Arconia for Spring Boot Dev Services and Observability

piotr.minkowski — Fri, 21 Nov 2025 09:32:46 +0000

This article explains how to use the Arconia framework to enhance the developer experience with Spring Boot. This project is a recent initiative under active development. However, it caught my attention because of one feature I love in Quarkus and found missing in Spring Boot. I am referring to a solution called Dev Services, which is likely familiar to those of you who are familiar with Quarkus. Dev Services supports the automatic provisioning of unconfigured services in development and test mode. Similar to Quarkus, Arconia is based on Testcontainers and also uses Spring Boot Testcontainers support.

To learn how Spring Boot supports Testcontainers, read my article on the subject. If you’re interested in Quarkus Dev Services, consider this post, which focuses on automated testing support in Quarkus.

Prerequisites

To perform the exercise described in this article, you must have the following on your laptop:

Docker / Podman
Java 21+
Maven 3.9+

Source Code

Feel free to use my source code if you’d like to try it out yourself. To do that, you must clone my sample GitHub repository. Then you should only follow my instructions.

Create Spring Boot Application

For this exercise, we will build a simple application that connects to a Postgres database and returns employee information through a REST interface. In addition to the core logic, we will also implement integration tests to verify endpoint functionality with a live database. Below is a list of required dependencies.

<dependencies>
  <dependency>
    <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
    <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-data-jpa</artifactId>
  </dependency>
  <dependency>
    <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
    <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-web</artifactId>
  </dependency>
  <dependency>
    <groupId>org.postgresql</groupId>
    <artifactId>postgresql</artifactId>
    <scope>runtime</scope>
  </dependency>
  <dependency>
    <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
    <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-test</artifactId>
    <scope>test</scope>
  </dependency>
</dependencies>


  
    org.springframework.boot
    spring-boot-starter-data-jpa
  
  
    org.springframework.boot
    spring-boot-starter-web
  
  
    org.postgresql
    postgresql
    runtime
  
  
    org.springframework.boot
    spring-boot-starter-test
    test

XML

Here’s the Employee domain object, which is stored in the employee table:

@Entity
public class Employee {

    @Id
    @GeneratedValue(strategy = GenerationType.IDENTITY)
    private Integer id;
    private int organizationId;
    private int departmentId;
    private String name;
    private int age;
    private String position;
    
    // GETTERS and SETTERS
    
}

@Entity
public class Employee {

    @Id
    @GeneratedValue(strategy = GenerationType.IDENTITY)
    private Integer id;
    private int organizationId;
    private int departmentId;
    private String name;
    private int age;
    private String position;
    
    // GETTERS and SETTERS
    
}

Java

Here’s the Spring Data repository interface responsible for interacting with the Postgres database:

public interface EmployeeRepository extends CrudRepository<Employee, Integer> {

    List<Employee> findByDepartmentId(int departmentId);
    List<Employee> findByOrganizationId(int organizationId);

}

public interface EmployeeRepository extends CrudRepository<Employee, Integer> {

    List<Employee> findByDepartmentId(int departmentId);
    List<Employee> findByOrganizationId(int organizationId);

}

Java

This is the EmployeeController code with several REST endpoints that allow us to add and find employees in the database:

@RestController
@RequestMapping("/employees")
public class EmployeeController {

    private static final Logger LOGGER = LoggerFactory
       .getLogger(EmployeeController.class);

    @Autowired
    EmployeeRepository repository;

    @PostMapping
    public Employee add(@RequestBody Employee employee) {
        LOGGER.info("Employee add...: {}", employee);
        return repository.save(employee);
    }

    @GetMapping("/{id}")
    public Employee findById(@PathVariable("id") Integer id) {
        LOGGER.info("Employee find: id={}", id);
        return repository.findById(id).get();
    }

    @GetMapping
    public List<Employee> findAll() {
        LOGGER.info("Employee find");
        return (List<Employee>) repository.findAll();
    }

    @GetMapping("/department/{departmentId}")
    public List<Employee> findByDepartment(@PathVariable("departmentId") int departmentId) {
        LOGGER.info("Employee find: departmentId={}", departmentId);
        return repository.findByDepartmentId(departmentId);
    }

