Build Your First Spring AI Application with OpenAI Using Spring Boot
Build Your First Spring AI Application with OpenAI Using Spring Boot If you have been following this Spring AI series, you already understand the two most important abstractions: ChatClient and ChatModel . In the previous article, we learned that: Your Java Code | v ChatClient | v ChatModel | v AI Provider ChatClient gives us a developer-friendly API, while ChatModel handles the underlying model…
This article explains how to build a simple Spring AI application using the OpenAI service with Spring Boot. The key points are:
1. Understand the core abstractions: ChatClient and ChatModel. ChatClient provides a developer-friendly API, while ChatModel handles the underlying model integration.
2. Start building a real application by setting up a Spring Boot project with the necessary dependencies: Spring Web and Spring AI OpenAI starter.
3. Configure your OpenAI API key as an environment variable and reference it in your Spring configuration to keep secrets out of your code.
4. Configure the chat model to use in your application through the application properties.
5. Create a ChatController that injects the ChatClient, which is automatically configured by Spring AI when the appropriate model is set up.
6. Send a prompt to the ChatClient, which then sends it to the ChatModel on OpenAI's side, retrieves the AI response, and returns it to the client.
The end result is a RESTful Spring Boot API that can communicate with an AI model, demonstrating the complete flow from client request to AI response. The article emphasizes understanding this foundational flow before adding more advanced features.
Written by urgent.news from Dev.to's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
