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Quickstart for adding feature flags to Spring Boot with Azure App Configuration	Add feature flags to Spring Boot apps and manage them using Azure App Configuration	mrm9084	azure-app-configuration	java	quickstart	05/02/2022	mametcal	devx-track-java, mode-other

Quickstart: Add feature flags to a Spring Boot app

In this quickstart, you incorporate Azure App Configuration into a Spring Boot web app to create an end-to-end implementation of feature management. You can use the App Configuration service to centrally store all your feature flags and control their states.

The Spring Boot Feature Management libraries extend the framework with comprehensive feature flag support. These libraries do not have a dependency on any Azure libraries. They seamlessly integrate with App Configuration through its Spring Boot configuration provider.

Prerequisites

Azure subscription - create one for free
A supported Java Development Kit SDK with version 11.
Apache Maven version 3.0 or above.

Create an App Configuration instance

[!INCLUDE azure-app-configuration-create]

Select Feature Manager > +Add to add a feature flag called Beta.

[!div class="mx-imgBorder"]

Leave label undefined for now.

Create a Spring Boot app

Use the Spring Initializr to create a new Spring Boot project.

Browse to https://start.spring.io/.
Specify the following options:
- Generate a Maven project with Java.
- Specify a Spring Boot version that's equal to or greater than 2.0.
- Specify the Group and Artifact names for your application. This article uses com.example and demo.
- Add the Spring Web dependency.
After you specify the previous options, select Generate Project. When prompted, download the project to your local computer.

Add feature management

After you extract the files on your local system, your Spring Boot application is ready for editing. Locate pom.xml in the root directory of your app.

Open the pom.xml file in a text editor and add the following to the list of <dependencies>:

<dependency>
    <groupId>com.azure.spring</groupId>
    <artifactId>azure-spring-cloud-appconfiguration-config-web</artifactId>
    <version>2.6.0</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
    <groupId>com.azure.spring</groupId>
    <artifactId>azure-spring-cloud-feature-management-web</artifactId>
    <version>2.4.0</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
    <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
    <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-thymeleaf</artifactId>
</dependency>

Note

If you need to support an older version of Spring Boot see our old appconfiguration library and our old feature flag library.
There is a non-web Feature Management Library that doesn't have a dependency on spring-web. Refer to GitHub's documentation for differences.

Connect to an App Configuration store

Navigate to the resources directory of your app and open bootstrap.properties. If the file does not exist, create it. Add the following line to the file.

spring.cloud.azure.appconfiguration.stores[0].connection-string= ${APP_CONFIGURATION_CONNECTION_STRING}
spring.cloud.azure.appconfiguration.stores[0].feature-flags.enabled=true

Set an environment variable named APP_CONFIGURATION_CONNECTION_STRING, and set it to the connection string to your App Configuration store. At the command line, run the following command and restart the command prompt to allow the change to take effect:

Windows command prompt

To build and run the app locally using the Windows command prompt, run the following command:
```
setx APP_CONFIGURATION_CONNECTION_STRING "connection-string-of-your-app-configuration-store"
```
Restart the command prompt to allow the change to take effect. Print the value of the environment variable to validate that it is set properly.

PowerShell

If you use Windows PowerShell, run the following command:
```
$Env:APP_CONFIGURATION_CONNECTION_STRING = "connection-string-of-your-app-configuration-store"
```
macOS

If you use macOS, run the following command:
```
export APP_CONFIGURATION_CONNECTION_STRING='connection-string-of-your-app-configuration-store'
```
Restart the command prompt to allow the change to take effect. Print the value of the environment variable to validate that it is set properly.

Linux

If you use Linux, run the following command:
```
export APP_CONFIGURATION_CONNECTION_STRING='connection-string-of-your-app-configuration-store'
```
Restart the command prompt to allow the change to take effect. Print the value of the environment variable to validate that it is set properly.

Create a new Java file named HelloController.java in the package directory of your app.

package com.example.demo;

import org.springframework.boot.context.properties.ConfigurationProperties;
import org.springframework.stereotype.Controller;
import org.springframework.ui.Model;

import com.azure.spring.cloud.feature.manager.FeatureManager;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.GetMapping;


@Controller
@ConfigurationProperties("controller")
public class HelloController {

    private FeatureManager featureManager;

    public HelloController(FeatureManager featureManager) {
        this.featureManager = featureManager;
    }

    @GetMapping("/welcome")
    public String mainWithParam(Model model) {
        model.addAttribute("Beta", featureManager.isEnabledAsync("Beta").block());
        return "welcome";
    }
}