    @GetMapping("/organization/{organizationId}")
    public List<Employee> findByOrganization(@PathVariable("organizationId") int organizationId) {
        LOGGER.info("Employee find: organizationId={}", organizationId);
        return repository.findByOrganizationId(organizationId);
    }

    @GetMapping("/department-with-delay/{departmentId}")
    public List<Employee> findByDepartmentWithDelay(@PathVariable("departmentId") int departmentId) throws InterruptedException {
        LOGGER.info("Employee find with delay: departmentId={}", departmentId);
        Thread.sleep(2000);
        return repository.findByDepartmentId(departmentId);
    }

}

@RestController
@RequestMapping("/employees")
public class EmployeeController {

    private static final Logger LOGGER = LoggerFactory
       .getLogger(EmployeeController.class);

    @Autowired
    EmployeeRepository repository;

    @PostMapping
    public Employee add(@RequestBody Employee employee) {
        LOGGER.info("Employee add...: {}", employee);
        return repository.save(employee);
    }

    @GetMapping("/{id}")
    public Employee findById(@PathVariable("id") Integer id) {
        LOGGER.info("Employee find: id={}", id);
        return repository.findById(id).get();
    }

    @GetMapping
    public List<Employee> findAll() {
        LOGGER.info("Employee find");
        return (List<Employee>) repository.findAll();
    }

    @GetMapping("/department/{departmentId}")
    public List<Employee> findByDepartment(@PathVariable("departmentId") int departmentId) {
        LOGGER.info("Employee find: departmentId={}", departmentId);
        return repository.findByDepartmentId(departmentId);
    }

    @GetMapping("/organization/{organizationId}")
    public List<Employee> findByOrganization(@PathVariable("organizationId") int organizationId) {
        LOGGER.info("Employee find: organizationId={}", organizationId);
        return repository.findByOrganizationId(organizationId);
    }

    @GetMapping("/department-with-delay/{departmentId}")
    public List<Employee> findByDepartmentWithDelay(@PathVariable("departmentId") int departmentId) throws InterruptedException {
        LOGGER.info("Employee find with delay: departmentId={}", departmentId);
        Thread.sleep(2000);
        return repository.findByDepartmentId(departmentId);
    }

}

Java

With the following configuration in the application.yml, we will initialize the database schema on the application or tests startup:

spring:
  application:
    name: sample-spring-web-with-db
  jpa:
    hibernate:
      ddl-auto: create
    properties:
      hibernate:
        show_sql: true
        format_sql: true

spring:
  application:
    name: sample-spring-web-with-db
  jpa:
    hibernate:
      ddl-auto: create
    properties:
      hibernate:
        show_sql: true
        format_sql: true

YAML

Finally, here’s the @SpringBootTest that calls and verifies previously implemented REST endpoints:

@SpringBootTest(webEnvironment = SpringBootTest.WebEnvironment.RANDOM_PORT)
@TestMethodOrder(MethodOrderer.OrderAnnotation.class)
public class EmployeeControllerTests {

    @Autowired
    TestRestTemplate restTemplate;

    @Test
    @Order(1)
    public void testAdd() {
        Employee employee = new Employee();
        employee.setName("John Doe");
        employee.setAge(30);
        employee.setPosition("Manager");
        employee.setDepartmentId(1);
        employee.setOrganizationId(1);
        employee = restTemplate.postForObject("/employees", employee, Employee.class);
        Assertions.assertNotNull(employee);
        Assertions.assertNotNull(employee.getId());
    }

    @Test
    @Order(2)
    public void testFindById() {
        Employee employee = restTemplate.getForObject("/employees/1", Employee.class);
        Assertions.assertNotNull(employee);
        Assertions.assertEquals(1, employee.getId());
    }

    @Test
    @Order(3)
    public void testFindAll() {
        Employee[] employees = restTemplate.getForObject("/employees", Employee[].class);
        Assertions.assertNotNull(employees);
        Assertions.assertEquals(1, employees.length);
    }

