Practical writing on Java, Spring, AI, and the craft of software engineering.
If you're building with Java and Spring (or trying to figure out where AI fits into your development workflow) you're in the right place. I write practical, beginner-friendly deep dives on Spring Boot, Spring AI, and software engineering fundamentals, collected here in chronological order.
Filtering by tag: Spring Boot
Spring, Build Me a Coding Agent
Build an autonomous coding agent in Spring AI with the Spring AI Agent Utils library. This tutorial adds file system tools, shell commands, and agent skills.
Getting Started with Error Handling in the RestClient
Learn best practices for error handling with Spring's RestClient, including global exception handlers, custom exceptions, Problem Detail responses, and built-in retry with resilience methods in Spring Framework 7.
Giving Your Spring AI Agents a Real Browser with the Browserbase Spring Boot Starter
Most AI agents can search the web. But what happens when they need to actually use it? I built a Spring Boot Starter for Browserbase that gives your agents a real, headless browser in three lines of configuration, plus a deep research agent to show it off.
Building a Spring Initializr Terminal UI with Java
How I built a terminal user interface for the Spring Initializr using Tambu UI, a new Java TUI framework, and GraalVM native images to streamline my development workflow.
OpenTelemetry with Spring Boot 4: The New Starter
Learn how to use the new spring-boot-starter-opentelemetry in Spring Boot 4 to add observability with traces, metrics, and logs—no Actuator required.
Building a Spring Boot 4 REST API the Fast Way
Learn how to build a REST API with Spring Boot 4 in minutes. This tutorial shows you how to create CRUD endpoints using Java records and the @RestController annotation.
Loading Resources in Spring Boot
Learn how to load resources in Spring Boot using the Resource interface. This tutorial covers three approaches for loading files from the classpath, filesystem, and URLs.
Spring Security 7 Multi-Factor Authentication: Complete Tutorial with @EnableMultiFactorAuthentication
Learn how to implement multi-factor authentication (MFA) in Spring Boot 4 using Spring Security 7's new @EnableMultiFactorAuthentication annotation. Step-by-step tutorial with one-time token login and custom PIN codes.
Spring Boot 4 Modularization: Fix Missing Auto-Configuration
Spring Boot 4 broke your auto-configuration? Learn which modular starters you now need—Flyway, H2, and the test starters behind @AutoConfigureMockMvc.