Create a new HTML file named welcome.html in the templates directory of your app.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en" xmlns:th="http://www.thymeleaf.org">
<head>
    <meta charset="utf-8">
    <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1, shrink-to-fit=no">
    <title>Feature Management with Spring Cloud Azure</title>

    <link rel="stylesheet" href="/css/main.css">
    <link rel="stylesheet" href="https://stackpath.bootstrapcdn.com/bootstrap/4.3.1/css/bootstrap.min.css" integrity="sha384-ggOyR0iXCbMQv3Xipma34MD+dH/1fQ784/j6cY/iJTQUOhcWr7x9JvoRxT2MZw1T" crossorigin="anonymous">

    <script src="https://code.jquery.com/jquery-3.6.0.min.js" integrity="sha256-/xUj+3OJU5yExlq6GSYGSHk7tPXikynS7ogEvDej/m4=" crossorigin="anonymous"></script>
    <script src="https://unpkg.com/@popperjs/core@2"></script>
    <script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/bootstrap@5.1.3/dist/js/bootstrap.bundle.min.js" integrity="sha384-ka7Sk0Gln4gmtz2MlQnikT1wXgYsOg+OMhuP+IlRH9sENBO0LRn5q+8nbTov4+1p" crossorigin="anonymous"></script>

</head>
<body>
    <header>
    <!-- Fixed navbar -->
    <nav class="navbar navbar-expand-md navbar-dark fixed-top bg-dark">
        <a class="navbar-brand" href="#">TestFeatureFlags</a>
        <button class="navbar-toggler" aria-expanded="false" aria-controls="navbarCollapse" aria-label="Toggle navigation" type="button" data-target="#navbarCollapse" data-toggle="collapse">
        <span class="navbar-toggler-icon"></span>
        </button>
        <div class="collapse navbar-collapse" id="navbarCollapse">
        <ul class="navbar-nav mr-auto">
            <li class="nav-item active">
            <a class="nav-link" href="#">Home <span class="sr-only">(current)</span></a>
            </li>
            <li class="nav-item" th:if="${Beta}">
            <a class="nav-link" href="#">Beta</a>
            </li>
            <li class="nav-item">
            <a class="nav-link" href="#">Privacy</a>
            </li>
        </ul>
        </div>
    </nav>
    </header>
    <div class="container body-content">
        <h1 class="mt-5">Welcome</h1>
        <p>Learn more about <a href="https://github.com/Azure/azure-sdk-for-java/blob/master/sdk/appconfiguration/azure-spring-cloud-feature-management/README.md">Feature Management with Spring Cloud Azure</a></p>

    </div>
    <footer class="footer">
        <div class="container">
        <span class="text-muted">&copy; 2019 - Projects</span>
    </div>

    </footer>
</body>
</html>

Create a new folder named CSS under static and inside of it a new CSS file named main.css.

html {
 position: relative;
 min-height: 100%;
}
body {
 margin-bottom: 60px;
}
.footer {
 position: absolute;
 bottom: 0;
 width: 100%;
 height: 60px;
 line-height: 60px;
 background-color: #f5f5f5;
}

body > .container {
 padding: 60px 15px 0;
}

.footer > .container {
 padding-right: 15px;
 padding-left: 15px;
}

code {
 font-size: 80%;
}

Build and run the app locally

Build your Spring Boot application with Maven and run it.
```
mvn clean package
mvn spring-boot:run
```
Open a browser window, and go to the URL: http://localhost:8080/welcome.
In the App Configuration portal select Feature Manager, and change the state of the Beta key to On:

Key State

Beta On
Refresh the browser page to see the new configuration settings.

Clean up resources

[!INCLUDE azure-app-configuration-cleanup]

Next steps

In this quickstart, you created a new App Configuration store and used it to manage features in a Spring Boot web app via the Feature Management libraries.

Library reference documentation
Learn more about feature management.
Manage feature flags.
Use feature flags in a Spring Boot Core app.

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Files

quickstart-feature-flag-spring-boot.md

quickstart-feature-flag-spring-boot.md

Quickstart: Add feature flags to a Spring Boot app

Prerequisites

Create an App Configuration instance

Create a Spring Boot app

Add feature management

Connect to an App Configuration store

Windows command prompt

PowerShell

macOS

Linux

Build and run the app locally

Clean up resources

Next steps

Files

quickstart-feature-flag-spring-boot.md

Latest commit

History

quickstart-feature-flag-spring-boot.md

File metadata and controls

Quickstart: Add feature flags to a Spring Boot app

Prerequisites

Create an App Configuration instance

Create a Spring Boot app

Add feature management

Connect to an App Configuration store

Windows command prompt

PowerShell

macOS

Linux

Build and run the app locally

Clean up resources

Next steps