Welcome

Thank you for purchasing the MEAP of Spring in Action, 6th Edition. Having come through the previous five editions, I'm now excited to introduce you to the newest and best Spring in this edition. Whether you're just getting started or looking to learn about some of Spring's new features, this book is a valuable resource for learning Spring.

I've tried to make this edition follow a hands-on style, guiding you through the entire process of building an application. From initializing a project all the way to how to deploy your application.

We're releasing the first five chapters to start. Although there's still some content that hasn't been updated yet, these chapters aren't too different from the previous edition. In Chapter 1, you'll learn how to use Spring Initializr and Spring Boot to start creating projects. In Chapter 2, we'll build on that by developing browser-based functionality using Spring MVC. Chapter 3 introduces data persistence using JDBC and Spring Data JPA. In Chapter 4, we'll see how to secure applications with Spring Security. Finally, Chapter 5 will cover how to configure Spring using configuration properties.

Looking ahead, we'll expand on more data persistence topics in Part 1, including Spring Data JDBC and non-relational databases like MongoDB and Cassandra. In Part 2 of the book, we'll see how to integrate applications with other applications. In Part 3, we'll dive deep into Spring 6's reactive programming and rework previously developed components to make them reactive. Finally, in Part 4 we'll further discuss application deployment.

We plan to update this book every few weeks, whether by adding new chapters or revising existing ones. As you read, I invite you to visit the liveBook forum where you can ask questions and leave comments. I value your feedback greatly, as it's extremely valuable in guiding my subsequent writing while I work on this book.

—Craig Walls