Spring Boot Starters

Starters are a set of convenient dependency descriptors that you can include in your application. They provide a one-stop shop for all the Spring and related technologies you need without hunting through sample code and copy-pasting loads of dependency descriptors. For example, to use Spring and JPA for database access, include the spring-boot-starter-data-jpa dependency in your project.

Starters include many of the dependencies required to get a project up and running quickly with a consistent, supported set of managed transitive dependencies.

Naming Conventions

All official starters follow a similar naming pattern: spring-boot-starter-*, where * represents a particular type of application. This naming structure helps you find a starter easily. For example, with the appropriate Eclipse or Spring Tools plugin installed, you can press ctrl-space in the POM editor and type “spring-boot-starter” to see a complete list.

Third-party starters should not start with spring-boot, as it is reserved for official Spring Boot artifacts. Instead, a third-party starter typically starts with the name of the project. For example, a third-party starter called thirdpartyproject would typically be named thirdpartyproject-spring-boot-starter.

Official Spring Boot Application Starters

Name	Description
spring-boot-starter	Core starter, including auto-configuration support, logging, and YAML
spring-boot-starter-activemq	Starter for JMS messaging using Apache ActiveMQ
spring-boot-starter-amqp	Starter for using Spring AMQP and Rabbit MQ
spring-boot-starter-aop	Starter for aspect-oriented programming with Spring AOP and AspectJ
spring-boot-starter-artemis	Starter for JMS messaging using Apache Artemis
spring-boot-starter-batch	Starter for using Spring Batch
spring-boot-starter-cache	Starter for using Spring Framework’s caching support
spring-boot-starter-data-cassandra	Starter for using Cassandra distributed database and Spring Data Cassandra
spring-boot-starter-data-cassandra-reactive	Starter for using Cassandra distributed database and Spring Data Cassandra Reactive
spring-boot-starter-data-couchbase	Starter for using Couchbase document-oriented database and Spring Data Couchbase
spring-boot-starter-data-couchbase-reactive	Starter for using Couchbase document-oriented database and Spring Data Couchbase Reactive
spring-boot-starter-data-elasticsearch	Starter for using Elasticsearch search and analytics engine and Spring Data Elasticsearch
spring-boot-starter-data-jdbc	Starter for using Spring Data JDBC
spring-boot-starter-data-jpa	Starter for using Spring Data JPA with Hibernate
spring-boot-starter-data-ldap	Starter for using Spring Data LDAP
spring-boot-starter-data-mongodb	Starter for using MongoDB document-oriented database and Spring Data MongoDB
spring-boot-starter-data-mongodb-reactive	Starter for using MongoDB document-oriented database and Spring Data MongoDB Reactive
spring-boot-starter-data-neo4j	Starter for using Neo4j graph database and Spring Data Neo4j
spring-boot-starter-data-r2dbc	Starter for using Spring Data R2DBC
spring-boot-starter-data-redis	Starter for using Redis key-value data store with Spring Data Redis and the Lettuce client
spring-boot-starter-data-redis-reactive	Starter for using Redis key-value data store with Spring Data Redis reactive and the Lettuce client
spring-boot-starter-data-rest	Starter for exposing Spring Data repositories over REST using Spring Data REST and Spring MVC
spring-boot-starter-freemarker	Starter for building MVC web applications using FreeMarker views
spring-boot-starter-graphql	Starter for building GraphQL applications with Spring GraphQL
spring-boot-starter-groovy-templates	Starter for building MVC web applications using Groovy Templates views
spring-boot-starter-hateoas	Starter for building hypermedia-based RESTful web applications with Spring MVC and Spring HATEOAS
spring-boot-starter-integration	Starter for using Spring Integration
spring-boot-starter-jdbc	Starter for using JDBC with the HikariCP connection pool
spring-boot-starter-jersey	Starter for building RESTful web applications using JAX-RS and Jersey. An alternative to spring-boot-starter-web
spring-boot-starter-jooq	Starter for using jOOQ to access SQL databases with JDBC. An alternative to spring-boot-starter-data-jpa or spring-boot-starter-jdbc
spring-boot-starter-json	Starter for reading and writing JSON
spring-boot-starter-mail	Starter for using Java Mail and Spring Framework’s email sending support
spring-boot-starter-mustache	Starter for building web applications using Mustache views
spring-boot-starter-oauth2-authorization-server	Starter for using Spring Authorization Server features
spring-boot-starter-oauth2-client	Starter for using Spring Security’s OAuth2/OpenID Connect client features
spring-boot-starter-oauth2-resource-server	Starter for using Spring Security’s OAuth2 resource server features
spring-boot-starter-pulsar	Starter for using Spring for Apache Pulsar
spring-boot-starter-pulsar-reactive	Starter for using Spring for Apache Pulsar Reactive
spring-boot-starter-quartz	Starter for using the Quartz scheduler
spring-boot-starter-rsocket	Starter for building RSocket clients and servers
spring-boot-starter-security	Starter for using Spring Security
spring-boot-starter-test	Starter for testing Spring Boot applications with libraries including JUnit Jupiter, Hamcrest, and Mockito
spring-boot-starter-thymeleaf	Starter for building MVC web applications using Thymeleaf views
spring-boot-starter-validation	Starter for using Java Bean Validation with Hibernate Validator
spring-boot-starter-web	Starter for building web, including RESTful, applications using Spring MVC. Uses Tomcat as the default embedded container
spring-boot-starter-web-services	Starter for using Spring Web Services
spring-boot-starter-webflux	Starter for building WebFlux applications using Spring Framework’s Reactive Web support
spring-boot-starter-websocket	Starter for building WebSocket applications using Spring Framework’s MVC WebSocket support

Production Starters

Name	Description
spring-boot-starter-actuator	Starter for using Spring Boot’s Actuator which provides production-ready features to help monitor and manage your application

Technical Starters

Name	Description
spring-boot-starter-jetty	Starter for using Jetty as the embedded servlet container. An alternative to spring-boot-starter-tomcat
spring-boot-starter-log4j2	Starter for using Log4j2 for logging. An alternative to spring-boot-starter-logging
spring-boot-starter-logging	Starter for logging using Logback. Default logging starter
spring-boot-starter-reactor-netty	Starter for using Reactor Netty as the embedded reactive HTTP server
spring-boot-starter-tomcat	Starter for using Tomcat as the embedded servlet container. Default servlet container starter used by spring-boot-starter-web
spring-boot-starter-undertow	Starter for using Undertow as the embedded servlet container. An alternative to spring-boot-starter-tomcat

To learn how to swap technical facets, please refer to the documentation on swapping web servers and logging systems.

For a list of additional community-contributed starters, see the README file in the spring-boot-starters module on GitHub.

Reference

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