Spring Boot vs Spring MVC: How Are They Different?

It is very common for beginners to get confused between Spring Boot and Spring MVC as they are both used with the Spring Framework and use the name “Spring”. Both Spring Boot and Spring MVC are used for different purposes. 

In this blog, we’ll see Spring Boot vs Spring MVC in detail, which is probably one of the most confusing concepts for those new to Java Spring development. Let’s first look at the basic overviews of both technologies.

What is Spring MVC?

The Spring MVC web framework is based on the Java Servlet stack. It makes developing web applications for servlet containers like Apache Tomcat easier and more enjoyable.

Spring MVC is a subproject of the Spring Framework Core, which is part of the Spring platform’s umbrella. Spring MVC can be used to create web apps that use a synchronous or asynchronous request/response processing model, as well as RESTful web services and REST APIs.

What is Spring Boot?

Spring Boot is an opinionated approach to getting started with the Spring framework with the least amount of effort. It simplifies the handling of HTTP requests and responses within the Spring framework. It also facilitates the development of production-ready, standalone Spring-based apps.

Spring Boot is also another part of the Spring platform. Spring Boot allows developers to save time and boost productivity when creating Spring-based projects that operate as standalone applications with embedded servers.

Spring Boot VS Spring MVC – Detailed Comparison

One of the most common dilemmas for new developers who wish to use the Spring Framework is which one to choose: Spring MVC or Spring Boot. So, let’s take a closer look at Spring Boot vs Spring MVC.

Spring Boot

• Spring Boot allows you to create and build Spring applications quickly.
• With the help of auto-configuration, you can do different things, like including H2 on the build path. Spring will auto-configure the connection information for an in-memory database without any additional configuration.
• The ability to develop standalone web applications and auto-configuration are features that only Spring Boot can provide.
• Avoiding Spring Boot necessitates extra configuration on your part.
• Spring Boot’s starter projects will boost productivity by offering defaults and configurations that will reduce a developer’s effort by eliminating the need to write a lot of annotations, XML configuration, and boilerplate code.
• You can tell Spring how many of its modules, like spring-web, spring-date, spring-core, and so on, to use and obtain a rapid setup for them using Spring Boot.
• Spring Boot also includes embedded HTTP servers like Tomcat, Jetty, and others that you can bundle with your apps to create executable war files.

Spring MVC

• Spring MVC is a Spring framework module and an HTTP-oriented web application development framework.
• It allows you to construct web apps in a decoupled manner. It will enable you to create a web application that follows the model-view-controller design pattern.
• In the JavaEE stack, Spring MVC is equal to JSF (Java Server Faces). Annotated classes are the most popular Spring MVC elements.
• Spring MVC offers an equivalent @RestController for implementing REST-based APIs.

If you want to create a web application with Spring, you can use Spring MVC. On the other hand, Spring Boot is suggested to develop general Spring applications or learn Spring as it is quickly adopted, ready for production, and minimizes the work. 

Spring Boot may also use Spring MVC and configure it automatically. The choice will be between Boot or Bootless in this scenario, rather than MVC and Boot.

Most Spring projects are now fully integrated with Boot, and the Spring community has begun to develop new Spring Boot-based apps such as monitoring and managing. 

To monitor and manage boot usage, you can take advantage of useful features like Actuator and Remote Shell. This adds or improves production-ready functionality to your app.

There are many powerful and nice configuration controls in Spring Boot. These features make it possible to extend the Boot in a very simple and impressive way. The Boot is one of the first microservice ready platforms. 

Your project configuration will be very simple with the help of Boot, and you need not maintain an XML file as well. The Boot provides a lot of default implementations, and JPA and Spring Hibernate integration will be easy.

Also Read: Spring Vs Struts.

Spring Boot vs Spring MVC: Head To Head Differences

Spring Boot vs Spring MVC: Popularity

We can decide on Spring Boot vs Spring MVC popularity on the basis of the number of Google searches for both terms over the past few years. Below is the Google search trend graph for Spring Boot and Spring MVC, depicting the past 5 years of worldwide searches. We can clearly see that Spring Boot is more popular than Spring MVC. 

Conclusion

You have just finished reading about Spring Boot vs Spring MVC. So, when looking above at Spring Boot vs Spring MVC, we can conclude that Spring Boot is more beneficial because it has numerous inherent features and benefits that make it more useful than Spring MVC. 

The majority of the settings are set automatically by Spring Boot. Spring Boot is particularly handy for container-based deployments, which are becoming very common. As Spring Boot and Spring MVC are used for different purposes, you can use them together in your project and reap the benefits of both technologies.

Moreover, if you need any help with Spring MVC or Spring Boot assignments, you can get our Java assignment help service at a reasonable price.

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