Questions about Spring in Action 5th edition

[Esteban Suarez]

Hi Craig, first of all welcome and thanks for delivering a new member of your Spring in Action series. What I'd like to ask you is as follows:

1. Which have been the most important changes in the framework since Spring in Action 4th edition release?

2. According to you, which are the most challenging topics to learn about for totally Spring beginners like me,  and how the book helps in order to get a better undertanding of those topics?

That's all for now. Thanks in advance for your answers and have a nice rest of day.

Regards
Esteban

[Craig Walls]

Perhaps the most significant changes are those involving the reactive programming model. That includes Reactor, Spring WebFlux, and the new reactive support in Spring Data. The book also covers some of Spring Cloud, which wasn't in the previous editions. And it's Spring Boot from chapter 1 until the end, which is completely different than previous editions.

Challenging bits for beginners...hmmm...Again, I'd think that reactive is tricky, mostly because it requires you to think very differently about how you code. It's hard to explain *how* I help you understand that in the book, but I certainly aim to help you get your head around reactive in chapters 10-12. That said, reactive programming is one of those thing that is best learned (at least for me) by practice and no book is going to clarify it for you until you get your hands dirty with it and see how it works. Even so, I try my best to help you get to know it.

Being based on Spring Boot from the beginning, a lot of what used to be difficult in Spring is now significantly easier. That said, I hear some people complain that Spring Boot has too much magic and that it makes it harder to understand. I'm not sure I feel the same way, though. But maybe my years of experience working with Spring prior to the invention of Spring Boot has helped me gain a deeper understanding of how the magic is performed.

Esteban Suarez wrote:Hi Craig, first of all welcome and thanks for delivering a new member of your Spring in Action series. What I'd like to ask you is as follows:

1. Which have been the most important changes in the framework since Spring in Action 4th edition release?

2. According to you, which are the most challenging topics to learn about for totally Spring beginners like me,  and how the book helps in order to get a better undertanding of those topics?

That's all for now. Thanks in advance for your answers and have a nice rest of day.

Regards
Esteban

[Martyna Kolaczek]

Hi Craig,

I am a fond of your book - edition 4. Really useful in my daily work ;) I've just read that you've included Spring boot in 5th edition. This is really cool!! This is what I was missing about the book.
Are there any significant changes regarding Spring security part? Especially, are there any SSO solutions examples included (i.e. integrating Spring with OAuth)?

[Esteban Suarez]

Hi Craig,

Thanks for your answers, according to what you said, in special this: " But maybe my years of experience working with Spring prior to the invention of Spring Boot has helped me gain a deeper understanding of how the magic is performed", does it mean that would it be recommended to have some kind of Spring previous versions knowledge in order to get a better understanding of the topics included in the book?

[Dobre Diana]

Hello,

Thank you for writting this book.
What chapter did you enjoy writting?

Thank you and all the best,
Diana

[Craig Walls]

Esteban Suarez wrote:Hi Craig,

Thanks for your answers, according to what you said, in special this: " But maybe my years of experience working with Spring prior to the invention of Spring Boot has helped me gain a deeper understanding of how the magic is performed", does it mean that would it be recommended to have some kind of Spring previous versions knowledge in order to get a better understanding of the topics included in the book?

No, I don't think it's required or even recommended to have some previous Spring knowledge before approaching SiA5. It might help, but I don't think it's necessary. I would, however, recommend that you not accept what Spring Boot autoconfiguration does at face-value....once you get a handle on it, dig a little deeper and see how it ticks.

[Craig Walls]

Ugh...I was afraid someone would ask that.

In truth, Spring in Action 5 does *not* cover OAuth. It's not because I didn't want to, but rather because Spring's OAuth story is in a state of flux. Historically, OAuth has been handled as part of an extension to Spring Security called Spring Security for OAuth (S2OAuth). But it's gradually moving into the main Spring Security project. Unfortunately, this move is taking place over the course of several releases and is still not complete. I chose to *not* write about OAuth in the book because I was afraid that whatever I wrote about would be obsolete before or shortly after publication when a new release of Spring Security is cut.

In short, I was faced with this dilemma: Either make the reader angry that I didn't write about OAuth or make the reader angry because what I wrote about doesn't work anymore. In one situation, I had less work to do.

I am maintaining an example app for OAuth, however, at https://github.com/habuma/spring-security-oauth2-jwt-example. The plan is to evolve this app over time so that it always matches the current state of OAuth2 in Spring Security. At some point, I hope to be able to write an add-on chapter (the plan is to make it a free download) that talks about OAuth in Spring. But again, I didn't want to include it in a printed book where it would be statically wrong almost as soon as the ink dried.

Martyna Kolaczek wrote:Hi Craig,

I am a fond of your book - edition 4. Really useful in my daily work ;) I've just read that you've included Spring boot in 5th edition. This is really cool!! This is what I was missing about the book.
Are there any significant changes regarding Spring security part? Especially, are there any SSO solutions examples included (i.e. integrating Spring with OAuth)?

[Craig Walls]

I rather enjoyed writing chapter 10, the chapter on Reactor. That's because the subject was relatively new to me when writing it and I learned a lot in doing so. Also, because that chapter is almost a completely standalone chapter, I was able to take some liberties in the examples I came up with.

Dobre Diana wrote:Hello,

Thank you for writting this book.
What chapter did you enjoy writting?

Thank you and all the best,
Diana

[Andres Lascano]

Hi Craig, thank you for all the education.
I have one question: Does it add value reading Spring Boot in Action after reading Spring in Action 5th edition?