Best of Spring Boot — November 2025

  1. 1
    Article
    Avatar of springSpring·28w

    Null-Safe applications with Spring Boot 4

    Spring Boot 4 and the Spring portfolio now provide null-safe APIs using JSpecify annotations to help prevent NullPointerExceptions. The Spring team has annotated most major projects including Spring Framework 7, Spring Data 4, and Spring Security 7 with explicit nullability information. Developers can leverage this through IDE support (IntelliJ IDEA 2025.3+) for warnings, or use build-time checkers like NullAway for stricter enforcement. Kotlin 2 automatically translates these annotations to native Kotlin nullability. This allows teams to choose their level of null-safety adoption, from simple IDE warnings to fully null-safe applications, without breaking existing APIs.

  2. 2
    Article
    Avatar of jetbrainsJetBrains·26w

    Spring Boot 4: Leaner, Safer Apps and a New Kotlin Baseline

    Spring Boot 4.0 introduces significant improvements including better modularization for reduced memory usage, JSpecify as the standard null-safety library, and enhanced observability with Micrometer. The release establishes Kotlin 2.2 as the official baseline, bringing native JSpecify annotation support, cleaner API versioning, and more elegant bean registration through Kotlin DSL. IntelliJ IDEA 2025.3 provides full support for these features with compiler warnings and IDE inspections for null-safety violations.

  3. 3
    Article
    Avatar of springSpring·29w

    Spring gRPC Next Steps for 1.0.0

    Spring gRPC 1.0 will support Spring Boot 4.0 as a standalone project rather than being merged into Spring Boot 4.0 as originally planned. The autoconfiguration merge is now targeted for Spring Boot 4.1. Users can upgrade from version 0.12.0 by simply changing the version number in their dependency management, with minimal code changes required. The autoconfiguration and starter dependencies will be deprecated immediately upon release to signal the planned migration to Spring Boot 4.1, though this deprecation is purely about dependency coordinate changes.

  4. 4
    Article
    Avatar of springSpring·26w

    Towards Spring Tools 5 - Ready for Boot 4 and Framework 7

    Spring Tools 5 is scheduled for GA release on December 10th with support for Spring Framework 7 and Spring Boot 4. Key features include API versioning support with code lenses and validation, recognition of functional bean definitions via the new bean registrar API, visualization of AOT-compiled Spring Data repository queries with SQL preview, and automatic configuration for JSpecify null analysis annotations. The tooling enhancements work across Eclipse, Visual Studio Code, Cursor, and Theia environments.

  5. 5
    Article
    Avatar of infoqInfoQ·26w

    Spring Framework 7 and Spring Boot 4 Deliver API Versioning, Resilience, and Null-Safe Annotations

    Spring Framework 7.0 and Spring Boot 4.0 introduce first-class REST API versioning with multiple strategies (path, header, query, media type), standardized null safety through JSpecify annotations, and built-in resilience features like retry and concurrency throttling. The releases migrate to Jackson 3 for JSON processing, modularize Spring Boot's autoconfiguration into technology-specific modules, and maintain JDK 17 baseline while supporting JDK 25. New baselines include Jakarta EE 11 and Kotlin 2.2. Additional improvements include HTTP Interface Groups, multi-factor authentication in Spring Security 7, GraalVM Native Image optimizations, and coordinated releases across the Spring ecosystem.

  6. 6
    Article
    Avatar of javarevisitedJavarevisited·28w

    Top 5 Frontend Masters Courses to Learn Java and Spring Boot in 2026

    A curated list of five Frontend Masters courses for learning Java and Spring Boot development. The selection includes Java fundamentals with Angie Jones, enterprise Spring Boot with Josh Long, web development basics, API design principles, and SQL with PostgreSQL. Each course is described with learning outcomes, instructor credentials, and target audience, along with a recommended 22-week learning path for progressing from beginner to professional-grade enterprise development.

  7. 7
    Article
    Avatar of jakartaeeJakarta EE·27w

    SpringBoot 4.0, preview of Jakarta Data 1.1 and more in 25.0.0.12-beta- OpenLiberty.io

    Open Liberty 25.0.0.12-beta introduces Spring Boot 4.x support with JAR and WAR deployment options, requiring Java 17+ and EE11 features. The release previews Jakarta Data 1.1 capabilities including entity projections, the @Is annotation, and Constraint subtype parameters for advanced filtering. Updates to the Model Context Protocol Server 1.0 add session management and improved endpoint discoverability. The Netty-based HTTP transport receives enhancements for HTTP/1.1, HTTP/2, WebSocket, JMS, and SIP communications. A new feature allows developers to provide their own Base64-encoded 256-bit AES keys for password encryption, improving startup performance and preparing for WebSphere migration.

See all Spring Boot archives