IN28MINUTES

Spring Boot - Integrating with Bootstrap & jQuery using Web Jars

Dec 8, 2017
6 minute read

This guide will help you create a simple web application with Spring Boot. We will add the dependencies for Bootstrap and jQuery webjars. We will create a simple jsp view using jQuery and Bootstrap.

You will learn

  • How to bootstrap a simple project with Spring Initializr?
  • How to initialize a basic web application for Spring Boot?
  • How to add a JSP for web application?
  • How to add webjars for jQuery and Bootstrap?
  • How to create a simple view using jQuery and Bootstrap?

Spring Boot Courses

Image

Image

Image

10 Step Reference Courses

Tools you will need

  • Maven 3.0+ is your build tool
  • Your favorite IDE. We use Eclipse.
  • JDK 1.8+

Overview of the Web application

We will build a static todo page (un-formatted) rendered using a jsp.

Files

Following screenshot shows eclipse project with all the files we would create.

Image

A brief overview of all files

  • SpringBootWebApplicationBootstrapJqueryApplication.java - Spring Boot Application class. This initialized the Spring Boot application with auto configuration.
  • WelcomeController.java - A Controller with a method to redirect to the view - jsp.
  • welcome.jsp - The view - uses Jquery and Bootstrap.
  • pom.xml - We will add the webjar dependencies for Bootstrap and jQuery to pom.xml.
  • application.properties - This is typically used to configure frameworks in Spring Boot. In this example, we would configure our view resolver in application.properties.

Complete project on Github : https://github.com/in28minutes/spring-boot-examples/tree/master/spring-boot-web-application-bootstrap-jquery

Bootstrapping web application with Spring Initializr

Creating a Web application with Spring Initializr is a cake walk.

Spring Initializr http://start.spring.io/ is great tool to bootstrap your Spring Boot projects.

Image

As shown in the image above, following steps have to be done

  • Launch Spring Initializr and choose the following
    • Choose com.in28minutes.springboot.web.application as Group
    • Choose spring-boot-web-application-bootstrap-jquery as Artifact
    • Choose following dependencies
      • Web
      • Actuator
      • DevTools
  • Click Generate Project.
  • Import the project into Eclipse.
  • If you want to understand all the files that are part of this project, you can go here.

Project Dependencies

Spring Boot Starter Web provides all the dependencies and the auto configuration need to develop web applications. It is the first dependency we would use.

<dependency>
    <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
    <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-web</artifactId>
</dependency>

We want to use JSP as the view. Default embedded servlet container for Spring Boot Starter Web is tomcat. To enable support for JSP’s, we would need to add a dependency on tomcat-embed-jasper.

<dependency>
    <groupId>org.apache.tomcat.embed</groupId>
    <artifactId>tomcat-embed-jasper</artifactId>
    <scope>provided</scope>
</dependency>

Configuring a View Resolver

We would have our jsp’s in /WEB-INF/jsp/. We would need to configure the view resolver with the prefix and suffix.

spring.mvc.view.prefix=/WEB-INF/jsp/
spring.mvc.view.suffix=.jsp

Controller

Lets add in a simple controller redirecting to the view.

/src/main/java/com/in28minutes/springboot/tutorial/basics/application/configuration/WelcomeController.java

@Controller
public class WelcomeController {    
    @RequestMapping("/welcome")
    public String loginMessage(){
        return "welcome";
    }
}

The url to this controlle method will be http://localhost:8080/welcome

Adding a view

Let’s create a simple with a basic HTML structure. We will create a basic table which we would want to format a little later.

