Spring Boot 1.4.0 M2 Release Notes

For changes in earlier milestones, please refer to:

v1.4.0 M1

Upgrading from Spring Boot 1.4.0 M1

See instructions in the 1.4.0.M1 release notes for upgrading from v1.3.

Test utilities and classes

Spring Boot 1.4 ships with a new spring-boot-test module that contains a completely reorganized org.springframework.boot.test package. When upgrading a Spring Boot 1.3 application you should migrate from the deprecated classes in the old package to the equivalent class in the new structure. If you’re using Linux or OSX, you can use the following command to migrate code:

find . -type f -name '*.java' -exec sed -i '' \
-e s/org.springframework.boot.test.ConfigFileApplicationContextInitializer/org.springframework.boot.test.context.ConfigFileApplicationContextInitializer/g \
-e s/org.springframework.boot.test.EnvironmentTestUtils/org.springframework.boot.test.util.EnvironmentTestUtils/g \
-e s/org.springframework.boot.test.OutputCapture/org.springframework.boot.test.rule.OutputCapture/g \
-e s/org.springframework.boot.test.SpringApplicationContextLoader/org.springframework.boot.test.context.SpringApplicationContextLoader/g \
-e s/org.springframework.boot.test.SpringBootMockServletContext/org.springframework.boot.test.mock.web.SpringBootMockServletContext/g \
-e s/org.springframework.boot.test.TestRestTemplate/org.springframework.boot.test.web.client.TestRestTemplate/g \
{} \;

Additionally, Spring Boot 1.4 attempts to rationalize and simplify the various ways that a Spring Boot test can be run. You should migrate the following to use the new @SpringBootTest annotation:

From @SpringApplicationConfiguration(classes=MyConfig.class) to @SpringBootTest(classes=MyConfig.class)
From @ContextConfiguration(classes=MyConfig.class, loader=SpringApplicationContextLoader.class) to @SpringBootTest(classes=MyConfig.class)
From @ContextConfiguration(classes=MyConfig.class, loader=SpringApplicationContextLoader.class) to @SpringBootTest(classes=MyConfig.class)
From @IntegrationTest to @SpringBootTest(webEnvironment=WebEnvironment.NONE)
From @IntegrationTest with @WebAppConfiguration to @SpringBootTest(webEnvironment=WebEnvironment.DEFINED_PORT) (or RANDOM_PORT)
From @WebIntegrationTest to @SpringBootTest(webEnvironment=WebEnvironment.DEFINED_PORT) (or RANDOM_PORT)

Tip	Whilst migrating tests you may also want to replace any `@RunWith(SpringJUnit4ClassRunner.class)` declarations with Spring 4.3’s more readable `@RunWith(SpringRunner.class)`.

For more details on the @SpringBootTest annotation refer to the updated documentation.

Hibernate 5

Hibernate 5.1 is now used as the default JPA persistence provider. If you are upgrading from Spring Boot 1.3 you will be moving from Hibernate 4.3 to Hibernate 5.1. Please refer to Hibernate migration documentation for general upgrade instructions. In addition you should be aware of the following:

SpringNamingStrategy is no longer used as Hibernate 5.1 has removed support for the old NamingStrategy interface. A new SpringPhysicalNamingStrategy is now auto-configured which is used in combination with Hibernate’s default ImplicitNamingStrategy. This should be very close to (if not identical) to Spring Boot 1.3 defaults, however, you should check your Database schema is correct when upgrading.

If you were already using Hibernate 5 before upgrading, you may be using Hibernate’s 5 default. If you want to restore them after the upgrade, set this property in your configuration:

spring.jpa.hibernate.naming.physical-strategy=org.hibernate.boot.model.naming.PhysicalNamingStrategyStandardImpl

In order to minimize upgrade pain, we set hibernate.id.new_generator_mappings to false for Hibernate 5. The Hibernate team generally don’t recommend this setting, so if you’re happy to deal with generator changes, you might want to set spring.jpa.hibernate.use-new-id-generator-mappings to true in your application.properties file.

If you have major problems upgrading to Hibernate 5.1 you can downgrade to the older Hibernate version by overriding the hibernate.version property in your pom.xml:

<properties>
	<hibernate.version>4.3.11.Final</hibernate.version>
</properties>

Note	Hibernate 4.3 will not be supported past Spring Boot 1.4. Please raise an issue if you find a bug that prevents you from upgrading.

Guava caches

Developers using Guava cache support are advised to migrate to Caffeine.

New and Noteworthy

Tip	Check the configuration changelog for a complete overview of the changes in configuration.

Spring Framework 4.3

Spring Boot 1.4 builds on and requires Spring Framework 4.3. There are a number of nice refinements in Spring Framework 4.3 including new Spring MVC @RequestMapping annotations. Refer to the Spring Framework reference documentation for details.

