Spring Boot and Microservices Learning Plan (2025)

Goal

Back-end specialist with expertise in Spring Boot and Microservices. Let’s break down the plan in phases.

Phase 1: Foundations

Objective: Understand Spring Boot basics and set up a strong foundation.

1. Introduction to Spring Boot

Theory:

• What is Spring Boot? Advantages and features.
• Overview of the Spring Framework ecosystem.
• Spring Boot 3.x updates (AOT processing, GraalVM support).

Hands-on:

• Set up a Spring Boot project (using Spring Initializr).
• Create your first REST API with Spring Boot.
• Test your API using Postman or cURL.

2. Spring Boot Fundamentals

Theory:

• Dependency Injection and Spring Beans.
• Profiles and configuration properties.

Hands-on:

• Use application.properties/yaml for configuration.
• Create services, controllers, and repositories using Spring Data JPA.

3. Persistence and Data Handling

Theory:

• JPA and Hibernate basics.
• Entity relationships (One-to-One, One-to-Many).

Hands-on:

• Build a RESTful service with database integration.
• Implement CRUD operations.

4. API Development Best Practices

Theory:

• HTTP methods, status codes, and REST principles.
• Exception handling and validation.

Hands-on:

• Add custom exception handling using @ControllerAdvice.
• Implement DTOs and validation using Hibernate Validator.

Phase 2: Advanced Spring Boot

Objective: Dive into advanced Spring Boot features and introduce event-driven architecture.

Spring Security

Theory:

• Authentication vs. Authorization.
• Introduction to Spring Security.

Hands-on:

• Implement basic authentication.
• Add role-based access control.

Event-Driven Architecture

Theory:

• What is event-driven architecture?
• Basics of Kafka and its role in microservices.

Hands-on:

• Set up a basic Kafka producer and consumer.
• Send and process events between microservices.

Distributed Tracing

Theory:

• Challenges in distributed systems.
• Introduction to tools like OpenTelemetry and Zipkin.
• Hands-on:
• Integrate distributed tracing with a simple microservice system.

Spring Boot Testing

Theory:

• Importance of unit, integration, and end-to-end testing.
• Tools: JUnit, Mockito, and Spring Boot Test.

Hands-on:

• Write unit tests for controllers and services.
• Set up integration tests with an in-memory database (H2).

Phase 3: Microservices Specialization

Objective: Build microservices, focusing on communication, resilience, and scalability.

Building Microservices

Theory:

• Principles of microservices architecture.
• Designing and decomposing monolithic applications.

Hands-on:

• Create two services with independent databases.
• Implement synchronous communication using REST.

Resilience and Fault Tolerance

Theory:

• Importance of resilience in microservices.
• Circuit breakers (Hystrix/Resilience4j).

Hands-on:

• Add fault tolerance using Resilience4j.
• Implement retry and fallback mechanisms.

Asynchronous Communication

Theory:

• Benefits of asynchronous communication.
• Kafka topics, partitions, and consumer groups.

Hands-on:

• Enhance services with Kafka for asynchronous communication.

Service Discovery and API Gateway

Theory:

• Introduction to service discovery and service registry.
• Role of an API Gateway in microservices.

Hands-on:

• Set up service discovery using Spring Cloud Eureka.
• Implement an API Gateway using Spring Cloud Gateway.

Spring Config Server

Theory:

• Managing configurations in distributed systems.
• Introduction to Spring Cloud Config Server.

Hands-on:

• Set up Spring Cloud Config Server and client.
• Manage microservices configurations dynamically.

Monitoring and Observability

Theory:

• Importance of monitoring in microservices.
• Overview of Micrometer and Prometheus.

Hands-on:

• Set up application metrics using Micrometer.
• Visualize data with a basic Prometheus-Grafana setup.

Phase 4: Capstone Project

Objective: Apply all the learned concepts in a real-world scenario.

Project Scope:

• Develop a mini e-commerce platform with the following:
• User service (registration and authentication).
• Order service (manages orders).
• Inventory service (manages stock).

Key Features to Implement:

• Synchronous and asynchronous communication.
• Event-driven processing using Kafka.
• Service discovery and registry with Eureka.
• API Gateway for request routing and load balancing.
• Centralized configuration management with Spring Config Server.
• Resilience, monitoring, and distributed tracing.

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Thanks for taking the time to read out, let me know what you would like to add or if you see anything missing that should be covered.