/src/main/webapp/WEB-INF/jsp/welcome.jsp

<html>
<head>
    <title>Welcome</title>
</head>
<body>
    <div class="container">
        <table class="table table-striped">
            <caption>Your todos are</caption>
            <thead>
                <tr>
                    <th>Description</th>
                    <th>Target Date</th>
                    <th>Is it Done?</th>
                    <th>Edit</th>
                    <th>Delete</th>
                </tr>
            </thead>
            <tbody>
                    <tr>
                        <td>Todo 1</td>
                        <td>10/12/2017</td>
                        <td>No</td>
                        <td><a class="btn btn-warning" href="/edit-todo">Edit Todo</a></td>
                        <td><a class="btn btn-warning" href="/delete-todo">Delete Todo</a></td>
                    </tr>
            </tbody>
        </table>
        <div>
            <a class="btn btn-default" href="/add-todo">Add a Todo</a>
            
        </div>
    </div>
</body>
</html>

Webjars for jQuery and Bootstrap

Let’s now add in the webjars to our pom.xml

<dependency>
    <groupId>org.webjars</groupId>
    <artifactId>bootstrap</artifactId>
    <version>3.3.6</version>
</dependency>

<dependency>
    <groupId>org.webjars</groupId>
    <artifactId>bootstrap-datepicker</artifactId>
    <version>1.0.1</version>
</dependency>

<dependency>
    <groupId>org.webjars</groupId>
    <artifactId>jquery</artifactId>
    <version>1.9.1</version>
</dependency>

Using Web Jars in View

Make sure that you restart the application and we are ready to use jquery and bootstrap in our project.

If you expand your dependencies you should see the dependencies. Image

Referring to bootstrap css

    <link href="webjars/bootstrap/3.3.6/css/bootstrap.min.css"
        rel="stylesheet">

Referring to Bootstrap js


<script src="webjars/bootstrap/3.3.6/js/bootstrap.min.js"></script>

Referring to jQuery js

<script src="webjars/jquery/1.9.1/jquery.min.js"></script>

Update view using jQuery and Bootstrap is shown below.

/src/main/webapp/WEB-INF/jsp/welcome.jsp

<html>
<head>
    <title>Welcome</title>
    <link href="webjars/bootstrap/3.3.6/css/bootstrap.min.css"
        rel="stylesheet">
</head>
<body>
    <div class="container">
        <table class="table table-striped">
            <caption>Your todos are</caption>
            <thead>
                <tr>
                    <th>Description</th>
                    <th>Target Date</th>
                    <th>Is it Done?</th>
                    <th>Edit</th>
                    <th>Delete</th>
                </tr>
            </thead>
            <tbody>
                    <tr>
                        <td>Todo 1</td>
                        <td>10/12/2017</td>
                        <td>No</td>
                        <td><a class="btn btn-warning" href="/edit-todo">Edit Todo</a></td>
                        <td><a class="btn btn-warning" href="/delete-todo">Delete Todo</a></td>
                    </tr>
            </tbody>
        </table>
        <div>
            <a class="btn btn-default" href="/add-todo">Add a Todo</a>
            
        </div>
        <script src="webjars/jquery/1.9.1/jquery.min.js"></script>
        <script src="webjars/bootstrap/3.3.6/js/bootstrap.min.js"></script>
    </div>
</body>
</html>

Spring Boot would auto configure the webjars resource mapping. So you DON’T need to do this anymore.

    <mvc:resources mapping="/webjars/**" location="/webjars/"/>

Congratulations! You are reading an article from a series of 50+ articles on Spring Boot and Microservices. We also have 20+ projects on our Github repository. For the complete series of 50+ articles and code examples, click here.

Next Steps

Image

Image

Image

Image

Image

Image

Image

Image

Image

Complete Code Example

/pom.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd">
    <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>

    <groupId>com.in28minutes.springboot.web.application</groupId>
    <artifactId>spring-boot-web-application-bootstrap-jquery</artifactId>
    <version>0.0.1-SNAPSHOT</version>
    <packaging>jar</packaging>

    <name>spring-boot-web-application-bootstrap-jquery</name>
    <description>Spring Boot Tutorial - Adding Bootstrap and jQuery to Web Application</description>

    <parent>
        <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-parent</artifactId>
        <version>2.0.0.RELEASE</version>
        <relativePath /> <!-- lookup parent from repository -->
    </parent>

    <properties>
        <project.build.sourceEncoding>UTF-8</project.build.sourceEncoding>
        <project.reporting.outputEncoding>UTF-8</project.reporting.outputEncoding>
        <java.version>1.8</java.version>
    </properties>

    <dependencies>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-web</artifactId>
        </dependency>

