UPDATED: 01 February 2018

Today we are going to learn how to create rest api in spring-boot. This example is created using gradle, if you are not familiar with how to setup gradle project in eclipse follow the steps stated in Setup first gradle project in eclipse

build.gradle
update your build.gradle as follow and refresh the project, gradle will download the required dependencies(jar files).

buildscript {
    ext {
        springBootVersion = '1.5.7.RELEASE'
    }
    repositories {
        mavenCentral()
    }
    dependencies {
        classpath("org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-gradle-plugin:${springBootVersion}")
    }
}

apply plugin: 'java'
apply plugin: 'eclipse'
apply plugin: 'org.springframework.boot'
sourceCompatibility = 1.8

repositories {
    mavenCentral()
}

dependencies {
    compile('org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-web')
}

Source code (HelloWorldController.java)
Spring follows Model-View-Controller so we'll use widely used package structure and filenames. Now create package like com.example.package.rest.controller

import org.springframework.http.ResponseEntity;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.GetMapping;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RequestMapping;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RestController;

/**
 * @author javaQuery
 * @since 2018-01-31
 * @github https://github.com/javaquery/spring-boot-examples
 */
@RestController
@RequestMapping("/api") 
public class HelloWorldController {
 
 /**
  * This will send Hello World in response with HTTP status code 200.
  * @return
  */
 @GetMapping("/helloworld")
 public ResponseEntity sayHello(){
  /* return response */
  return ResponseEntity.ok("Hello World");
 }
}

Lets quickly understand annotations used in HelloWorldController.java

• @RestController - To denote class will be service as rest service
• @RequestMapping("/api") - default/root path for all apis created under HelloWorldController.java
• @GetMapping("/helloworld") - sayHello method will serve for GET http request made for path /api/helloworld

Source code (Application.java)
Create Application.java (main-class) in package best suited your project,

import org.springframework.boot.SpringApplication;
import org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.SpringBootApplication;
import org.springframework.context.annotation.ComponentScan;

/**
 * @author javaQuery
 * @since 2018-01-31
 * @github https://github.com/javaquery/spring-boot-examples
 */
@SpringBootApplication
@ComponentScan(basePackages = { "com.javaquery.examples.springboot.rest" })
public class Application {
 public static void main(String[] args) {
  SpringApplication.run(Application.class, args);
 }
}

Lets quickly understand annotations used in Application.java

• @SpringBootApplication - denotes entry point of spring-boot application
• @ComponentScan - files under given package(s) are part/component of spring application so spring will process the annotations.