As developers, we’re always looking for ways to optimize our workflow and reduce the feedback loop during development. One tool that significantly enhances productivity in Spring Boot applications is Spring Boot DevTools. This development tool is specifically designed to speed up the coding process, providing features such as hot reloads, automatic restarts, and more.

In this blog post, we’ll explore how Spring Boot DevTools works, how to configure it, and how to take full advantage of its hot reload capabilities to accelerate your development workflow. Along the way, we’ll also provide practical Java examples to help you get started quickly.

What is Spring Boot DevTools?

Spring Boot DevTools is a set of development-time utilities that help you work faster during development by allowing for automatic application restarts and live reload of changes, such as HTML templates, properties files, and other configurations, without needing to restart the entire application manually.

The biggest time-saver is its hot reload functionality, which automatically picks up changes in the codebase and refreshes the running application, reducing the development cycle time.

Key Features of Spring Boot DevTools

1. Automatic Restarts: Spring Boot DevTools monitors the classpath for changes and automatically restarts the application when changes are detected.
2. Live Reload: Integrated with LiveReload to trigger a browser refresh automatically whenever resources, like HTML templates or JavaScript files, are modified.
3. Fast Application Restart: By separating the reloadable classes from the core classes, DevTools ensures that only the modified parts of the application are reloaded.
4. Remote Development Support: You can configure DevTools to monitor changes on a remote server to reload the app during remote development.

Configuring Spring Boot DevTools

Getting started with Spring Boot DevTools is straightforward. Add the following dependency to your pom.xml to enable DevTools:

<dependency>
    <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
    <artifactId>spring-boot-devtools</artifactId>
</dependency>

By default, Spring Boot DevTools will monitor the classpath for changes. As soon as it detects a change in your code or resource files, it will automatically restart the application.

Note: Spring Boot DevTools is disabled in production by default, ensuring that performance is not impacted in live environments.

Java Examples: Using DevTools for Hot Reload

Let’s walk through an example of how you can use Spring Boot DevTools for a smooth development experience. Suppose you have a simple Spring Boot application with a controller that returns a welcome message.

Step 1: Create a REST controller:

@RestController
public class WelcomeController {

    @GetMapping("/welcome")
    public String welcomeMessage() {
        return "Welcome to Spring Boot with Hot Reload!";
    }
}

Step 2: Run the application, and navigate to http://localhost:8080/welcome. You’ll see the message “Welcome to Spring Boot with Hot Reload!”

Step 3: Now, modify the controller code without stopping the application. For example, update the return message:

@GetMapping("/welcome")
public String welcomeMessage() {
    return "Updated Welcome Message - Hot Reload in Action!";
}

As soon as you save the file, DevTools will automatically detect the change, restart the necessary components, and apply the update. You don’t need to restart the application manually — simply refresh your browser to see the updated message instantly.

Live Reload for Static Resources

In addition to hot reloading Java code, Spring Boot DevTools also allows live reload for static resources such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files.

Let’s say you are working on the front end of your Spring Boot application, and you want to see changes in real-time without manually refreshing the browser. DevTools integrates with the LiveReload protocol, which automatically triggers a browser refresh upon saving changes.

Simply enable LiveReload by adding the following plugin to your browser (e.g., Chrome or Firefox), and whenever you update an HTML file or a CSS file, the browser will refresh automatically.

Optimizing the Feedback Loop

For large applications, restarting the entire application can still take a significant amount of time. However, Spring Boot DevTools optimizes this process by performing a partial restart, meaning only classes that have changed are reloaded, while the rest of the application remains untouched.

This approach significantly reduces restart time, allowing developers to focus on writing code rather than waiting for the app to reboot.

Conclusion

Spring Boot DevTools is an essential tool for developers looking to accelerate their development process. The combination of hot reloads, live reloads, and automatic restarts dramatically improves the feedback loop, saving you valuable time during development.

If you’re not already using Spring Boot DevTools in your project, I highly recommend giving it a try. You’ll quickly notice the benefits in terms of faster development cycles and more efficient coding sessions.