        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.webjars</groupId>
            <artifactId>bootstrap</artifactId>
            <version>3.3.6</version>
        </dependency>

        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.webjars</groupId>
            <artifactId>bootstrap-datepicker</artifactId>
            <version>1.0.1</version>
        </dependency>

        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.webjars</groupId>
            <artifactId>jquery</artifactId>
            <version>1.9.1</version>
        </dependency>

        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.apache.tomcat.embed</groupId>
            <artifactId>tomcat-embed-jasper</artifactId>
            <scope>provided</scope>
        </dependency>

        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-boot-devtools</artifactId>
            <scope>runtime</scope>
        </dependency>

        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-test</artifactId>
            <scope>test</scope>
        </dependency>
    </dependencies>

    <build>
        <plugins>
            <plugin>
                <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
                <artifactId>spring-boot-maven-plugin</artifactId>
            </plugin>
        </plugins>
    </build>

    <repositories>
        <repository>
            <id>spring-snapshots</id>
            <name>Spring Snapshots</name>
            <url>https://repo.spring.io/snapshot</url>
            <snapshots>
                <enabled>true</enabled>
            </snapshots>
        </repository>
        <repository>
            <id>spring-milestones</id>
            <name>Spring Milestones</name>
            <url>https://repo.spring.io/milestone</url>
            <snapshots>
                <enabled>false</enabled>
            </snapshots>
        </repository>
    </repositories>

    <pluginRepositories>
        <pluginRepository>
            <id>spring-snapshots</id>
            <name>Spring Snapshots</name>
            <url>https://repo.spring.io/snapshot</url>
            <snapshots>
                <enabled>true</enabled>
            </snapshots>
        </pluginRepository>
        <pluginRepository>
            <id>spring-milestones</id>
            <name>Spring Milestones</name>
            <url>https://repo.spring.io/milestone</url>
            <snapshots>
                <enabled>false</enabled>
            </snapshots>
        </pluginRepository>
    </pluginRepositories>


</project>

/src/main/java/com/in28minutes/springboot/tutorial/basics/application/configuration/SpringBootWebApplicationBootstrapJqueryApplication.java

package com.in28minutes.springboot.tutorial.basics.application.configuration;

import org.springframework.boot.SpringApplication;
import org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.SpringBootApplication;

@SpringBootApplication
public class SpringBootWebApplicationBootstrapJqueryApplication {

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        SpringApplication.run(SpringBootWebApplicationBootstrapJqueryApplication.class, args);
    }
}

/src/main/java/com/in28minutes/springboot/tutorial/basics/application/configuration/WelcomeController.java

package com.in28minutes.springboot.tutorial.basics.application.configuration;
import org.springframework.stereotype.Controller;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RequestMapping;

@Controller
public class WelcomeController {    
    @RequestMapping("/welcome")
    public String loginMessage(){
        return "welcome";
    }
}

/src/main/resources/application.properties

spring.mvc.view.prefix=/WEB-INF/jsp/
spring.mvc.view.suffix=.jsp
logging.level.org.springframework.web=INFO

/src/main/resources/static/css/custom.css

body {
    background-color: lightblue;
}

/src/main/resources/static/js/custom.js

alert("I'm active");

/src/main/webapp/WEB-INF/jsp/welcome.jsp

<html>
<head>
    <title>Welcome</title>
    <link href="webjars/bootstrap/3.3.6/css/bootstrap.min.css"
        rel="stylesheet">
    <link href="css/custom.css"
        rel="stylesheet">
</head>
<body>
    <div class="container">
        <table class="table table-striped">
            <caption>Your todos are</caption>
            <thead>
                <tr>
                    <th>Description</th>
                    <th>Target Date</th>
                    <th>Is it Done?</th>
                    <th>Edit</th>
                    <th>Delete</th>
                </tr>
            </thead>
            <tbody>
                    <tr>
                        <td>Todo 1</td>
                        <td>10/12/2017</td>
                        <td>No</td>
                        <td><a class="btn btn-warning" href="/edit-todo">Edit Todo</a></td>
                        <td><a class="btn btn-warning" href="/delete-todo">Delete Todo</a></td>
                    </tr>
            </tbody>
        </table>
        <div>
            <a class="btn btn-default" href="/add-todo">Add a Todo</a>
            
