Building Microservices with Spring Boot
As the demand for Microservices Architecture Patterns is increasing in the industry, the Spring Boot is becoming more popular as it provides simplified Microservices development features.
Spring Boot can be the first alternative that developers think about while building top microservices. As it is a microservice-based framework that helps in making production-ready apps in much less time.
With the use of this platform, developers can make microservices that run faster and have smaller sizes. For these reasons, Spring Boot is becoming the standard for building Java Microservices. Here, in this article, we will see what Spring Boot is and why it is used to build Microservices.
What are Spring Boot Microservices?
Spring Boot is becoming a popular choice for developing microservices because of its features like flexibility, easy-to-use, and a strong set of features and tools. Microservice architecture has gained popularity because of its capacity to develop complex and large-scale systems that can be scaled easily and managed quickly.
Now, let’s take a closer look at why to Microservices are majorly built using Spring Boot and how developers can develop a strong and efficient microservice that meets the needs of the organizations.
Simple steps to build Microservices using Spring Boot
Here we will discuss some basic layout of steps that generally developers follow while building Spring Boot Microservices:
1> Setting up the development environment
To begin with the process of microservice development, you will have to set up a development environment first. Make sure there’s the latest version of Spring Boot and Java installed in your system.
You can also perform development processes with the help of an accurate IDE (Integrated Development Environment) such as IntelliJ or Eclipse, and make the process much easier.
2> Explain your Microservices Architecture proficiently
Before you begin coding, you must properly define your microservices architecture. Think accurately about the various services that are necessary to have in your app and how to interact with each other. For this, developers leverage tools like OpenAPI or Swagger to define your RESTful APIs and make sure that they implement the best practices to build microservices.
3> Make your Microservices
Once the step of defining the microservices architecture is done, you can begin creating your microservice. Begin with making a fresh Spring Boot project while making each microservice.
Every microservice that you develop should possess its database and to manage these databases, you can take advantage of the Spring Data JPA for creating and managing entities of the DBs.
4> Define the endpoints of your API
The next step is that you have to define the particular endpoints of your API. With the use of Spring MVC for creating RESTful endpoints, it gets easier for developers to perform this step. You can also utilize the tools like RestTemplate or Feign to develop HTTP calls in between different microservices.
5> Implementing the Business Logic
When you are done with defining proper endpoints for your APIs, you can start with easy implementation and execution of your business logic. Use the features of Spring Boot such as its framework’s dependency injection functionality to put the dependencies in your code. Also, the autoconfiguration feature of this platform will help you set up your app on the basis of best practices trending at that time.
6> Testing your Microservices
After proper implementation of the business logic, it is now the time to begin the testing process of the microservices that you developed. You can use tools like Mockito and JUnit to develop unit tests for every microservice, and utilize tools such as Postman for testing your API.
7> Deployment of your Microservices
In the final step, you can deploy your microservices to your preferred deployment environment. Now, you can use tools such as Kubernetes and Docker to build containerized deployments and leverage CI/CD tools such as Jenkins or Travis CI to automate the deployment process.
Reasons to choose Spring Boot for building Microservices
Spring Boot has many functionalities that make it a good fit for developing microservices. Some of them are quick development, modular design, lightweight in nature, cloud-native support, huge community support, and many more. Let’s discuss the reasons why to choose Spring Boot for Microservice development:
Lightweight in nature
This platform is designed as a lightweight framework that is also easy to use for developers. This feature can be one of the main reasons why Spring Boot is an outstanding choice for developing fast and efficient microservices.
Quick Development
Spring Boot will provide multiple features and tools making it easy for developers to build microservices with ease. It includes an auto-configuration feature that helps the developers easily configure the framework even without developing boilerplate code.
Cloud-native
With Spring Boot, you can build microservices that are easily deployed on popular cloud platforms like Google Cloud, AWS, Azure, etc. and they can be easily managed by using platforms like Docker and Kubernetes.
Modular
Being Modular, Spring Boot makes it easy to add new functions and features in the microservices as and when needed. This feature makes it easier to scale up or scale down the microservices as per the requirements of the app changes.
Large Community
Spring Boot platform has a vast and active community of developers who can contribute to the development of the framework and give support to others as well. There are a huge amount of resources available for developers who are new to this platform and also for those programmers who might require help while working on advanced features.
Let’s now see some best use cases of Spring Boot Microservices to understand more about when and where to use them.
Popular Use Cases of Spring Boot Microservices
Spring Boot Microservices are well-suited for developing scalable and complex apps belonging to different domains beginning from healthcare to finance, education, and many more. Here’s the list of a few of the most important Spring Boot instances:
Healthcare Apps
Developers can easily develop healthcare apps that provide patients with an approach to medical records, telemedicine services, and schedule appointments. Breaking the app into smaller microservices makes it easier to manage and update each component without interrupting the whole app.
Banking Apps
Different services to the customer include online account management, money transfers, and loan apps. Each service can be made as an independent microservice, and it allows easy maintenance and scaling.
Travel Apps
Spring Boot Microservices can be used to develop travel apps that give customers easy access to hotel bookings, flight schedules, and other car rentals. Every service can be used to build new microservices that allow easy maintenance and scaling.
Retail Apps
Spring Boot Microservices are used to develop retail apps that give customers access to product searches, online catalogs, & shopping carts. So, every service can be developed as a unique microservice and allows easy maintenance and scaling.
Education Apps
Develop apps for education apps with microservices that help students with easy access to online tutorials, course materials, and easy assignment submissions. It becomes easy to break the app into a small and independent microservice that makes updating and maintaining individual components quicker without affecting the whole app.
Final Verdict
In the end, when you embrace microservices development using Spring Boot, it offers a strong framework for developing scalable, robust, and maintainable apps. By dividing the complex systems into small ones. With Independent and manageable services, teams can change faster, deploy easily, and scale up or down the app effortlessly.
The rich ecosystem of this framework and its seamless integration with Spring Cloud makes Spring Boot a good alternative for developing microservices. However, it is necessary to design boundaries, establish strong monitoring, implement proper communication protocols, and easy error-handling processes.
With an accurate approach, Spring Boot empowers developers to make resilient, agile, and adaptable apps that meet the demands of the latest software development. Accept the Spring Boot Microservices and pave the way for a future-ready structure that is capable of maintaining in ever-evolving, dynamic, and digital landscapes.