Careeroza
Starters
What is a Starter?
A starter is a dependency that only contains other dependencies: a curated bundle for one feature. Add one line, get a tested set of libraries that work together.
| Starter | Brings in | Use for |
|---|---|---|
spring-boot-starter-web | Spring MVC, embedded Tomcat, Jackson, validation-ready | REST APIs |
spring-boot-starter-data-jpa | Hibernate, Spring Data JPA, HikariCP | SQL databases |
spring-boot-starter-validation | Hibernate Validator (jakarta.validation) | request validation |
spring-boot-starter-security | Spring Security | login, roles, JWT |
spring-boot-starter-actuator | Micrometer, health endpoints | monitoring |
spring-boot-starter-test | JUnit 5, Mockito, AssertJ, Spring Test | testing |
spring-boot-starter-webflux | Reactor, Netty | reactive APIs |
Naming Rule
Official starters are named spring-boot-starter-*. Third-party starters put their own name first, e.g. mybatis-spring-boot-starter, springdoc-openapi-starter-webmvc-ui.
Tip: Do not add Tomcat, Jackson or Spring MVC separately when you already have spring-boot-starter-web. The starter already includes them in compatible versions.