Note that the test framework in Spring Framework 4.3 requires JUnit 4.12. See SPR-13275 for further details.

Third-party library upgrades

A number of third party libraries have been upgraded to their latest version. Updates include Hibernate 5.1, Jackson 2.7, Solr 5.5, Spring Data Hopper, Spring Session 1.2 & Hazelcast 3.6.

Image Banners

You can now use image files to render ASCII art banners. Drop a banner.gif, banner.jpg or banner.png file into src/main/resources to have it automatically converted to ASCII. You can use the banner.image.width and banner.image.height properties to tweak the size, or use banner.image.invert to invert the colors.

JSON Components

A new @JsonComponent annotation is now provided for custom Jackson JsonSerializer and/or JsonDeserializer registration. This can be a useful way to decouple JSON serialization logic:

@JsonComponent
public class Example {

    public static class Serializer extends JsonSerializer<SomeObject> {
        // ...
    }

    public static class Deserializer extends JsonDeserializer<SomeObject> {
        // ...
    }

}

Additionally, Spring Boot also now provides JsonObjectSerializer and JsonObjectDeserializer base classes which provide useful alternatives to the standard Jackson versions when serializing objects. See the updated documentation for details.

Couchbase support

Full auto-configuration support is now provided for Couchbase. You can easily access a Bucket and Cluster bean by adding the spring-boot-starter-data-couchbase "Starter" and providing a little configuration:

spring.couchbase.bootstrap-hosts=my-host-1,192.168.1.123
spring.couchbase.bucket.name=my-bucket
spring.couchbase.bucket.password=secret

It’s also possible to use Couchbase as a backing store for a Spring Data Repository or as a CacheManager. Refer to the updated documentation for details.

Neo4J Support

Auto-configuration support is now provided for Neo4J. You can connect to a remote server or run an embedded Neo4J server. You can also use Neo4J to back a Spring Data Repository, for example:

public interface CityRepository extends GraphRepository<City> {

    Page<City> findAll(Pageable pageable);

    City findByNameAndCountry(String name, String country);

}

Full details are provided in the Neo4J section of the reference documentation.

Redis Spring Data repositories

Redis can now be used to back Spring Data repositories. See the Spring Data Redis documentation for more details.

Narayana transaction manager support

Auto-configuration support is now included for the Narayana transaction manager. You can choose between Narayana, Bitronix or Atomkos if you need JTA support. See the updated reference guide for details.

Actuator info endpoint improvements

You can now use the InfoContributor interface to register beans that expose information to the /info actuator endpoint. Out of the box support is provided for:

Full or partial Git information generated from the git-commit-id-plugin Maven or gradle-git-properties Gradle plugin (set management.info.git.mode=full to expose full details)
Build information generated from the Spring Boot Maven or Gradle plugin.
Custom information from the Environment (any property starting info.*)

Details are documented in the "Application information" section of the reference docs.

MetricsFilter improvements

The MetricsFilter can now submit metrics in both the classic "merged" form, or grouped per HTTP method. Use endpoints.metrics.filter properties to change the configuration:

endpoints.metrics.filter.gauge-submissions=grouped
endpoints.metrics.filter.counter-submissions=grouped,merged

Caffeine cache support

Auto-configuration is provided for Caffeine v2.2 (a Java 8 rewrite of Guava’s caching support). Existing Guava cache users should consider migrating to Caffeine as Guava cache support will be dropped in a future release.

Test improvements

Spring Boot 1.4 includes a major overhaul of testing support. Test classes and utilities are now provided in dedicated spring-boot-test and spring-boot-test-autoconfigure jars (although most users will continue to pick them up via the spring-boot-starter-test "Starter"). We’ve added AssertJ, JSONassert and JsonPath dependencies to the test starter.

@SpringBootTest

With Spring Boot 1.3 there were multiple ways of writing a Spring Boot test. You could use @SpringApplicationConfiguration, @ContextConfiguration with the SpringApplicationContextLoader, @IntegrationTest or @WebIntegrationTest. With Spring Boot 1.4, a single @SpringBootTest annotation replaces all of those.

Use @SpringBootTest in combination with @RunWith(SpringRunner.class) and set the webEnvironment attribute depending on the type of test you want to write.

A classic integration test, with a mocked servlet environment:

@RunWith(SpringRunner.class)
@SpringBootTest
public class MyTest {

	// ...

}

A web integration test, running a live server listening on a defined port:

@RunWith(SpringRunner.class)
@SpringBootTest(webEnvironment=WebEnvionment.DEFINED_PORT)
public class MyTest {

	// ...

