springboot-best-practices

name: springboot-best-practices description: Spring Boot patterns for enterprise Java applications user-invocable: false

Rules

1. Project Structure

Layered architecture: controller (REST), service (business logic), repository (data access), model/entity, dto, config, exception.

2. Dependency Injection

Constructor injection preferred. Use @RequiredArgsConstructor with final fields. Avoid field injection with @Autowired.

// GOOD: Constructor injection
@Service
@RequiredArgsConstructor
public class UserService {
    private final UserRepository userRepository;
    private final EmailService emailService;
}

3. REST API Design

@RestController + @RequestMapping. Use @Validated for input, ResponseEntity for responses, proper HTTP status codes.

See examples/controller-example.java for reference implementation.

4. Service Layer

Business logic in services. @Transactional boundaries at service level. Interface + implementation pattern.

See examples/service-example.java for reference implementation.

5. Data Access

Spring Data JPA. @Query or method naming for custom queries. @Entity with proper JPA annotations.

See examples/repository-example.java and examples/entity-example.java for reference implementations.

6. Exception Handling

@RestControllerAdvice for global handling. Domain-specific exceptions with proper HTTP status mapping.

See examples/exception-handler-example.java for reference implementation.

7. Configuration

Profile-based: application-{profile}.yml. @ConfigurationProperties for type-safe config. Externalize sensitive values.

# application.yml
spring:
  profiles:
    active: ${SPRING_PROFILES_ACTIVE:local}
  datasource:
    url: ${DATABASE_URL}
    username: ${DATABASE_USERNAME}
    password: ${DATABASE_PASSWORD}

See examples/config-properties-example.java for type-safe configuration properties.

8. Security

Spring Security with SecurityFilterChain. Externalize secrets. Proper authentication/authorization patterns.

See examples/security-config-example.java for reference implementation.

9. Testing

@WebMvcTest (controller), @DataJpaTest (repository), @SpringBootTest (integration), @MockBean for mocking.

See examples/controller-test-example.java and examples/repository-test-example.java for reference implementations.

Application

Always: constructor injection, layered architecture, DTOs, global exception handling, externalized config, proper security, layer-appropriate tests.