Spring Boot Starters

By / 28 September 2026 / 4 minutes of reading

Spring Boot Starters are convenient dependency descriptors that provide a predefined set of libraries required for a particular application capability. Instead of manually adding many individual dependencies and managing their compatible versions, developers can add a single starter dependency to the pom.xml file.

  • spring-boot-starter-web provides dependencies required for developing web applications and REST APIs.
  • spring-boot-starter-data-jpa provides dependencies required for database access using JPA and Spring Data JPA.
  • spring-boot-starter-test provides libraries required for testing Spring Boot applications.

Starters simplify project configuration, reduce dependency-management effort, and help maintain compatible library versions through Spring Boot’s dependency management.

Common Spring Boot Starters

Starter Purpose
spring-boot-starter Core Spring Boot functionality
spring-boot-starter-web Web applications and REST APIs
spring-boot-starter-data-jpa JPA and database persistence
spring-boot-starter-jdbc JDBC database access
spring-boot-starter-security Authentication and authorization
spring-boot-starter-test Testing
spring-boot-starter-validation Bean validation
spring-boot-starter-thymeleaf Thymeleaf server-side templates
spring-boot-starter-actuator Application monitoring and management
spring-boot-starter-mail Email functionality
spring-boot-starter-cache Caching support
spring-boot-starter-websocket WebSocket applications

Why Do We Use Starters?

Without starters, developers would need to identify compatible libraries individually.

Without Starter

Developer

   ↓

Find required libraries

   ↓

Add individual dependencies

   ↓

Check compatible versions

   ↓

Resolve transitive dependencies

   ↓

Configure project

With Starter

Developer

   ↓

Select Starter

   ↓

Maven downloads required dependencies

   ↓

Application development

Hands-on Experiment: Create a Basic Spring Boot Application for Employee Management System

The following steps are involved in developing this hands-on experiment.

Step 1: Generate the Project

Step 2: Project Structure

Step 3: pom.xml

Step 4: application.properties

Step 5: Create Entity Class

Step 6: Create Repository Interface

Step 7: Create Controller Class

Step 8: Main Application Class

Step 9: Run the Main Application Class

Step 1: Configure the Project on Spring Initializr

Go to start.spring.io and set:

  • Project: Maven
  • Language: Java
  • Spring Boot version: 3.2.x
  • Group: net.codejava
  • Artifact: employee-app
  • Name: employee-app
  • Package name: net.codejava.employeeapp
  • Packaging: Jar
  • Java: 17
  • Dependencies: Spring Web, Spring Data JPA, MySQL Driver

Click Generate to download the ZIP, then extract and import it into your IDE as a Maven project.

Step 2: Generated Project Structure

Step 3: Explore pom.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
	xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 https://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd">
	<modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
	<parent>
		<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
		<artifactId>spring-boot-starter-parent</artifactId>
		<version>4.1.1</version>
		<relativePath/> <!-- lookup parent from repository -->
	</parent>
	<groupId>net.codejava</groupId>
	<artifactId>employeeapp</artifactId>
	<version>0.0.1-SNAPSHOT</version>
	<name/>
	<description/>
	<url/>
	<licenses>
		<license/>
	</licenses>
	<developers>
		<developer/>
	</developers>
	<scm>
		<connection/>
		<developerConnection/>
		<tag/>
		<url/>
	</scm>
	<properties>
		<java.version>17</java.version>
	</properties>
	<dependencies>
		<dependency>
			<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
			<artifactId>spring-boot-starter-data-jpa</artifactId>
		</dependency>
		<dependency>
			<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
			<artifactId>spring-boot-starter-webmvc</artifactId>
		</dependency>

		<dependency>
			<groupId>com.mysql</groupId>
			<artifactId>mysql-connector-j</artifactId>
			<scope>runtime</scope>
		</dependency>
		<dependency>
			<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
			<artifactId>spring-boot-starter-data-jpa-test</artifactId>
			<scope>test</scope>
		</dependency>
		<dependency>
			<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
			<artifactId>spring-boot-starter-webmvc-test</artifactId>
			<scope>test</scope>
		</dependency>
	</dependencies>

	<build>
		<plugins>
			<plugin>
				<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
				<artifactId>spring-boot-maven-plugin</artifactId>
			</plugin>
		</plugins>
	</build>

</project>

Step 4: application.properties

spring.application.name=employeeapp
spring.datasource.url=jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/employee_db
spring.datasource.username=root
spring.datasource.password=password
spring.jpa.hibernate.ddl-auto=update
spring.jpa.show-sql=true
server.port=8080Code language: JavaScript (javascript)

Step 5: Create Entity Class

package net.codejava.employeeapp.entity;

import jakarta.persistence.*;

@Entity
public class Employee {

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

    private String name;
    private String email;
    private String department;
    private double salary;

    public Employee() {
    }

    public Employee(String name, String email,
                    String department, double salary) {
        this.name = name;
        this.email = email;
        this.department = department;
        this.salary = salary;
    }

    public Long getId() {
        return id;
    }

    public String getName() {
        return name;
    }

    public void setName(String name) {
        this.name = name;
    }

    public String getEmail() {
        return email;
    }

    public void setEmail(String email) {
        this.email = email;
    }

    public String getDepartment() {
        return department;
    }

    public void setDepartment(String department) {
        this.department = department;
    }

    public double getSalary() {
        return salary;
    }

    public void setSalary(double salary) {
        this.salary = salary;
    }
}

Step 6: Create Repository Interface

package net.codejava.employeeapp.repository;

import net.codejava.employeeapp.entity.Employee;
import org.springframework.data.jpa.repository.JpaRepository;

public interface EmployeeRepository
        extends JpaRepository<Employee, Long> {
}

Step 7: Create Controller Class

package net.codejava.employeeapp.controller;

import net.codejava.employeeapp.entity.Employee;
import net.codejava.employeeapp.repository.EmployeeRepository;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.*;

import java.util.List;

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

    private final EmployeeRepository repository;

    public EmployeeController(EmployeeRepository repository) {
        this.repository = repository;
    }

    @PostMapping
    public Employee addEmployee(
            @RequestBody Employee employee) {

        return repository.save(employee);
    }

    @GetMapping
    public List<Employee> getEmployees() {

        return repository.findAll();
    }
}

Step 8: Main application

package net.codejava.employeeapp;

import org.springframework.boot.SpringApplication;
import org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.SpringBootApplication;

@SpringBootApplication
public class EmployeeappApplication {

	public static void main(String[] args) {
		SpringApplication.run(EmployeeappApplication.class, args);
	}

}

Step 9: Run the EmployeeApplication

i. Adding Employee
ii. Retrieve Employees
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