}

A web integration test, running a live server listening on a random port:

@RunWith(SpringRunner.class)
@SpringBootTest(webEnvironment=WebEnvionment.RANDOM_PORT)
public class MyTest {

	@LocalServerPort
	private int actualPort;

	// ...

}

See the updated reference documentation for details.

Auto-detection of test configuration

Test configuration can now be automatically detected for most tests. If you follow the Spring Boot recommended conventions for structuring your code the @SpringBootApplication class will be loaded when no explicit configuration is defined. If you need to load a different @Configuration class you can either include it as a nested inner-class in your test, or use the classes attribute of @SpringBootTest.

See Detecting test configuration for details.

Mocking and spying beans

It’s quite common to want to replace a single bean in your ApplicationContext with a mock for testing purposes. With Spring Boot 1.4 this now as easy as annotating a field in your test with @MockBean:

@RunWith(SpringRunner.class)
@SpringBootTest
public class MyTest {

    @MockBean
    private RemoteService remoteService;

    @Autowired
    private Reverser reverser;

    @Test
    public void exampleTest() {
        // RemoteService has been injected into the reverser bean
        given(this.remoteService.someCall()).willReturn("mock");
        String reverse = reverser.reverseSomeCall();
        assertThat(reverse).isEqualTo("kcom");
    }

}

You can also use @SpyBean if you want to spy on an existing bean rather than using a full mock.

See the mocking section of the reference documentation for more details.

Auto-configured tests

Full application auto-configuration is sometime overkill for tests, you often only want to auto-configure a specific "slice" of your application. Spring Boot 1.4 introduces a number of specialized test annotations that can be used for testing specific parts of your application:

@JsonTest - For testing JSON marshalling and unmarshalling.
@WebMvcTest - For testing Spring MVC @Controllers using MockMVC.
@DataJpaTest - For testing Spring Data JPA elements

Many of the annotations provide additional auto-configuration that’s specific to testing. For example, if you use @WebMvcTest you can @Autowire a fully configured MockMvc instance.

See the reference documentation for details.

JSON AssertJ assertions

New JacksonTester, GsonTester and BasicJsonTester classes can be used in combination with AssertJ to test JSON marshalling and unmarshalling. Testers can be used with the @JsonTest annotation or directly on a test class:

@RunWith(SpringRunner.class)
@JsonTest
public class MyJsonTests {

    private JacksonTester<VehicleDetails> json;

    @Test
    public void testSerialize() throws Exception {
        VehicleDetails details = new VehicleDetails("Honda", "Civic");
        assertThat(this.json.write(details)).isEqualToJson("expected.json");
        assertThat(this.json.write(details)).hasJsonPathStringValue("@.make");
    }

}

See the JSON section of the reference documentation or the Javadocs for details.

Auto-configuration for Spring REST Docs

Combined with the support for auto-configuring MockMvc described above, auto-configuration for Spring REST Docs has been introduced. REST Docs can be enabled using the new @AutoConfigureRestDocs annotation. This will result in the MockMvc instance being automatically configured to use REST Docs and also removes the need to use REST Docs' JUnit rule. Please see the relevant section of the reference documentation for further details.

Miscellaneous

server.jetty.acceptors and server.jetty.selectors properties have been added to configure the number of Jetty acceptors and selectors.
server.max-http-header-size and server.max-http-post-size can be used to constrain maximum sizes for HTTP headers and HTTP POSTs. Settings work on Tomcat, Jetty and Undertow.
The minimum number of spare threads for Tomcat can now be configured using server.tomcat.min-spare-threads
Profile negation in now supported in application.yml files. Use the familiar ! prefix in spring.profiles values

Deprecations in Spring Boot 1.4.0

Velocity support has been deprecated since support has been deprecated as of Spring Framework 4.3.
Some constructors in UndertowEmbeddedServletContainer have been deprecated (most uses should be unaffected).
The locations and merge attributes of the @ConfigurationProperties annotation have been deprecated in favor of directly configuring the Environment.
The protected SpringApplication.printBanner method should no longer be used to print a custom banner. Use the Banner interface instead.
The protected InfoEndpoint.getAdditionalInfo method has been deprecated in favor of the InfoContributor interface.
org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.test.ImportAutoConfiguration has been moved to org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.
All classes in the org.springframework.boot.test package have been deprecated. See the "upgrading" notes above for details.

Property Renames

spring.jackson.serialization-inclusion should be replaced with spring.jackson.default-property-inclusion.
spring.activemq.pooled should be replaced with spring.activemq.pool.enabled.
spring.jpa.hibernate.naming-strategy should be replaced with spring.jpa.hibernate.naming.strategy.
server.tomcat.max-http-header-size should be replaced with server.max-http-header-size.