# Create a Web Application using Spring Boot
## Overview
The tutorial illustrates how to create a Web Application with Spring. We’ll look into the **Spring Boot** solution for creating the application.
We’ll primarily use **Java configuration** in this tutorial.
## Pre-requisties
* JDK 1.8
* Maven
* IDE (for ease of use)
## Getting Started
First, we’ll add the required dependencies and plugins in pom.xml
We will use the dependencyManagement to define a standard version of an artifact to use across multiple projects.
We will import the version of artifacts defined in **spring-boot-starter-parent**.
``` xml
org.springframework.boot
spring-boot-starter-parent
2.1.3.RELEASE
pom
import
```
Now we'll add the spring-boot-starter-web dependency.
Spring Boot Starter Web includes:
* spring-web module
* spring-webmvc module
* tomcat starter
**Spring-web & Spring-webmvc** are required for spring applications while tomcat starter is required to run web applications directly without explicitly installing any server.
``` xml
org.springframework.boot
spring-boot-starter-web
```
**Spring Boot Maven Plugin** provides Spring Boot support in Maven, letting you package executable jar or war archives and run an application “in-place”.
``` xml
org.springframework.boot
spring-boot-maven-plugin
```
### Creating a Spring Boot Application
Create a class with the main method. Annotate the class with @SpringBootApplication. Call the run method of **SpringApplication class**
``` java
package com.tutorialflix.spring.web;
import org.springframework.boot.SpringApplication;
import org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.SpringBootApplication;
@SpringBootApplication
public class SpringBootWebApplication {
public static void main(String[] args) {
SpringApplication.run(SpringBootWebApplication.class, args);
}
}
```
**@SpringBootApplication** includes the functionality of following annotations:
* @Configuration
* @EnableAutoConfiguration
* @ComponentScan.
** By default, it will perform the component scan in the base package. So make sure SpringBootWebApplication class is present in the base package.**
### Creating a Web Controller
Create a class with a meaningful name based on your requirement & annotate the class with **@Controller**.
``` java
package com.tutorialflix.spring.web.contrroller;
import org.springframework.stereotype.Controller;
@Controller
public class MyWebController {
}
```
### Create a method to accept requests
Create a method named home to accept the request on '/' URL and show the index.html
``` java
package com.tutorialflix.spring.web.contrroller;
import org.springframework.stereotype.Controller;
@Controller
public class MyWebController {
@GetMapping("/")
public String home() {
return "index.html";
}
}
```
### Create a webpage to display
Create a **public** folder inside **resources** folder of the application and create a file named **index.html**.
``` html
Welcome to TutorialFlix.
```
### Configure application using a properties file
Create a file **application.properties** inside **resources** folder of the application and following properties.
```
server.port=8081
logging.level.org.springframework.web=DEBUG
```
**server.port** : to change the default port 8080 to any other port number.
**logging.level.org.springframework.web** : to change the log level default INFO to DEBUG
## Run the web application
``` bash
$ mvn spring-boot:run
```
## Test
Goto http://localhost:8081/