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Monitoring plays a vital role in the life cycle of any application, offering insights into its health, performance, and essential metrics. Spring Boot Actuator, a subproject of the Spring Boot framework, provides an effortless way to add production-ready features for monitoring and managing your Spring Boot application.

Add Dependency

You need to add the spring-boot-actuator dependency to our package manager to enable the Spring Boot Actuator.

In Maven:

        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-actuator</artifactId>
        </dependency>

Enabling Spring Boot Actuator

To initiate Spring Boot Actuator in your project, a simple configuration is required. Open the application.properties file and insert the following:

management.endpoints.web.exposure.include=*

This setting exposes all Actuator endpoints over HTTP, which can be further customized based on specific needs.

Key Actuator Endpoints

Spring Boot Actuator introduces various built-in endpoints that provide valuable information about your application. Here are some commonly used endpoints:

Health Endpoint: /actuator/health

The /health endpoint provides insights into the application’s health by examining the status of various components such as the database, disk space, and custom health indicators.

Info Endpoint: /actuator/info

The /info endpoint permits the exposure of arbitrary application information. Customize this endpoint to display details like the application version, description, or any pertinent information.

Metrics Endpoint: /actuator/metrics

The /metrics endpoint supplies a comprehensive range of application metrics, encompassing memory usage, garbage collection statistics, and custom metrics. It proves invaluable for monitoring your application’s performance.

Environnement Endpoint: /actuator/env

The /env endpoint discloses information about the application’s environment properties, aiding in understanding the configuration of your application in a production setting.

Securing Actuator Endpoints

While Actuator endpoints are potent for monitoring, it is imperative to secure them, particularly in a production environment. Access to these endpoints can be controlled by configuring security settings. For instance, access can be restricted to specific endpoints or security features like HTTP Basic Authentication can be enabled.

You can configure Actuator endpoint security with the following properties:

spring.security.user.name=USERNAME
spring.security.user.password=SECURE_PASSWORD

Customizing Actuator Endpoints

Spring Boot Actuator is highly adaptable, allowing you to tailor monitoring features to suit your application’s specific needs. Create custom health indicators, metrics, and even custom endpoints to gain more flexibility and control.

For instance, to create a custom endpoint, implement the Endpoint interface and expose it using the @Endpoint annotation. Here’s a simple example:

import org.springframework.boot.actuate.endpoint.annotation.Endpoint;
import org.springframework.boot.actuate.endpoint.annotation.ReadOperation;

@Endpoint(id = "my_custom_endpoint")
public class CustomEndpoint {

    @ReadOperation
    public String customEndpoint() {
        return "Hello from the custom endpoint!";
    }
}

management.endpoints.web.exposure.include=health,info,my_custom_endpoint

Conclusion

Spring Boot Actuator proves to be a robust tool for monitoring and managing Spring Boot applications. Utilizing its built-in features and customization options, you can gain valuable insights into your application’s health and performance. Always remember to secure Actuator endpoints appropriately, especially in production, to safeguard the confidentiality of sensitive information.