What are Spring Boot starters?

Spring Boot starters are dependency sets (for Maven or Gradle) that simplify the integration and configuration of popular libraries and technologies in a project. Instead of manually specifying many individual dependencies, you connect one starter, which includes all the necessary components with optimal versions and settings.

For example, to add support for a web application using Spring MVC, simply include the spring-boot-starter-web starter, which will pull in Tomcat, Spring MVC, Jackson for JSON, and other necessary libraries.

This significantly speeds up development and reduces the likelihood of version conflicts.

Example of inclusion in Maven:

<dependency>
    <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
    <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-web</artifactId>
</dependency>

Thus, starters are a convenient way to quickly start working with a specific technology within the Spring Boot ecosystem.