How to run Spring Boot Applications on IntelliJ IDEA For Free?
It’s an integral part of a developer's journey to be a tech enthusiast to use the best tools available at their disposal to increase their productivity by simplifying tasks which allows more time for things that require their attention (e.g. quality code, architecture, logic building, etc.). And for all the folks reading this who have been using Android Studio (like me) which is based on JetBrains closed-source IntelliJ IDEA Community Edition IDE, you know how it can simplify the developer’s life.
Honestly, there is none other in comparison to InteliJ especially if you are writing in JAVA/Kotlin. In case you ain’t aware, JetBrains who is the creator of IntelliJ, TeamCity, YouTrack and many robust and best-performing software development tools (which you also must give a try) is also the creator of Kotlin. Hence, you get the First class support for development on Kotlin (for a comparison of Java and Kotlin refer here), you get the capability to automatically add Kotlin to your project with the snap of a few clicks, you can convert your existing Java code to Kotlin, and you can add plugins to add more features at your convenience from its vast repository of plugins.
Recently, I stuck to using a Hardened Laptop which only offers the community version of IntelliJ as the preinstalled IDE and I had to run Spring Boot Application for testing and debugging. Although the IntelliJ IDEA Ultimate version offers First class support to Spring Applications this is not the case with the Community Edition so let’s see how we can integrate it. For the rest of the article, IntelliJ refers to the Community Edition version only.
Steps to run Spring Boot Application in IntelliJ
- Open the Spring Boot project in IntelliJ. IntelliJ will automatically identify the
pom.xmlorbuild.gradlefile in your project and start resolving the dependencies.
2. Once the dependencies are loaded successfully, go to the Edit Configurations…
3. From the configurations dialog box, select Add new.. then select Application. A new Java Application configuration will be created.
4. In the created configuration, give a name and Enter/Select the class name of the main class of your Spring Boot Application and click ok.
5. Once this is done, you will start seeing the Run/Debug option for your application similar to how it appears in the IntelliJ ultimate version.
That’s all! Now you are good to run, debug and test your Spring Boot Applications in IntelliJ. Thanks for Reading. Give it a clap if it was helpful.
