Spring Boot actuator endpoints
last modified July 31, 2023
In this article we show how to enable actuator endpoints in a Spring Boot application.
Spring Boot is a popular application framework for creating enterprise application in Java, Kotlin, or Groovy.
Actuator endpoints are used to provide information and monitor our applications.
They are enabled with the spring-boot-actuator module.
The following is a partial is of built-in actuator endpoints.
- beans - displays a complete list of all Spring beans
- caches - exposes available caches
- env - exposes properties from Spring's ConfigurableEnvironment
- health - shows application health information
- metrics - shows metrics information for the current application
- shutdown - lets the application be gracefully shutdown
- threaddump - performs a thread dump.
The actuator endpoint returns a list of available endpoints.
Endpoints are available for HTTP and JMX.
By default, only the health endpoint is enabled. We can enable
endpoints via the management.endpoints.web.exposure.include
property
management.endpoints.web.exposure.include=*
Here we enable most endpoints with the star operator.
management.endpoints.web.exposure.include=health,info,beans,env
We can enable only specific endpoints.
management.endpoint.shutdown.enabled=true
Some endpoints, such as shutdown, must be enabled explicitly due
to their sensitivity.
Spring Boot actuator example
The following application enables actuator endpoints.
build.gradle
...
src
├───main
│ ├───java
│ │ └───com
│ │ └───zetcode
│ │ │ Application.java
│ │ ├───actuator
│ │ │ MyEndpoint.java
│ │ └───controller
│ │ HelloController.java
│ └───resources
│ application.properties
└───test
├───java
└───resources
This is the project structure.
plugins {
id 'org.springframework.boot' version '3.1.1'
id 'io.spring.dependency-management' version '1.1.0'
id 'java'
}
group = 'com.zetcode'
version = '0.0.1-SNAPSHOT'
sourceCompatibility = '17'
repositories {
mavenCentral()
}
dependencies {
implementation 'org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-web'
implementation 'org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-actuator'
}
This is the Gradle build file. We include the
spring-boot-starter-actuator module.
spring.main.banner-mode=off management.endpoints.web.exposure.include=health,beans,env,now
In the Application properties file, we enable the health, beans, env, and
now endpoints. The now endpoint is a custom one.
package com.zetcode.controller;
import org.springframework.http.ResponseEntity;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.GetMapping;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RestController;
@RestController
public class HelloController {
@GetMapping(path = "/hello")
public ResponseEntity<String> hello() {
return ResponseEntity.ok("hello there!");
}
}
The application has a simple controller with one mapping.
package com.zetcode.actuator;
import org.springframework.boot.actuate.endpoint.annotation.Endpoint;
import org.springframework.boot.actuate.endpoint.annotation.ReadOperation;
import org.springframework.context.annotation.Bean;
import org.springframework.stereotype.Component;
import java.time.LocalDateTime;
@Endpoint(id="now")
@Component
public class MyEndpoint {
@ReadOperation
@Bean
public LocalDateTime now() {
return LocalDateTime.now();
}
}
We create a custom actuator with @Endpoint. It returns the
current datetime.
package com.zetcode;
import org.springframework.boot.SpringApplication;
import org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.SpringBootApplication;
@SpringBootApplication
public class Application {
public static void main(String[] args) {
SpringApplication.run(Application.class, args);
}
}
The Application sets up the Spring Boot application.
$ ./gradlew bootRun
We build the application and run it.
$ curl localhost:8080/actuator/health
{"status":"UP"}
$ curl localhost:8080/actuator/now
"2023-07-31T16:38:54.3963529"
We check two endpoints.
In this tutorial we have worked with actuator endpoints.
