Spring Boot REST API Contract

Design the endpoint set as a consumer-visible contract: resources, actions, status codes, one error shape, and a bounded read model. Transport mechanics are a separate concern and belong to spring-boot-mvc.

When to use

• Adding, renaming, or removing an endpoint, path, method, status code, or required header.
• Designing an error contract, a stable machine-readable code, or a ProblemDetail extension member.
• Designing list endpoints, page envelopes, cursors, filters, sort allow-lists, Idempotency-Key retries, If-Match concurrency, or a pollable job resource for long-running work.

When not to use

• Filter, interceptor, message converter, CORS, or async mechanics: use spring-boot-mvc.
• Constraint definitions, groups, or binding failures: use spring-boot-validation.
• Choosing DTO fields, records, or entity-to-DTO mapping: use spring-boot-dto.
• Deciding whether the URL carries a version prefix and how versions route: use spring-boot-api-versioning.
• Generating or reviewing the OpenAPI document: use spring-boot-openapi.
• Authentication, authorization, or rate-limit identity: use spring-boot-security.
• Writing MockMvc or Testcontainers contract tests: use spring-boot-integration-testing.