Building a custom Spring Boot Starter: From theory to practice

A Comprehensive guide to creating reusable functionality in Spring Boot 3 applications

Introduction

Spring Boot starters are key feature of the Spring Boot ecosystem. They simplify dependency management and auto — configuration. A starter mix of dependencies and auto — configuration.It provides specific features with little setup needed. Spring Boot offers many official starters. However, you may need to create a custom starter for reusable functionality across different projects.

In this guide, we’ll look at the theory and practice fo building a custom Spring Boot starter. We’ll learn how to start working under the hood and create a real — world example that you can use as template for you own custom starter.

Understanding Spring Boot starter

What is a Spring Boot starter?

A Spring Boot starter is a special type of module that serves two primary purposes:

1. Provide a curated set of dependencies that integrate smoothly with one another.
2. Offers auto — configuration capabilities to enable specific functionaility with minimal configuration.