Spring Initializr

Introduction

Spring Initializr (start.spring.io) is the official project generator. You pick build tool, language, Spring Boot version and starters — it returns a zip with a runnable skeleton. Every Spring team at every company starts here.

Understanding the topic

Choices that matter:

• Project: Maven for stability, Gradle for speed/DSL.
• Language: Java (default), Kotlin, or Groovy.
• Spring Boot version: latest stable (3.3.x in 2026), not milestones in production.
• Packaging: Jar (microservice) > War (legacy app server).
• Java: 21 LTS.
• Dependencies: Web, JPA, Validation, Lombok, Actuator are 90% of starts.

Syntax reference

Generate via curl (CI-friendly):

curl https://start.spring.io/starter.zip \
  -d type=maven-project \
  -d language=java \
  -d bootVersion=3.3.5 \
  -d groupId=com.acme \
  -d artifactId=orders \
  -d name=orders \
  -d packageName=com.acme.orders \
  -d javaVersion=21 \
  -d dependencies=web,data-jpa,postgresql,validation,actuator,lombok \
  -o orders.zip && unzip orders.zip -d orders

Best practices

• Pick starters intentionally — every starter pulls 5–20 transitive deps.
• Always include Actuator for production health checks.
• Add Validation if you accept any external input.