Spring Boot Actuator with Example

What is Actuator in Spring Boot ?

Spring Boot Actuator is a set of tools and endpoints that allow developers to monitor and manage their Spring Boot applications.

It provides a variety of production-ready features out-of-the-box, such as health checks, metrics, tracing, and management endpoints, that help developers monitor and manage their applications easily.

What are Actuator Endpoints ?

Actuator endpoints can be accessed over HTTP, and are typically used for monitoring, debugging, and operational tasks in a production environment.

Actuator endpoints provide real-time information about the health, metrics, and status of the application, which can be used to troubleshoot problems and ensure that the application is running smoothly.

Here are some examples of Actuator endpoints:

• '/actuator/health': Provides information about the health of the application, including the status of various subsystems and components, such as the database, messaging system, and disk space.
• '/actuator/metrics': Provides metrics about the application, such as the number of requests served, the amount of memory used, and the duration of requests.
• '/actuator/info': Provides general information about the application, such as the application name, version, and build information.
• '/actuator/mappings': Provides a list of all the mappings defined in the application, including the HTTP method, URL path, and controller method.
• '/actuator/trace': Provides a detailed trace of recent HTTP requests, including information about the request and response headers, status codes, and duration.
• '/actuator/env': Provides information about the application’s environment variables, such as system properties, command-line arguments, and configuration files.
• '/actuator/auditevents': Provides information about security-related events in the application, such as login attempts, authentication failures, and access denied events.

How to Enable and Configure Actuator Endpoints ?

Actuator endpoints are a key part of Spring Boot’s production-ready feature set. By default, all the Actuator endpoints are disabled, but you can enable them by adding the following property to your 'application.properties' or 'application.yml' file:

This property enables all the Actuator endpoints, but you can also enable only specific endpoints by listing them comma-separated:

In addition to the built-in endpoints, you can also create your own custom endpoints by implementing the 'org.springframework.boot.actuate.endpoint.web.Endpoint' interface. This allows you to expose custom management information or functionality via an HTTP endpoint.

Overall, Spring Boot Actuator is a powerful tool that provides a variety of features out-of-the-box for monitoring and managing Spring Boot applications.

By leveraging Actuator endpoints, developers can quickly diagnose and resolve issues in their applications, and ensure that their applications are running smoothly in a production environment.