Spring
Spring makes programming Java quicker, easier, and safer for everybody. Spring’s focus on speed, simplicity, and productivity has made it the world's most popular Java framework. - spring.io
Use
We get to know Spring in the Task spring-starter.
Adhering to our principle DRY we do not repeat what others already offer for free and maintained. Spring is one of many Java frameworks (we mostly use Spring core) and one of hundreds of frameworks.
We use Spring and its core concepts to have a small but fine service we can use as a base for any of our further tasks (e.g. Testing, Design Patterns etc.).
Install
This tool is not installed in a classy way, check the task spring-starter to get started with Spring.
Notes
Dependencies
We want Spring primarily for this functionality. We want to import "features" that someone else already did "for us". Dependency managers and management are a key concept of modern architecture - it also helps us to stay DRY.
Remember
We want to reuse as much as possible but with common sense, otherwise we might end in a dependency hell 🔥
Good example for dependency: JSON Body De-Serialization or E-Mail templating
Bad example for dependency: Some library to convert a string from lower to UPPER case (Java can do that)
Annotations
As seen in the lecture, spring is heavily based on two concepts (one of which we might see later in this course):
These two principles you do not yet need to master, but you have to understand, that every @Annotation (signaled by the @) invokes either a configuration or injection by Spring!