Spring Boot 1.4.0 M2 Release Notes

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.

• In order to minimize upgrade pain, we set hibernate.id.new_generator_mappings is set to false for Hibernate 5. The Hibernate team generally don’t recommend this setting, so if your 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.

New and Noteworthy

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.

Third-party library upgrades

A number of third party libraries have been upgraded to the latest version. Highlights 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 POM 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.

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 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 a build 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.

Hibernate 5.1

MetricsFilter improvements

Caffeine cache support

Redis Spring Data repositories

Test improvements

Miscellaneous

• Jetty acceptors & selectors

• server.max-http-header-size, max-http-post-size

• Tomcat minSpareThreads

• Profile negation in YAML

Deprecations in Spring Boot 1.4.0

• Velocity Deprecated