If you develop in Java, you may have heard of Spring Boot. But if you don't know it yet, get ready to discover one of the most powerful and practical tools that revolutionized the way of creating Java applications!

What is Spring Boot?

Spring Boot is a framework that makes the development of Java applications much easier (and much easier!). It takes away the headache of configuring everything manually, such as the database, security, APIs, among other things. With it, you can quickly create an application ready to run, with very few lines of code and almost no configuration.

Why is Spring Boot so awesome?

1. Automatic configuration: Want an example? If you connect a database to the project, Spring Boot will automatically configure everything for you.
2. Standalone applications: Create applications that can run as a simple .jar, without needing external servers like Tomcat or JBoss. Everything is within the project!
3. Easy with REST APIs: Creating APIs with Spring Boot is extremely simple. See what creating an endpoint that returns a list of users looks like:

@RestController
public class UserController {

    @GetMapping("/users")
    public List getUsers() {
        return Arrays.asList("John", "Jane", "Doe");
    }
}

In just a few seconds, you already have a working API!
How to start?

To create an application with Spring Boot, you can use Spring Initializr, a tool that gets you started by creating the already configured project! All you need to do is choose the dependencies you want to use, such as database, security, etc.
Quick step by step:

1. Go to Spring Initializr.
2. Choose the options: Maven, Java and the Spring Boot version.
3. Select your favorite dependencies (database, web, security).
4. Click on Generate and download the project.
5. Unzip, open in your favorite editor and start coding!

Let's give you an example....

Imagine that you want to create an API that returns a list of products. With Spring Boot, this can be done in minutes:

In the ProductController.java file:

@RestController
public class ProductController {

    @GetMapping("/products")
    public List getProducts() {
        return List.of(
            new Product("Notebook", 2500.00),
            new Product("Smartphone", 1500.00)
        );
    }
}

In the Product.java file:

public class Product {
    private String name;
    private Double price;

    // Construtor, getters e setters
}

public class Product {
private String name;
private Double price;

// Construtor, getters e setters

}

And that's it! You've just created a REST API that returns a list of products. Very easy, right?
What else can I do with Spring Boot?