Create a REST API Using Spring Boot

1. Spring Boot Starter Project

In Eclipse, select File -> New -> Project ... -> Spring Starter Project (under the Spring Boot folder). The first screen of the project wizard is shown below:

Service URL is the url from which the project wizard gets the latest project template, so leave it as is.

We'll use JDK 1.8 and Maven to build the project. The project will be packaged in an executable JAR file with an embedded Tomcat server (as opposed to a WAR file that needs to be deployed to an existing Tomcat server).

Group (i.e. Group ID in Maven) is an unique identifier of the organization that develops the project. Like Java packages, it typically uses the reverse URL naming convention, e.g. edu.calstatela.cs. Artifact (i.e. Artifact ID in Maven) is the name of the project. Package is the top level Java package used in the project.

In the next screen you'll be asked to select the dependencies of the project as shown below:

We will select DevTools under Core, JPA and MySQL under SQL, and Web under Web. Don't worry about including all possible dependencies here because it'll be easy to add them later when they are needed.

Click Finish to create the project.