    @Test
    @Order(4)
    public void testFindByDepartment() {
        List<Employee> employees = restTemplate.getForObject("/employees/department/1", List.class);
        Assertions.assertNotNull(employees);
        Assertions.assertEquals(1, employees.size());
    }

}

@SpringBootTest(webEnvironment = SpringBootTest.WebEnvironment.RANDOM_PORT)
@TestMethodOrder(MethodOrderer.OrderAnnotation.class)
public class EmployeeControllerTests {

    @Autowired
    TestRestTemplate restTemplate;

    @Test
    @Order(1)
    public void testAdd() {
        Employee employee = new Employee();
        employee.setName("John Doe");
        employee.setAge(30);
        employee.setPosition("Manager");
        employee.setDepartmentId(1);
        employee.setOrganizationId(1);
        employee = restTemplate.postForObject("/employees", employee, Employee.class);
        Assertions.assertNotNull(employee);
        Assertions.assertNotNull(employee.getId());
    }

    @Test
    @Order(2)
    public void testFindById() {
        Employee employee = restTemplate.getForObject("/employees/1", Employee.class);
        Assertions.assertNotNull(employee);
        Assertions.assertEquals(1, employee.getId());
    }

    @Test
    @Order(3)
    public void testFindAll() {
        Employee[] employees = restTemplate.getForObject("/employees", Employee[].class);
        Assertions.assertNotNull(employees);
        Assertions.assertEquals(1, employees.length);
    }

    @Test
    @Order(4)
    public void testFindByDepartment() {
        List<Employee> employees = restTemplate.getForObject("/employees/department/1", List.class);
        Assertions.assertNotNull(employees);
        Assertions.assertEquals(1, employees.size());
    }

}

Java

Spring Boot Dev Services with Arconia

The Arconia framework offers multiple modules to support development services for the most popular databases and event brokers. To add support for the Postgres database, include the following dependency in your Maven pom.xml:

<dependency>
  <groupId>io.arconia</groupId>
  <artifactId>arconia-dev-services-postgresql</artifactId>
  <scope>runtime</scope>
  <optional>true</optional>
</dependency>


  io.arconia
  arconia-dev-services-postgresql
  runtime
  true

XML

We will add other Arconia modules later, so let’s include the BOM (Bill of Materials) with the latest version:

<dependencyManagement>
  <dependencies>
    <dependency>
      <groupId>io.arconia</groupId>
      <artifactId>arconia-bom</artifactId>
      <version>0.18.2</version>
      <type>pom</type>
      <scope>import</scope>
    </dependency>
  </dependencies>
</dependencyManagement>


  
    
      io.arconia
      arconia-bom
      0.18.2
      pom
      import

XML

And that’s all we needed to do. Now you can run the application in developer mode using the Maven command or through the arconia CLI. CLI is an add-on here, so for now, let’s stick with the standard mvn command.

mvn spring-boot:run

mvn spring-boot:run

ShellSession

You can also run automated tests with the mvn test command or through the IDE’s graphical interface.

Spring Boot Observability with Arconia

Dev services are just one of the features offered by Arconia. In this article, I will present a simple scenario of integrating with the Grafana observability stack using OpenTelemetry. This time, we will include two dependencies. The first is a special Spring Boot starter provided by Arconia, which automatically configures OpenTelemetry, Micrometer, and Spring Boot Actuator for your app. The second dependency includes the dev services for a Grafana LGTM observability platform, which contains: Loki, Grafana, Prometheus, Tempo, and OpenTelemetry collector.

<dependency>
  <groupId>io.arconia</groupId>
  <artifactId>arconia-opentelemetry-spring-boot-starter</artifactId>
</dependency>
<dependency>
  <groupId>io.arconia</groupId>
  <artifactId>arconia-dev-services-lgtm</artifactId>
  <scope>runtime</scope>
  <optional>true</optional>
</dependency>


  io.arconia
  arconia-opentelemetry-spring-boot-starter


  io.arconia
  arconia-dev-services-lgtm
  runtime
  true

XML

In addition to the standard Arconia Observability settings, we will enable all built-in resource contributors. Below is the required configuration to add to the application settings in the application.yml file.

