How to Build a Spring Boot REST API Powered by Spring AI and OpenAI
Developers can integrate OpenAI into a Spring Boot application using the Spring AI framework, which provides two core abstractions — ChatClient and ChatModel — to simplify AI provider communication. The setup requires Java 17 or later, Maven, an OpenAI API key, and dependencies including Spring Web and the Spring AI OpenAI starter, all configurable via Spring Initializr. A simple REST endpoint such as GET /api/chat?message= can be created to accept user prompts and return AI-generated responses through the ChatClient-to-OpenAI pipeline. API keys should never be hard-coded in source files; instead, they should be stored as environment variables and referenced through Spring configuration properties. This foundational setup is intended as a starting point before introducing more advanced features like retrieval-augmented generation, memory, structured output, and AI agents.
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