Spring Actuator | Generated by AI

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Spring Actuator is a powerful feature in Spring Boot that provides production-ready tools for monitoring and managing your application. Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to use it:

1. Add Spring Actuator Dependency

To use Spring Actuator, you need to include its dependency in your project. If you’re using Maven, add this to your pom.xml:

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

For Gradle, add this to your build.gradle:

implementation 'org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-actuator'

2. Start Your Spring Boot Application

Once the dependency is added, start your Spring Boot application. Spring Actuator will automatically enable a set of endpoints that you can use to monitor and interact with your app.

3. Access Default Endpoints

Spring Actuator exposes several endpoints over HTTP by default. The base path is /actuator. Here are some commonly used ones (assuming your app runs on localhost:8080):

By default, only /health and /info are enabled for security reasons. To expose more endpoints, you need to configure them.

4. Configure Actuator Endpoints

You can customize which endpoints are exposed in your application.properties or application.yml file. For example:

application.properties

# Enable specific endpoints
management.endpoints.web.exposure.include=health,info,metrics,beans

# Change the base path (optional)
management.endpoints.web.base-path=/manage

application.yml

management:
  endpoints:
    web:
      exposure:
        include: health, info, metrics, beans
      base-path: /manage

With this config, endpoints like /manage/metrics or /manage/beans will be available.

5. Explore Available Endpoints

Here are some useful Actuator endpoints you can enable:

To enable all endpoints for testing, use:

management.endpoints.web.exposure.include=*

6. Secure Actuator Endpoints

Since Actuator exposes sensitive data, you should secure it in production:

org.springframework.boot spring-boot-starter-security 
- Configure security in `application.properties`:
```properties
spring.security.user.name=admin
spring.security.user.password=secret
management.endpoints.web.exposure.include=health,metrics

Now, accessing endpoints will require authentication (e.g., admin:secret).

7. Add Custom Health Checks (Optional)

You can create custom health indicators by implementing the HealthIndicator interface. Example:

import org.springframework.boot.actuate.health.Health;
import org.springframework.boot.actuate.health.HealthIndicator;
import org.springframework.stereotype.Component;

@Component
public class CustomHealthCheck implements HealthIndicator {
    @Override
    public Health health() {
        boolean isHealthy = checkSomeCondition();
        if (isHealthy) {
            return Health.up().withDetail("customCheck", "All good!").build();
        }
        return Health.down().withDetail("customCheck", "Something's wrong").build();
    }

    private boolean checkSomeCondition() {
        // Your logic here
        return true;
    }
}

This will appear in the /actuator/health endpoint.

8. Monitor Metrics

To dive deeper into metrics, enable /metrics and explore specific ones like:

You can integrate with tools like Prometheus or Grafana for advanced monitoring.

9. Test It Out

Run your app and hit the endpoints using a browser, curl, or tools like Postman. For example:

curl http://localhost:8080/actuator/health

Tips

That’s the basics! Let me know if you want help with a specific use case or troubleshooting.

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