Preface
Welcome!
Welcome to Full Stack Development with Spring Boot and React ! This book is written by Brian Rono CK, a full-stack software engineer, with the goal of teaching you how to build a complete web application-from a robust backend API to a dynamic frontend interface-using the popular combo of Spring Boot (Java) and React (JavaScript). This expanded edition is deliberately verbose and educational. We will not just show you code, but also dive deep into why we make certain design choices, compare alternatives, and discuss best practices. This is a hands-on guide that encourages you to code along from start to finish. Each chapter builds on the last, and our companion GitHub repository contains incremental branches for every chapter so you can compare your work and recover if you get stuck. The appendices at the back of the book provide quick references, troubleshooting tips, and extra context to help you deepen your skills.
What to Expect
We’ll walk step-by-step through constructing a product management system, with a Spring Boot RESTful API as the backend and a React single-page application (SPA) as the frontend. Along the way, we’ll break down every decision:
We start with the backend, using Spring Boot 3.x to create a REST API. You’ll learn about layered architecture (controllers, services, repositories), mapping objects with JPA and MapStruct, validation, error handling, security considerations like CORS and JWT-based authentication, caching with Redis, database migrations with Flyway, and how to test your backend. We’ll also cover observability using Spring Boot Actuator and Prometheus.
Then we move to the frontend, using React (with modern tools like Vite) to build a responsive interface. We cover component structure, state management with hooks, communicating with the backend API, handling forms and validations, showing notifications, and making the app responsive and user-friendly.
Throughout, we’ll highlight common pitfalls, give analogies, and point out alternative approaches. For instance, we’ll explain why we use BigDecimal for money instead of floating-point, or how GraphQL or gRPC could be alternatives to REST in some cases.
Uniquely, this book compares the design choices we make with those in other languages and frameworks. Full stack engineering principles are universal: separating concerns, using MVC or similar patterns, ensuring scalability. We will discuss how our approach in Java + React parallels or differs from, say, a Node.js + Angular stack, a Python Django application, or a Ruby on Rails project.
Who Is This For?
If you have basic knowledge of Java (classes, interfaces, annotations) and some familiarity with web development (HTTP, JSON) and JavaScript/React fundamentals, you’re the perfect audience. Beginners will appreciate the step-by-step explanations and intermediate developers will find depth in best practices and architectural reasoning. We assume you’ve set up a Java development environment and know how to run a Spring Boot app (Maven or Gradle) and a Node-based toolchain for React. No prior Spring experience is required-we’ll introduce it as a framework that “just takes care of a lot of boilerplate for you.” Whether you’ve used Maven or Gradle before, you’ll see both in action here, and we include an appendix showing exactly how to migrate from Maven (used in the early chapters) to Gradle (used in later chapters).
How to Use This Book
This book is structured to encourage active learning.
Code along with each chapter: You’ll learn more by typing the code yourself than by copy-pasting.
Run the app frequently: Test after each major change to catch problems early.
Experiment: Tweak values, refactor code, and try variations.
Use GitHub branches: The companion repository contains a branch for every chapter so you can compare your work or recover from mistakes.
Refer to the appendices: From command-line cheat sheets to Spring Boot annotation references, they’re designed for quick access.
Each chapter builds on the previous one, and by the end of Part I (the backend), you’ll have a running REST API. By the end of Part II (the frontend), you’ll have a complete application with a polished UI. Part III adds advanced backend features, Part IV enhances the frontend, and Part V takes you through DevOps, infrastructure, and deployment.
How This Book Differs from Others
Most full stack books either focus heavily on one side of the stack and skim the other, provide only code snippets with minimal explanation or skip over real-world tooling, workflows, and troubleshooting. This book is different because:
We build a single project from start to finish, showing every step, including setup, configuration, and common mistakes.
We compare alternative technologies and approaches, so you understand the “why” behind decisions.
We integrate professional workflows, like GitHub branching, code reviews, Maven-to-Gradle migration, API testing, and deployment checklists.
We give you incremental code branches so you can join at any chapter without feeling lost.
We include detailed appendices that double as a developer’s quick reference manual.
Table of Contents
We provide a roadmap of chapters for both backend and frontend sections. Feel free to jump to specific topics if you need to (for example, you might reference the chapter on Global Exception Handling when you encounter errors), but the recommended approach is to follow in sequence for a cohesive understanding.
GitHub Repo
Our GitHub repository can be found here https://github.com/brianronock/fullstackdev_spring-and-react.git