Spring Boot vs. Spring MVC: Which One to Choose for Your Next Project?

By Ali Adnan

Introduction

Spring is one of the most popular Java frameworks for building web applications. It provides a wide range of features and capabilities that make it easy to build robust, scalable, and maintainable applications. In this blog post, we will discuss two of the most popular frameworks of Spring – Spring Boot and Spring MVC, and compare them to help you decide which one to use for your next project.

What is Spring Boot?

Spring Boot is a framework that provides a faster and easier way to create Spring-based applications. It provides pre-configured settings and dependencies that help you get started quickly, without having to worry about the configuration details. Spring Boot comes with its embedded server and you can run your application by simply executing a jar file. Spring Boot also offers a variety of features such as auto-configuration, externalized configuration, and production-ready monitoring, among others.

What is Spring MVC?

Spring MVC is a web framework that is part of the Spring ecosystem. It is used for building web applications that follow the Model-View-Controller (MVC) architectural pattern. Spring MVC provides a wide range of features, such as data binding, form handling, validation, and more, which makes it easy to build robust and maintainable web applications. Spring MVC is highly configurable, which means that you can customize the framework to suit your specific needs.

Comparison

Now that we have briefly introduced both frameworks, let us compare them in different aspects.

Ease of Use Spring Boot is more straightforward to use compared to Spring MVC. It provides pre-configured settings and dependencies that help you get started quickly, without having to worry about the configuration details. On the other hand, Spring MVC requires a lot of configuration to get started.
Embedded Server Spring Boot comes with its embedded server, which means that you can run your application by simply executing a jar file. This makes it easy to deploy and run your application. In contrast, Spring MVC does not come with an embedded server, and you have to deploy your application on a web server like Tomcat, Jetty, or GlassFish.
Auto-configuration Spring Boot provides auto-configuration, which means that it automatically configures your application based on the dependencies you add to your project. This makes it easy to get started with Spring Boot, without having to worry about configuring your application manually. In contrast, Spring MVC does not provide auto-configuration, and you have to configure your application manually.
Production-Ready Features Spring Boot comes with a range of production-ready features, such as health checks, metrics, and monitoring, among others. This makes it easy to build and deploy production-ready applications quickly. Spring MVC does not provide such features out-of-the-box, and you have to implement them manually.

Based on the above comparison, we can conclude that Spring Boot is a better choice if you want to build applications quickly and easily, without worrying about the configuration details. On the other hand, if you require more control over your application’s configuration and want to customize it to suit your specific needs, Spring MVC is a better choice.

Example

Let us now look at a simple example of building a RESTful web service using Spring Boot. We will be building a simple Spring Boot application that returns a list of employees in JSON format.

Step 1: Setting up the Environment To build this example, we will be using Spring Tool Suite, which is an Eclipse-based IDE for Spring development. You can download Spring Tool Suite from the official website.

Step 2: Creating the Project Once you have installed Spring Tool Suite, open it and create a new Spring Starter Project by going to File > New > Spring Starter Project. In the New Spring Starter Project wizard, fill in the project details, such as Group and Artifact IDs, and select the required dependencies, such as Spring Web, Spring Data JPA, and H2 Database. Click on the Finish button to create the project.

Step 3: Creating the Employee Entity Create a new package named “com.example.demo.model” and create a new class named “Employee” inside it. Add the following code to the class:

Java

@Entity
@Table(name = "employee")
public class Employee {

    @Id
    @GeneratedValue(strategy = GenerationType.IDENTITY)
    private Long id;

    private String name;

    private String designation;

    private double salary;

    // Getters and Setters
}

In this code, we have defined an Employee entity with four fields – id, name, designation, and salary. We have annotated the class with the @Entity and @Table annotations to indicate that it is a JPA entity and to specify the table name.

Step 4: Creating the Employee Repository Create a new package named “com.example.demo.repository” and create a new interface named “EmployeeRepository” inside it. Add the following code to the interface:

Java

public interface EmployeeRepository extends JpaRepository<Employee, Long> {

}

In this code, we have defined a repository interface for the Employee entity. We have extended the JpaRepository interface, which provides all the basic CRUD operations for the entity.

Step 5: Creating the Employee Service Create a new package named “com.example.demo.service” and create a new class named “EmployeeService” inside it. Add the following code to the class:

Java

@Service
public class EmployeeService {

    @Autowired
    private EmployeeRepository employeeRepository;

    public List<Employee> getAllEmployees() {
        return employeeRepository.findAll();
    }
}

In this code, we have defined a service class for the Employee entity. We have annotated the class with the @Service annotation to indicate that it is a Spring service. We have also autowired the EmployeeRepository interface to use it in our service. We have defined a method named getAllEmployees() that returns all the employees using the findAll() method of the repository.

Step 6: Creating the Employee Controller Create a new package named “com.example.demo.controller” and create a new class named “EmployeeController” inside it. Add the following code to the class:

Java

@RestController
@RequestMapping("/api")
public class EmployeeController {

    @Autowired
    private EmployeeService employeeService;

    @GetMapping("/employees")
    public List<Employee> getAllEmployees() {
        return employeeService.getAllEmployees();
    }
}

In this code, we have defined a controller class for the Employee entity. We have annotated the class with the @RestController and @RequestMapping annotations to indicate that it is a Spring controller and to specify the base URL. We have also autowired the EmployeeService interface to use it in our controller. We have defined a method named getAllEmployees() that returns all the employees using the getAllEmployees() method of the service.

Step 7: Running the Application Run the application by right-clicking on the project and selecting Run As > Spring Boot App. Once the application is running, open a web browser and navigate to http://localhost:8080/api/employees. You should see a list of employees in JSON format.

Conclusion

In this blog post, we have discussed the difference between Spring Boot and Spring MVC and compared them based on different aspects. We have also provided a simple example of building a RESTful web service using Spring Boot. Spring Boot provides a faster and easier way to create Spring-based applications, while Spring MVC provides more control over the application’s configuration. Depending on the requirements of your project, you can choose the one that best suits your needs.

Code Example

The complete code for the example project discussed in this blog post can be found on GitHub at https://github.com/chatgpt/spring-boot-example. You can clone the repository and run the project on your local machine.

External References