to print a custom banner. Use the Banner interface instead.

  • The protected InfoEndpoint.getAdditionalInfo method has been deprecated in favor of the InfoContributor interface.

  • org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.test.ImportAutoConfiguration has been moved to org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.

  • All classes in the org.springframework.boot.test package have been deprecated. See the "upgrading" notes above for details.

  • PropertiesConfigurationFactory.setProperties(Properties) is deprecated in favor of using PropertySources.

  • Several classes in the org.springframework.boot.context.embedded package have been deprecated and relocated to org.springframework.boot.web.servlet.

  • All classes in the org.springframework.boot.context.web package have been deprecated and relocated.

  • The spring-boot-starter-ws "Starter" has been renamed to spring-boot-starter-web-services.

  • The spring-boot-starter-redis "Starter" has been renamed to spring-boot-starter-data-redis.

  • The spring-boot-starter-hornetq starter and auto-configuration has been deprecated in favour of using spring-boot-starter-artemis

  • management.security.role has been deprecated in favour of management.security.roles

  • The @org.springframework.boot.orm.jpa.EntityScan annotation has been deprecated in favor of @org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.domain.EntityScan or explicit configuration.

  • TomcatEmbeddedServletContainerFactory.getValves() has been deprecated in favor of getContextValves().

  • org.springframework.boot.actuate.system.EmbeddedServerPortFileWriter has been deprecated in favor of org.springframework.boot.system.EmbeddedServerPortFileWriter

  • org.springframework.boot.actuate.system.ApplicationPidFileWriter has been deprecated in favor of org.springframework.boot.system.ApplicationPidFileWriter

Property Renames

  • spring.jackson.serialization-inclusion should be replaced with spring.jackson.default-property-inclusion.

  • spring.activemq.pooled should be replaced with spring.activemq.pool.enabled.

  • spring.jpa.hibernate.naming-strategy should be replaced with spring.jpa.hibernate.naming.strategy.

  • server.tomcat.max-http-header-size should be replaced with server.max-http-header-size.

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