Something I have unique insight into is what the approach to the 2014 1st edition vs. the 2017 soon-to-be 2nd edition. Most “next editions” are written by other authors. Not here.

I wrote the first by myself and I’m writing the second one now.

The 1st edition was relatively short. I had pitched ten chapters but Packt would only greenlight five. It’s only fair to point out that Spring Boot had just reached 1.0 GA release only a few months before my pitch. It wasn’t a “proven” technology yet.

So I pushed forward. With just five chapters, I narrowed the scope to the most critical things people wanted.

• Core stuff: building web apps with Spring MVC, Spring Security, and Spring Data.
• Given Boot was so new, I spent a chapter on debugging and maintaining apps, and helping people understand autoconfiguration.
• Also showed the magic of the Groovy-based Spring Boot CLI.
• Threw in a little about profiles and switching between development and production.

Many things I wanted to cover just didn’t make the cut.

Which brings me to the 2nd edition. We’ve got ten chapters and a clean slate. The field is wide open. This isn’t some rehash to turn a nickel. (That type of work frankly bores me!)

This edition is aimed at Spring Boot 2.0, which will be based on Spring Framework 5.0. Some of the goodies include:

• Reactive Streams API found in Spring MVC, Spring Data, and to some degree, Spring Cloud.
• Spring Cloud was just getting started back in 2014. Today, it’s a staple toolbox used for any cloud native/microservice solutions.
• Reactive apps use asynchronous, non-blocking paradigms. Messaging and WebSockets with Spring Boot really shines here.
• Unit testing, embedded integration testing, mock testing, and slice testin
• Taking your app to production

All these things are various facets where Spring Boot kicks major booty. And I plan to cover all of them. My goal is to write a down-to-earth title that helps people build Real World apps. Spring Boot is such a popular tool for serving customer needs, I can’t wait to deliver.