Getting started with using Spring Boot CLI

Spring Boot provides two interfaces, Spring Boot ApplicationRunner and Spring Boot CommandLineRunner. Let's dig a bit deeper into Spring Boot CLI.

Spring Boot CLI, as the name suggests, is another command-line prototyping tool. It's famous for being super fast and easy. Spring, however, is a Java application framework. It is a popular framework in the Java community, used by any Java application and for building web applications.

Spring Boot makes it easier to create Spring-powered applications and services with less hassle. And Spring Boot CLI assists in executing the applications and services created by Spring Boot. Spring Boot CLI is not necessarily used with Spring Boot IDE, but it is quicker to execute Spring applications if both are used together. The Spring Boot CLI is self-sufficient and doesn't require any additional platforms to run.

As we discussed earlier, the Spring Boot CLI offers an interesting, albeit unconventional, approach to developing Spring applications. Let's look at how to install the Spring Boot CLI so that you can run the code we looked at in Chapter 1, Getting Started with Spring Boot 2.0.