Hello developers!

Continuing our series on GitHub Copilot tips, here’s another valuable insight to enhance your coding experience:

In today’s fast-paced development environment, migrating legacy applications to modern frameworks is a common practice. One such migration is converting Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) applications to Spring Boot. This blog will guide you through the few tips on transforming your EJB application into a Spring Boot application using GitHub Copilot, an AI-powered code completion tool that can assist you in writing code more efficiently.

Step By Step Approach

Understand the Existing EJB Application:

• • Identify the EJB components (Session Beans, Message-Driven Beans, etc.).
  • Understand the business logic, data access layers, and transaction management.

Ask Copilot to explain specific EJB components or annotations.

Ask Copilot Chat:

– “Analyze this EJB component and suggest Spring Boot equivalent”

– “What Spring Boot annotations should replace these EJB annotations?”

– “Generate a component mapping document template”

Set Up a Spring Boot Project:

• • Create a new Spring Boot project using Spring Initializr or your IDE.
  • Add necessary dependencies like spring-boot-starter-web, spring-boot-starter-data-jpa, etc.

Ask Copilot for guidance on setting up a Spring Boot project with specific dependencies.

Let Copilot assist with:

– Generating pom.xml/build.gradle

– Creating application.properties

– Setting up project structure

Replace EJB Components with Spring Beans:

• • Convert Stateless and Stateful Session Beans to Spring @Service or @Component beans.
  • Replace Message-Driven Beans with Spring’s @JmsListener or other messaging solutions.

Ask Copilot for examples of converting specific EJB components to Spring beans.

Transaction Management:

• • Replace EJB’s container-managed transactions with Spring’s @Transactional annotation.

Ask Copilot for best practices on using Spring’s transaction management.

Data Access Layer:

• • Replace EJB’s JPA Entity Managers with Spring Data JPA repositories.
  • Configure the data source and JPA properties in application.properties or application.yml.

Ask Copilot for help with configuring JPA properties in application.properties or application.yml.

Dependency Injection:

• • Replace EJB’s @EJB and @Inject annotations with Spring’s @Autowired.

Ask Copilot for examples of dependency injection in Spring Boot.

Security:

• • Replace EJB security with Spring Security.

Ask Copilot for guidance on replacing EJB security with Spring Security.

Configuration:

• • Move EJB deployment descriptors to Spring Boot configuration files.

Ask Copilot for help with specific configuration settings in Spring Boot.

Considerations

Dependencies:

• • Ensure all necessary dependencies are included in the pom.xml or build.gradle.

Ask Copilot for a list of dependencies required for your Spring Boot application.

Configuration Management:

• • Use application.properties or application.yml for configuration instead of EJB deployment descriptors.

Ask Copilot Chat for help with specific configuration properties.

Testing:

• • Write unit tests and integration tests to ensure the converted application works as expected.
  • Use Spring Boot’s testing support for easier testing.

Use Copilot to generate unit tests

Performance:

• • Monitor the performance of the converted application and optimize as needed.

Ask Copilot for tips on monitoring and optimizing Spring Boot applications.

Documentation:

• • Document the changes made during the conversion process for future reference.

Ask Copilot Chat for help with documenting specific parts of your application.

Common Copilot Prompts for Migration

1. “Convert this EJB entity to JPA entity”
2. “Generate Spring Data JPA repository for this entity”
3. “Convert this EJB security configuration to Spring Security”
4. “Generate application.properties for these EJB configurations”
5. “Create integration test for this Spring service“

Conclusion: By leveraging GitHub Copilot and GitHub Copilot Chat, you can streamline the process of converting your EJB application to Spring Boot and get real-time assistance with code generation, explanations, and best practices.