Info endpoint configuration in Spring Boot - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Info endpoint configuration

📖 Scenario: You are building a Spring Boot application that needs to expose custom information about the app through the /actuator/info endpoint.This is useful for showing app version, description, or other metadata in a standardized way.

🎯 Goal: Configure the Spring Boot info endpoint to expose custom application information using properties and Java configuration.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a properties file with custom info entries

Enable the info endpoint in Spring Boot

Create a configuration class to add additional info programmatically

Verify the info endpoint exposes all configured information

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Exposing application metadata helps operations teams monitor app versions and build details easily.

💼 Career

Configuring actuator info endpoints is a common task for backend developers working with Spring Boot microservices.

1

Create application.properties with custom info entries

Create a file named application.properties and add these exact entries:
info.app.name=MyApp
info.app.description=This is a sample Spring Boot app
info.app.version=1.0.0

Spring Boot

# Add the custom info properties below
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Properties starting with info. are automatically exposed by Spring Boot's info endpoint.

2

Enable the info endpoint in application.properties

Add this exact line to application.properties to enable the info endpoint:
management.endpoint.info.enabled=true

Spring Boot

info.app.name=MyApp
info.app.description=This is a sample Spring Boot app
info.app.version=1.0.0
# Enable the info endpoint below
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Spring Boot actuator endpoints are disabled by default; you must enable the info endpoint explicitly.

3

Create a configuration class to add custom info programmatically

Create a Java class named CustomInfoConfig annotated with @Configuration.
Inside it, create a method customInfoContributor annotated with @Bean that returns an InfoContributor.
Inside the method, return a lambda that adds an info entry with key build.time and value "2024-06-01T12:00:00Z" using builder.withDetail.

Spring Boot

import org.springframework.context.annotation.Configuration;
import org.springframework.context.annotation.Bean;
import org.springframework.boot.actuate.info.InfoContributor;
import org.springframework.boot.actuate.info.Info.Builder;

@Configuration
public class CustomInfoConfig {
    // Your code here
}

Need a hint?

The InfoContributor interface allows adding custom info entries programmatically.

4

Expose the info endpoint by adding actuator dependency and verify

Ensure your project has the Spring Boot Actuator dependency added.
In your main application class, add @SpringBootApplication annotation.
Run the app and verify the /actuator/info endpoint shows app.name, app.description, app.version, and build.time entries.

Spring Boot

info.app.name=MyApp
info.app.description=This is a sample Spring Boot app
info.app.version=1.0.0
management.endpoint.info.enabled=true

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

@SpringBootApplication
public class Application {
    // Your code here
}

Need a hint?

The main class must have a main method to run the Spring Boot app.

Verify the info endpoint by visiting http://localhost:8080/actuator/info in your browser.