Actuator endpoints overview in Spring Boot - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Actuator Endpoints Overview in Spring Boot

📖 Scenario: You are building a Spring Boot application that needs monitoring and management features. To do this, you will use Spring Boot Actuator endpoints which provide useful information about the running application.

🎯 Goal: Learn how to enable and access basic Spring Boot Actuator endpoints to monitor application health, metrics, and info.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a Spring Boot application with Actuator dependency

Configure Actuator endpoints exposure

Access health and info endpoints

Understand the purpose of common Actuator endpoints

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Spring Boot Actuator endpoints help developers and operators monitor and manage applications in production environments easily.

💼 Career

Knowing how to enable and use Actuator endpoints is essential for backend developers working with Spring Boot to ensure application health and diagnostics.

1

Add Actuator dependency

Add the Spring Boot Actuator dependency to your build.gradle file inside dependencies block: implementation 'org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-actuator'

Spring Boot

// Add the Actuator dependency inside dependencies block
// Your code here

Need a hint?

This dependency enables Actuator features in your Spring Boot app.

2

Configure Actuator endpoints exposure

In src/main/resources/application.properties, add the line management.endpoints.web.exposure.include=health,info to expose the health and info endpoints over HTTP.

Spring Boot

dependencies {
    implementation 'org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-actuator'
}

# Add the property to expose health and info endpoints
# Your code here

Need a hint?

This property controls which Actuator endpoints are accessible via HTTP.

3

Access health and info endpoints

Run your Spring Boot application and access http://localhost:8080/actuator/health and http://localhost:8080/actuator/info in your browser or API client to see the JSON responses.

Spring Boot

dependencies {
    implementation 'org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-actuator'
}

# src/main/resources/application.properties
management.endpoints.web.exposure.include=health,info

# Run the app and access the endpoints
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use a browser or tool like curl or Postman to see the JSON output from these endpoints.

4

Add custom info properties

In src/main/resources/application.properties, add info.app.name=MyApp and info.app.description=Demo application to add custom information to the info endpoint.

Spring Boot

dependencies {
    implementation 'org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-actuator'
}

# src/main/resources/application.properties
management.endpoints.web.exposure.include=health,info

# Add custom info properties below
# Your code here

Need a hint?

These properties will appear in the JSON response of the info endpoint.