In this chapter, we will get straight to the code and set up a web application, which we will be working on for the rest of this book.
We will leverage Spring Boot's autoconfiguration capabilities to build an application with zero boilerplate or configuration files.
I will lay out the big picture regarding how Spring Boot works and how to configure it. There are four ways to get started with Spring:
Using Spring Tool Suite to generate the starter code
Using IntelliJ IDEA 14.1, which now has good support for Spring Boot
Using Spring's website, http://start.Spring.io, to download a configurable zip file
Using the curl command line to http://start.Spring.io and achieving the same result
We will use Gradle and Java 8 throughout this book, but don't be scared. Even if you are still working with Maven and a previous version of Java, I bet you will find these technologies easy to work with.
Many official Spring tutorials have both a Gradle build and a Maven build, so you will find examples easily if you decide to stick with Maven. Spring 4 is fully compatible with Java 8, so it would be a shame not to take advantage of lambdas to simplify our code base.
I will also show you some Git commands. I think it's a good idea to keep track of your progress and commit when you are in a stable state. It will also make it easier to compare your work with the source code provided with this book.
As we will deploy our application with Heroku in Chapter 9, Deploying Your Web Application to the Cloud, I recommend that you start versioning your code with Git from the very beginning. I will give you some advice on how to get started with Git later in this chapter.