This series of articles will demonstrate how to get started with Spring Boot 3. I will do this by creating a very simple application to manage the pets we might have in our household. For the purposes of this article I will use Apache NetBeans 17, but you should easily be able to adapt this to instead use IntelliJ or Spring Tool Suite if you prefer, or an earlier version of NetBeans.
This article assume you already have NetBeans installed. To see how to install NetBeans that includes an integrated local Java Development Kit (JDK) to save you from having to download a JDK in advance, see the following article:
Software Educator - Articles - Installing NetBeans with integrated local JDK
In Part 1, I show how to get setup to develop a Spring Boot 3 application.
Because we will be using a plugin we need to ensure that Java support is activated within NetBeans. Select Tools --> Plugins and then choose the Installed tab. Look for the Java SE entry in the table and see whether it has a green tick to its right under the Active column. If not, click the checkbox to its left and then click the Activate button, as shown below:
Setting up the software
While the Spring website provides an Initializr facility that that generates a downloadable starting configuration for new Spring Boot applications, we can make this process easier in NetBeans by installing a plugin that connects to it for us. Browse to the following link to get the plugin:
Apache NetBeans Plugin Portal
The downloaded file is called nb-springboot-plugin-3.1.nbm in whatever folder you chose to download it to.
We now need to install this into NetBeans. Select Tools --> Plugins:
Now click the Downloaded tab, which will be empty unless you have previously downloaded other plugins:
Click the Add Plugins... button and browse to the folder where you downloaded the nb-springboot-plugin-3.1.nbm file, and then select it and press the Open button.
This should now show the following screen:
Click the Install button followed by the Next > button that follows. You now need to check the checkbox to accept the license terms, followed by the Install button.
You will likely get a Validation Warning dialogue which on you can safely click Continue.
Another dialogue will appear asking whether you should restart the IDE now or later. Choose Restart IDE Now and click Finish.
NetBeans will go through a brief update process and then automatically restart itself. To verify that the plugin has successfully been installed, click the New Project... icon in the toolbar (or alternatively choose File --> New Project... from the menu bar):
In the New Project dialogue, ensure Java with Maven is selected under the Categories column, and that you have an entry under the Projects column called Spring Boot Initialzr project:
This concludes the setting up of the required software. In Part 2 I will show you how to create a new Spring Boot 3 web application to model our simple system of managing household pets.
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