What is the purpose of the SpringBootTest annotation in testing Spring Boot applications?

The @SpringBootTest annotation is used for integration testing of Spring Boot applications. It loads the full application context, allowing tests to work with real beans and configurations as if the application were running in production.

This is useful when you need to verify interactions between multiple components, database operations, web services, and other parts of the application.

Example usage:

@SpringBootTest
public class MyServiceIntegrationTest {

    @Autowired
    private MyService myService;

    @Test
    public void testServiceMethod() {
        // testing service method with real context
        assertNotNull(myService);
        // additional checks
    }
}