arconia:
 otel:
   resource:
     contributors:
       build:
         enabled: true
       host:
         enabled: true
       java:
         enabled: true
       os:
         enabled: true
       process:
         enabled: true

arconia:
 otel:
   resource:
     contributors:
       build:
         enabled: true
       host:
         enabled: true
       java:
         enabled: true
       os:
         enabled: true
       process:
         enabled: true

YAML

That’s it. Let’s start our application in development mode once again.

mvn spring-boot:run

mvn spring-boot:run

ShellSession

This time, Arconia starts one container more than before. I can access the Grafana dashboard at http://localhost:33383.

Let’s display all the containers running locally:

$ docker ps
CONTAINER ID  IMAGE                                   COMMAND               CREATED        STATUS        PORTS                                                                                                                                                 NAMES
a6a097fb9ebe  docker.io/testcontainers/ryuk:0.12.0    /bin/ryuk             2 minutes ago  Up 2 minutes  0.0.0.0:42583->8080/tcp                                                                                                                               testcontainers-ryuk-dfdea2da-0bbd-43fa-9f50-3e9d966d877f
917d74a5a0ad  docker.io/library/postgres:18.0-alpine  postgres -c fsync...  2 minutes ago  Up 2 minutes  0.0.0.0:38409->5432/tcp                                                                                                                               pensive_mcnulty
090a9434d1fd  docker.io/grafana/otel-lgtm:0.11.16     /otel-lgtm/run-al...  2 minutes ago  Up 2 minutes  0.0.0.0:33383->3000/tcp, 0.0.0.0:39501->3100/tcp, 0.0.0.0:32867->3200/tcp, 0.0.0.0:40389->4317/tcp, 0.0.0.0:46739->4318/tcp, 0.0.0.0:36915->9090/tcp  vigorous_euler

$ docker ps
CONTAINER ID  IMAGE                                   COMMAND               CREATED        STATUS        PORTS                                                                                                                                                 NAMES
a6a097fb9ebe  docker.io/testcontainers/ryuk:0.12.0    /bin/ryuk             2 minutes ago  Up 2 minutes  0.0.0.0:42583->8080/tcp                                                                                                                               testcontainers-ryuk-dfdea2da-0bbd-43fa-9f50-3e9d966d877f
917d74a5a0ad  docker.io/library/postgres:18.0-alpine  postgres -c fsync...  2 minutes ago  Up 2 minutes  0.0.0.0:38409->5432/tcp                                                                                                                               pensive_mcnulty
090a9434d1fd  docker.io/grafana/otel-lgtm:0.11.16     /otel-lgtm/run-al...  2 minutes ago  Up 2 minutes  0.0.0.0:33383->3000/tcp, 0.0.0.0:39501->3100/tcp, 0.0.0.0:32867->3200/tcp, 0.0.0.0:40389->4317/tcp, 0.0.0.0:46739->4318/tcp, 0.0.0.0:36915->9090/tcp  vigorous_euler

ShellSession

And now for the best part. Right after launch, our application is fully integrated with the Grafana stack. For example, logs are sent to the Loki instance, from which we can view them in the Grafana UI.

We can also display a dashboard with Spring Boot metrics.

Right after launch, I sent several test POST and GET requests to the application endpoints. Information about this is available in Grafana Tempo.

We can also verify JVM statistics in a dedicated dashboard.

What more could you want?

Conclusion

Arconia is an exciting and promising project, which I will be watching closely in the future. It is a relatively new initiative that is still undergoing intensive development. Arconia already offers several practical solutions that significantly simplify working with the Spring Boot application. I have shown you how this framework works in a simple scenario: running and integrating our application with the Postgres database and the Grafana observability stack using the Micrometer framework.

The post Arconia for Spring Boot Dev Services and Observability appeared first on Piotr's TechBlog.

open-telemetry Archives - Piotr's TechBlog

Arconia for Spring Boot Dev Services and Observability

Prerequisites

Source Code

Create Spring Boot Application

Spring Boot Dev Services with Arconia

Spring Boot Observability with Arconia

Conclusion