Spring Boot Actuator

In this Spring boot actuator tutorial, learn about in-built HTTP endpoints available for any boot application for different monitoring and management purposes. Before the spring framework, if we had to introduce this type of monitoring functionality in our applications then we had to manually develop all those components and that too was very specific to our need. But with spring boot we have Actuator module which makes it very easy.

We just need to configure a few things and we are done – all the management and monitoring related information is easily available. Let’s learn to configure Spring boot 2 actuator endpoints.

Table of Contents

1. Spring Boot Actuator Module
    1.1. Maven
    1.2. Endpoint URLs
    1.3. Security
    1.4. Enabling Endpoints
    1.5. CORS
    1.6. Caching
2. Actuator Example
3. Actuator Endpoints Demo
4. Advance Configuration Options
5. Summary

1. Spring Boot Actuator Module

Spring boot’s module Actuator allows you to monitor and manage application usages in production environment, without coding and configuration for any of them. These monitoring and management information is exposed via REST like endpoint URLs.

1.1. Actuator Maven Dependency

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

dependencies {
    implementation 'org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-actuator'
}

1.2. Important Actuator Endpoints

Most applications exposes endpoints via HTTP, where the ID of the endpoint along with a prefix of /actuator is mapped to a URL. For example, by default, the health endpoint is mapped to /actuator/health.

By default, only /health and /info are exposed via Web APIs. Rest are exposed via JMX. Use management.endpoints.web.exposure.include=* to expose all endpoints through the Web APIs.

management.endpoints.web.exposure.include=*

# To expose only selected endpoints
#management.endpoints.jmx.exposure.include=health,info,env,beans

Some of important and widely used actuator endpoints are given below:

The Spring web application (Spring MVC, Spring WebFlux, or Jersey) provide the following additional endpoints:

1.3. Securing Endpoints

By default, spring security is enabled for all actuator endpoints if it available in the classpath.

If you wish to configure custom security for HTTP endpoints, for example, only allow users with a certain role to access then configure WebSecurityConfigurerAdapter in following manner:

@Configuration(proxyBeanMethods = false)
public class ActuatorSecurity extends WebSecurityConfigurerAdapter {

    @Override
    protected void configure(HttpSecurity http) throws Exception {
        http.requestMatcher(EndpointRequest.toAnyEndpoint()).authorizeRequests((requests) ->
                requests.anyRequest().hasRole("ENDPOINT_ADMIN"));
        http.httpBasic();
    }

}

The above configuration ensures that only users with role ENDPOINT_ADMIN have access to actuation endpoints.

1.4. Enabling Endpoints

By default, all endpoints (except /shutdown) are enabled. To disable all endpoints, by default, use property:

management.endpoints.enabled-by-default=false

Then use the only required endpoints which the application need to expose using the pattern management.endpoint.<id>.enabled.

management.endpoint.health.enabled=true
management.endpoint.loggers.enabled=true

1.5. CORS support

CORS support is disabled by default and is only enabled once the endpoints.cors.allowed-origins property has been set.

management.endpoints.web.cors.allowed-origins=https://example.com
management.endpoints.web.cors.allowed-methods=GET,POST

Here the management context path is /management.

1.6. Caching the Response

Actuator endpoints automatically cache the responses to read operations that do not take any parameters. Use cache.time-to-live property to configure the amount of time for which an endpoint will cache the response.

management.endpoint.beans.cache.time-to-live=20s

2. Spring Boot Actuator Endpoint Example

In this example, we will create a simple spring boot application and access the actuator endpoints to know more about them.

2.1. Development environment

• JDK 1.8, Eclipse, Maven – Development environment
• Spring-boot – Underlying application framework
• Spring-boot Actuator – Management endpoints

2.2. Create Maven Project

Start with creating one spring boot project from Spring Initializer site with Web, Rest Repositories and Actuator dependencies. Download project in zipped format. Unzip and then import project in eclipse as maven project.

2.3. Add simple Rest endpoint

Now add one simple Rest endpoint /example to the application.

package com.example.springbootmanagementexample;

import java.util.Date;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.GetMapping;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RestController;

@RestController
public class SimpleRestController {
    @GetMapping("/example")
    public String example() {
        return "Hello User !! " + new Date();
    }
}

3. Spring Boot Actuator Endpoints Demo

Do maven build using mvn clean install and start the application using java -jar target\spring-boot-actuator-example-0.0.1-SNAPSHOT.jar command. This will bring up one tomcat server in default port 8080 and application will be deployed in it.

Access /example API in browser to generate few monitoring information on server.

• http://localhost:8080/actuator/env

  This will give all the environmental configuration about the server.

  

• http://localhost:8080/actuator/beans

  This will give all the spring beans loaded in the context.

  

• http://localhost:8080/actuator/threaddump

  This will give the current server thread dump.

  

Those endpoints will give standard information in the browser. These are the basic important endpoints we generally refer, but spring boot provides many more endpoints as mentioned in this link

4. Actuator Advance Configuration Options

4.1. Change the Management endpoint context path

By default all endpoints comes in default context path of the application, suffixed with /actuator. If for some reason, we have existing endpoints in application starting with /actuator then we can customize the base path to something else.

All we need to specify the new base path in the application.properties.

management.endpoints.web.base-path=/manage

Now you will be able to access all actuator endpoints under a new URL. e.g.

• /manage/health
• /manage/dump
• /manage/env
• /manage/beans

4.2. Customize the management server port

To customize the management endpoint port, we need to add this entry in the application.properties file.

management.server.port=8081

5. Summary

In this spring boot actuator example, we learned to configure management and monitoring endpoints with few easy configurations. So next time, you need to add application health checks or add monitoring support, you should consider adding the Spring actuator project and use these endpoints.

Feel free to drop your questions in the comments section.

Happy Learning !!