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Spring Boot Auto-configuration: Magic under the Hood

Explore the inner workings of Spring Boot's auto-configuration focusing on how it conditionally configures embedded web servers such as Tomcat, Jetty, and Undertow. Learn how annotations like @ConditionalOnClass and @ConditionalOnMissingBean enable Spring Boot to detect classpath dependencies and register beans only when needed. This lesson helps you understand the logic behind automatic bean registration and how to verify and manage auto-configuration in your Spring Boot applications.

Try adding another web server

Unlike other lessons, we will start this lesson with the code-first approach. We will add Jetty along with Tomcat in our application, and notice what happens.

Check auto-configuration report

Run the below application after enabling all actuator endpoints and check the auto-configuration report, or check directly from URL /actuator/conditions.

We are looking for the ServletWebServerFactoryConfiguration class in the report.

/*
 * Copyright 2007-present the original author or authors.
 *
 * Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
 * you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
 * You may obtain a copy of the License at
 *
 *      http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
 *
 * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
 * distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
 * WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
 * See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
 * limitations under the License.
 */
import java.net.*;
import java.io.*;
import java.nio.channels.*;
import java.util.Properties;

public class MavenWrapperDownloader {

    private static final String WRAPPER_VERSION = "0.5.6";
    /**
     * Default URL to download the maven-wrapper.jar from, if no 'downloadUrl' is provided.
     */
    private static final String DEFAULT_DOWNLOAD_URL = "https://repo.maven.apache.org/maven2/io/takari/maven-wrapper/"
        + WRAPPER_VERSION + "/maven-wrapper-" + WRAPPER_VERSION + ".jar";

    /**
     * Path to the maven-wrapper.properties file, which might contain a downloadUrl property to
     * use instead of the default one.
     */
    private static final String MAVEN_WRAPPER_PROPERTIES_PATH =
            ".mvn/wrapper/maven-wrapper.properties";

    /**
     * Path where the maven-wrapper.jar will be saved to.
     */
    private static final String MAVEN_WRAPPER_JAR_PATH =
            ".mvn/wrapper/maven-wrapper.jar";

    /**
     * Name of the property which should be used to override the default download url for the wrapper.
     */
    private static final String PROPERTY_NAME_WRAPPER_URL = "wrapperUrl";

    public static void main(String args[]) {
        System.out.println("- Downloader started");
        File baseDirectory = new File(args[0]);
        System.out.println("- Using base directory: " + baseDirectory.getAbsolutePath());

        // If the maven-wrapper.properties exists, read it and check if it contains a custom
        // wrapperUrl parameter.
        File mavenWrapperPropertyFile = new File(baseDirectory, MAVEN_WRAPPER_PROPERTIES_PATH);
        String url = DEFAULT_DOWNLOAD_URL;
        if(mavenWrapperPropertyFile.exists()) {
            FileInputStream mavenWrapperPropertyFileInputStream = null;
            try {
                mavenWrapperPropertyFileInputStream = new FileInputStream(mavenWrapperPropertyFile);
                Properties mavenWrapperProperties = new Properties();
                mavenWrapperProperties.load(mavenWrapperPropertyFileInputStream);
                url = mavenWrapperProperties.getProperty(PROPERTY_NAME_WRAPPER_URL, url);
            } catch (IOException e) {
                System.out.println("- ERROR loading '" + MAVEN_WRAPPER_PROPERTIES_PATH + "'");
            } finally {
                try {
                    if(mavenWrapperPropertyFileInputStream != null) {
                        mavenWrapperPropertyFileInputStream.close();
                    }
                } catch (IOException e) {
                    // Ignore ...
                }
            }
        }
        System.out.println("- Downloading from: " + url);

        File outputFile = new File(baseDirectory.getAbsolutePath(), MAVEN_WRAPPER_JAR_PATH);
        if(!outputFile.getParentFile().exists()) {
            if(!outputFile.getParentFile().mkdirs()) {
                System.out.println(
                        "- ERROR creating output directory '" + outputFile.getParentFile().getAbsolutePath() + "'");
            }
        }
        System.out.println("- Downloading to: " + outputFile.getAbsolutePath());
        try {
            downloadFileFromURL(url, outputFile);
            System.out.println("Done");
            System.exit(0);
        } catch (Throwable e) {
            System.out.println("- Error downloading");
            e.printStackTrace();
            System.exit(1);
        }
    }

    private static void downloadFileFromURL(String urlString, File destination) throws Exception {
        if (System.getenv("MVNW_USERNAME") != null && System.getenv("MVNW_PASSWORD") != null) {
            String username = System.getenv("MVNW_USERNAME");
            char[] password = System.getenv("MVNW_PASSWORD").toCharArray();
            Authenticator.setDefault(new Authenticator() {
                @Override
                protected PasswordAuthentication getPasswordAuthentication() {
                    return new PasswordAuthentication(username, password);
                }
            });
        }
        URL website = new URL(urlString);
        ReadableByteChannel rbc;
        rbc = Channels.newChannel(website.openStream());
        FileOutputStream fos = new FileOutputStream(destination);
        fos.getChannel().transferFrom(rbc, 0, Long.MAX_VALUE);
        fos.close();
        rbc.close();
    }

}
Application With Multiple Server Dependency

Actuator report findings

You should find three occurrences of the ServletWebServerFactoryConfiguration class.

  1. Tomcat: Positive match
ServletWebServerFactoryConfiguration.EmbeddedTomcat": [
{
"condition": "OnClassCondition",
"message": "@ConditionalOnClass found required classes 'javax.servlet.Servlet', 'org.apache.catalina.startup.Tomcat', 'org.apache.coyote.UpgradeProtocol'"
},
{
"condition": "OnBeanCondition",
"message": "@ConditionalOnMissingBean (types: org.springframework.boot.web.servlet.server.ServletWebServerFactory; SearchStrategy: current) did not find any beans"
}

As we are using the Tomcat web server, the match is positive.

  1. Jetty: Negative Match
ServletWebServerFactoryConfiguration.EmbeddedJetty": {
"notMatched": [
{
"condition": "OnClassCondition",
"message": "@ConditionalOnClass did not find required classes 'org.eclipse.jetty.server.Server', 'org.eclipse.jetty.util.Loader', 'org.eclipse.jetty.webapp.WebAppContext'"
}
],
...