        </div>
        <script src="webjars/jquery/1.9.1/jquery.min.js"></script>
        <script src="webjars/bootstrap/3.3.6/js/bootstrap.min.js"></script>
        <script src="js/custom.js"></script>
    </div>
</body>
</html>

/src/test/java/com/in28minutes/springboot/tutorial/basics/application/configuration/SpringBootWebApplicationBootstrapJqueryApplicationTests.java

package com.in28minutes.springboot.tutorial.basics.application.configuration;

import org.junit.Test;
import org.junit.runner.RunWith;
import org.springframework.boot.test.context.SpringBootTest;
import org.springframework.test.context.junit4.SpringRunner;

@RunWith(SpringRunner.class)
@SpringBootTest
public class SpringBootWebApplicationBootstrapJqueryApplicationTests {

    @Test
    public void contextLoads() {
    }

}

300,000+ Learners doing 24 Best Selling Courses


✔ Amazing Hands-on Step By Step Learning Experiences
✔ Real Project Experiences with Best Tools and Frameworks
✔ Awesome Troubleshooting Guides with 200+ FAQs
✔ Friendly Support in Questions and Answers section
✔ Free Udemy Certificate on Completion of Course
✔ 30 Day "No Questions Asked" Money Back Guarantee!

50,000+ Amazing Reviews on in28Minutes Courses


★★★★★ Excellent, fabulous. The way he has prepared the material and the way he teaches is really awesome. What an effort .. Thanks a million
★★★★★ A lot of preparation work has taken place from the teacher and this is visible throughout the course.
★★★★★ This guy is fantastic. Really. Wonderful teaching skills, and goes well out of his way to make sure that everything he is doing is fully understood.
★★★★★ He explains the concepts really well and also makes sure that there is not a single line of code you type without understanding what it really does.
★★★★★ Amazing course. Explained super difficult concepts (that I have spent hours on the internet finding a good explanation) in under 5 minutes.

Try a Free Course Now!

Learn Spring Boot in 10 Steps

Get 90% OFF on our Premium Courses

Learn AWS, Spring Boot, Full stack (React/Angular), REST API, Microservices and more..

in28Minutes Profile in28Minutes Profile

Related Posts

Spring Boot Tutorials for Beginners

At in28Minutes, we are creating a number of tutorials with videos, articles & courses on Spring Boot for Beginners and Experienced Developers. This resources will help you learn and gain expertise at Spring Boot.

Introduction To Aspect Oriented Programming and Cross Cutting Concerns

Software applications are built in layers. There is common functionality that is sometimes needed across layers - logging, performance tracing etc. How do you implement these common features?

Programming Basics - Introduction To Object Oriented Programming

Object oriented programming (OOP) is all about thinking in terms of objects. Let's dig deeper.

Programming Basics - Five Things To Think About While Programming

You would obviously want to write code that meets your core requirements and provide good performance - choosing right data structures and algorithms to use is the fundamental part of programming. What are the other things that you need to worry about? Here are five things that we think are essential.

Asynchronous communication with queues and microservices - A perfect combination?

In this article, we throw some light on what asynchronous messaging is all about and discuss why you should consider it for your microservices architectures.

Microservice Best Practice - Build an Archetype

In this article, we focus on learning why creating proper archetypes is important for successful microservices architecture.

Microservice Architecture Best Practices - Messaging Queues

In this article, we discuss why Messaging queues are needed, and how they form the cornerstone of communication in microservices architectures.

Microservice Best Practice - Why do you build a Vertical Slice?

In this article, we look at what is a vertical slice, and why we build it. We also discuss the best practices involved in building vertical slices.

Microservices Architectures - Event Driven Approach

In this article, we talk about event driven approach, in the context of microservices architectures. We also discuss what are the advantages of using an event driven approach.

The 12 Factor App - Best Practices In Cloud Native Applications and Microservices

In order that an application be deployed in the cloud and enjoy features such as auto scaling, it first needs to be cloud native. In this article, we have a close look at the best practices for cloud native applications, popularly known as The 12 Factor App.