Learning Path

Spring Boot Roadmap

A progressive path from Spring Boot foundations to architecture, security, testing, and production operations.

Foundations

Spring Boot Fundamentals

  • What Spring Boot solves
  • Auto-configuration basics
  • Starter dependencies

Coming soon

Foundations

Project Setup

  • Initializr workflow
  • Folder conventions
  • Maven or Gradle setup

Coming soon

Core

Dependency Injection and Beans

  • Bean lifecycle
  • Constructor injection
  • Configuration classes

Coming soon

Core

Configuration and Profiles

  • application.yml strategy
  • local/staging/production profiles
  • Secrets management basics

Coming soon

Web

REST Controllers

  • Request mapping
  • Request/response DTOs
  • HTTP status handling

Coming soon

Web

Validation and Error Handling

  • Bean Validation
  • Global exception handling
  • Consistent API error contracts

Coming soon

Architecture

Layered Design

  • Controller/service/repository boundaries
  • Business logic placement
  • DTO mapping strategy

Coming soon

Data

Spring Data JPA Basics

  • Entities and repositories
  • CRUD and pagination
  • Query method conventions

Coming soon

Data

CriteriaBuilder and Dynamic Queries

  • Build type-safe predicates
  • Compose dynamic filters
  • Specification-style query composition

Coming soon

Data

Database Migrations

  • Flyway basics
  • Versioned migrations
  • Environment-safe schema changes

Coming soon

Security

Security Fundamentals

  • Authentication vs authorization
  • Filter chain mental model
  • Endpoint protection

Coming soon

Security

JWT and API Key Approaches

  • Token validation flow
  • Key rotation basics
  • Security trade-offs

Coming soon

Testing

Unit Testing

  • JUnit 5 structure
  • Mockito usage
  • Given/When/Then style

Coming soon

Testing

Integration Testing

  • Repository and API tests
  • Testcontainers setup
  • Stable test data strategy

Coming soon

Performance

Caching Strategy

  • Cache abstraction
  • TTL and eviction strategy
  • Cache invalidation patterns

Coming soon

Performance

Async Processing

  • @Async basics
  • Executor thread pools
  • Async error handling

Coming soon

Performance

Scheduled Jobs

  • @Scheduled patterns
  • Cron vs fixed delay/rate
  • Idempotent background tasks

Coming soon

Observability

Actuator, Metrics and Tracing

  • Health and readiness probes
  • Micrometer metrics
  • Trace correlation

Coming soon

Delivery

Build and Containerization

  • Executable jars
  • Docker image strategy
  • Runtime configuration

Coming soon

Delivery

CI/CD Pipeline

  • Test gates
  • Artifact publishing
  • Progressive deployment

Coming soon

Production

Production Hardening

  • Secure defaults
  • Rollback strategy
  • Operational runbook mindset

Coming soon