Spring Boot Rocks!

In case you have missed this wonder ...

Spring Boot makes it easy to create stand-alone, production-grade Spring based Applications that you can "just run". We take an opinionated view of the Spring platform and third-party libraries so you can get started with minimum fuss. Most Spring Boot applications need very little Spring configuration.

It is really a great tool and I can't recommend it  enough.
When coding a micro-service or a single context application I can't think of an easier way of hosting your spring context.

Developers need tools and technology that allow them to get started quickly with the least amount of friction. They also demand modular, lightweight and opinionated technology to optimize productivity. Spring Boot takes aim at the very issue of getting up and running quickly while dramatically improving development velocity.

To get started with Spring Boot, you can add to a POM file the following settings:

<parent>
    <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
    <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-parent</artifactId>
    <version>1.2.1.RELEASE</version>
</parent>
<dependencies>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-web</artifactId>
    </dependency>
</dependencies>

Or point your browser at Spring Initializer -http://start.spring.io. Spring Initializer provides a web based interface allowing developers to select an application/workload and relevant dependencies. It will then generate a starter application with build support (supports Maven POM, Maven project, Gradle Config, Gradle project).

Screenshot of Spring Initializer:

Get over to http://projects.spring.io/spring-boot/ and party!