Building a Spring Boot Microservice with GitHub Actions is as easy as doing it locally. Create a Microservice and build it on Github in under 5 minutes.
Introduction
One of the best things that happened to Java was the mainstream adoption of testing and CI/CD pipelines. This started many engineering practices and ultimately banished the dreaded “Golden Machine” anti-pattern.
However, it generally relied on a CI/CD pipeline to be available. What I like about GitHub actions is that no setup is required. You create the GitHub action file locally and push it. The remote build then starts working.
So now you can have a remote CI build from your first commit.
The Four Steps
You won’t find an easier blog than this. It consists of just four steps.
Continuous improvement dictates that once you know the steps and understand what they do, you must optimise them.
So, at the end of this blog, there is a script you can run to do all this.
Code
An example of the code and the complete build can be found here.
https://github.com/johndobie/spring-boot-github-action
Step 1 – Create a GitHub Repo.
You’ll need the GitHub CLI installed locally if you want to do this from the command line. https://cli.github.com
Once installed, it is as simple as running the following commands
gh repo create spring-boot-action --public --clone
cd spring-boot-actionOtherwise, create and check out a repo as you would normally.
Step 2 – Use Spring Initializr to create your code.
Spring Initializr allows you to create the skeleton code for your Spring Boot Microservices, and we will use it to make a skeleton to test our action.
Most people use Spring Initializr from the web interface or directly in their IDE, but you can use it from the command line.
The commands below will create a simple Spring Application that you can use for your Microservices and push to GitHub.
curl https://start.spring.io/starter.tgz -d dependencies=web,actuator,devtools -d type=maven-project -d language=java -d bootVersion=3.4.2 -d groupId=com.example -d artifactId=springboot-github-action -d name=springboot-github-action -d packageName=com.example.github.action -d baseDir=spring-boot-action | tar -xzvf -
git add --all
git commit -m "add spring boot code"It will create the following Skelton code.
You can build it as follows.
mvn clean install
..
..
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] BUILD SUCCESS
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] Total time: 5.135 s
[INFO] Finished at: 2025-02-17T14:05:41Z
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------We want to recreate this local build remotely on GitHub.
Step 3 – Download a GitHub Action.
There is a standard GitHub action that will replicate the local Maven build on GitHub. You can use curl to download it as below.
mkdir -p .github/workflows
curl -o .github/workflows/maven.yml https://raw.githubusercontent.com/actions/starter-workflows/refs/heads/main/ci/maven.yml
This action looks like this
# This workflow will build a Java project with Maven, and cache/restore any dependencies to improve the workflow execution time
# For more information see: https://docs.github.com/en/actions/automating-builds-and-tests/building-and-testing-java-with-maven
# This workflow uses actions that are not certified by GitHub.
# They are provided by a third-party and are governed by
# separate terms of service, privacy policy, and support
# documentation.
name: Java CI with Maven
on:
push:
branches: [ $default-branch ]
pull_request:
branches: [ $default-branch ]
jobs:
build:
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
steps:
- uses: actions/checkout@v4
- name: Set up JDK 17
uses: actions/setup-java@v4
with:
java-version: '17'
distribution: 'temurin'
cache: maven
- name: Build with Maven
run: mvn -B package --file pom.xml
# Optional: Uploads the full dependency graph to GitHub to improve the quality of Dependabot alerts this repository can receive
- name: Update dependency graph
uses: advanced-security/maven-dependency-submission-action@571e99aab1055c2e71a1e2309b9691de18d6b7d6You’re going to change lines 13 and 14 to this
on:
push:
branches: [ "**" ]
pull_request:
branches: [ "**" ]and delete lines 32-35
# Optional: Uploads the full dependency graph to GitHub to improve the quality of Dependabot alerts this repository can receive
- name: Update dependency graph
uses: advanced-security/maven-dependency-submission-action@571e99aab1055c2e71a1e2309b9691de18d6b7d6That’s your action, ready to go.
It will simply check out the code and build it on GitHub with Maven and Java 17.
Step 4 – Push Your Code and Check Your Build.
git add --all
git commit -m "add github action"
git push --set-upstream origin masterThe moment of truth – when you push your code, you should see your first build.
Go to the actions tab on GitHub.
https://github.com/johndobie/spring-boot-github-action/actions
https://github.com/johndobie/spring-boot-github-action/actions
From now on, a new build will run every time you commit.
Scripting The Steps
Now that you know and understand the steps, we can optimise the process.
You can see a full script here that will perform all the above steps.
https://github.com/johndobie/spring-boot-github-action/blob/master/script/create-application.sh
./create-application.sh <repository_name>Follow On
We have not gone through the ins and outs of GitHub actions but instead have concentrated on how to create your first one.
The next step is to look at all they have to offer.
Other Blogs
If you liked this blog, you may be interested in these other blogs.
https://johndobie.com/blog/testing-spring-boot-microservices-cheat-sheet/
https://johndobie.com/blog/validation-errors-in-spring-boot-microservices/
