Spring Initializr

Prerequisites

You need Java (1.6 or better) and a bash-like shell.

If you are on a Mac and using homebrew, all you need to do to install it is:

$ brew tap pivotal/tap
$ brew install springboot

It will install /usr/local/bin/spring. You can jump right to Running the app locally.

An alternative way to install the spring command line interface can be installed like this:

$ curl start.spring.io/install.sh | bash

After running that command you should see a spring directory:

$ ./spring/bin/spring --help

usage: spring [--help] [--version]
   <command> [<args>]
...

You could add that bin directory to your PATH (the examples below assume you did that).

If you don’t have curl or zip you can probably get them (for Windows users we recommend cygwin), or you can download the zip file and unpack it yourself.

Project structure

Initializr is a library that provides all the default features and a service with a very simple script that uses the auto-configuration feature of Spring Boot. All you need is grabbing the library and create a proper configuration file with the following script:

package org.acme.myapp

@Grab('io.spring.initalizr:initializr:1.0.0.BUILD-SNAPSHOT')
class InitializerService { }

As a reference, initializr-service represents the default service that runs at http://start.spring.io

Running the app locally

Note

Initializr currently uses a milestone release of spring-test-htmlunit that is available from the spring.io milestone repository. If you use a repository manager, please make sure to configure it accordingly. For your convenience, the project defines a springMilestone that you should activate if you haven’t defined that repository yourself.

First make sure that you have built the library:

$ cd initializr
$ mvn clean install -PspringMilestone

Once you have done that, you can easily start the app using the spring command from the initializr-service directory (cd ../initializr-service):

$ spring run app.groovy

Deploying to Cloud Foundry

If you are on a Mac and using homebrew, install the Cloud Foundry CLI:

$ brew install cloudfoundry-cli

Alternatively, download a suitable binary for your platform from Pivotal Web Services.

An example Cloud Foundry manifest.yml file is provided. You should ensure that the application name and URL (name and host values) are suitable for your environment before running cf push.

You can jar up the app and make it executable in any environment.

$ spring jar start.jar app.groovy

Once the jar has been created, you can push the application:

$ cf push start -p start.jar -n start-<space>

Where <space> is the name of the space. As a failsafe, and a reminder to be explicit, the deployment will fail in production without the -n. It is needed to select the route because there is a manifest that defaults it to start-development.