initializr VS Lombok

The best way, for generating a ready-to-run application in Java you can use the Spring Boot Initializr tool.

curl --location 'https://start.spring.io/starter.zip?type=maven-project&language=java&bootVersion=3.2.2&baseDir=ms-xcoffee&groupId=com.xcoffee&artifactId=ms-xcoffee&name=ms-xcoffee&description=Demo%20project%20for%20Spring%20Boot&packageName=com.xcoffee.ms-xcoffee&packaging=jar&javaVersion=21&dependencies=webflux%2Clombok%2Cvalidation' | tar -xzvf -

In this segment we will create a basic Spring boot app from Spring Initializer. Add the below dependencies:

Add the following MongoDB dependencies in your pom.xml or use spring initializer and select the Spring Data MongoDB dependency:

I created all of these applications using start.spring.io's REST API and HTTPie.

An easy way to create the skeleton project is to visit Spring Initializr, I set the Project to Gradle - Groovy, Language to Java, and add Spring Web dependency. Then it's just to generate the project and unpack it.

Create a new Spring Boot application using the Spring Initializr. You can use the web version or the curl command below. Use the default for most of the options. For the dependencies, select web, and okta. For the build tool, select Gradle.

I will start with a simple example of a cloud function, which is the same as a rest endpoint in the classical spring boot web application. You can create a project from your favorite IDE or from Spring Initliazr.

The above class maps the json data to a java object we can work with. We use Lombok to generate constructors, getters and setters for our code and the Jackson Project to handle serialization and deserialization of json to pojo . We know the response is an array of objects representing the coffee and so above data structure is fit for this.

Almost a decade ago, I started reducing my boilerplate (and saving time with Lombok. It made my life much easier, simple as that. Ever since I've been looking into finding the smoothest solutions for saving time rather than handling all of it myself.

Lombok is a widely used library that simplifies Java code. The @NonNull annotation helps enforce non-null parameters, generating appropriate null checks:

Project Lombok

I gotta agree with /u/rzwitserloot I don't see anything in the lombok repo that indicates they have their "own compiler". I see the "reaching into javac internals" but that's it.

i looked into that and found this: https://github.com/projectlombok/lombok/issues/2310

Funny enough; /u/rzwitserloot is the author of Lombok, one of the most widely used Java libraries in the world. So it's not really some kind of random-ass Redditor they're having a discussion with either.

This removes the need to add the 'Project Lombok' library (and going through a phase of installing it in your Eclipse IDE; old school devs know what I am talking about) and speeds up development time. Java 14 added a new feature of 'Records' which allows you to do the same, but it doesn't offer a 'copy' method to ease your object creation and also enforces the 'final' keyword for variables making them immutable.

I get the main criticisms of Java, i.e. its verbosity and the requirement for a lot of boilerplate code, and understand why some people switched to Kotlin. But by using libraries such as lombok you can get rid of most of it and suddenly the incentives for switching aren't that big anymore. And in the end it's all JVM bytecode anyways.

I usually use this... https://projectlombok.org/