Spring Boot Application displays no error, but tomcat not initialized and application.properties is unused - spring

Question

I created a new project using Spring Initializr, and opened it with Intellij IDEA version 2020.3.2 ide. After maven installed all dependencies in the pom.xml file, I ran the main method in the DemoApplication class. I didn't add anything new or different than the default project created by the Spring Initializr.
Two Problems occured:
1- Console outputted only these 3 logs, and Tomcat wasn't initialized
2021-02-03 23:48:45.073 INFO 15872 --- [ main] com.example.DemoApplication: Starting DemoApplication using Java 1.8.0_281 on DESKTOP-M with PID 15872 (D:\demo\target\classes started by M in D:\demo)
2021-02-03 23:48:45.078 INFO 15872 --- [ main] com.example.DemoApplication : No active profile set,falling back to default profiles: default
2021-02-03 23:48:46.355 INFO 15872 --- [ main] com.example.DemoApplication: Started DemoApplication in 2.062 seconds (JVM running for 2.87)
Process finished with exit code 0
2- Anything I write in the application.properties file turns grey (unused)
I watched a lot of tutorials, and did exactly as they do. Their console output always has more than 3 statements and is even colored, which mine isn't
My pom.xml
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 https://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd">
<modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
<parent>
<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-boot-starter-parent</artifactId>
<version>2.4.2</version>
<relativePath/> <!-- lookup parent from repository -->
</parent>
<groupId>com.example</groupId>
<artifactId>demo</artifactId>
<version>0.0.1-SNAPSHOT</version>
<packaging>war</packaging>
<name>demo</name>
<description>Demo project for Spring Boot</description>
<properties>
<java.version>1.8</java.version>
</properties>
<dependencies>
<dependency>
<groupId>commons-logging</groupId>
<artifactId>commons-logging</artifactId>
<version>1.1.1</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-boot-starter-web</artifactId>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>com.oracle.database.jdbc</groupId>
<artifactId>ojdbc8</artifactId>
<scope>runtime</scope>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-boot-starter-tomcat</artifactId>
<scope>provided</scope>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-boot-starter-test</artifactId>
<scope>test</scope>
</dependency>
</dependencies>
<build>
<plugins>
<plugin>
<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-boot-maven-plugin</artifactId>
</plugin>
</plugins>
</build>
</project>
DemoApplication.java
package com.example;
import org.springframework.boot.SpringApplication;
import org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.SpringBootApplication;
#SpringBootApplication
public class DemoApplication {
public static void main(String[] args) {
SpringApplication.run(DemoApplication.class, args);
}
}
Would appreciate it if you would help me figure out how to correctly run the project and have the server up and running.
Should I add anymore run Options?
External Libraries:

Answer 1

This issue is reproducible with a simple war initializer, when you run DemoApplication with a "standalone java" (IDE run) configuration.
The solution/correct usage is: To run (the project) in a "maven" spring-boot:run (IDE run) configuration.
Like:

Answer 2

It looks like you are using IntelliJ IDEA Community Edition which has no support for Spring Boot.
That is why the properties are not highlighted and the output is not colored.
IntelliJ IDEA Ultimate will use Spring Boot Run/Debug configuration type automatically:
As a workaround you can run your code via Maven spring-boot:run.

Answer 3

I saw the same behavior when I setup a project with pox.xml you provided.
The "Include dependencies with "Provided" fixed it for me. However I had to reload the Maven dependencies like this a few times: pom.xml (right click) -> Maven -> Reload Project.
I would still suggest that you remove <scope>provided</scope> in spring-boot-starter-tomcat.
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-boot-starter-tomcat</artifactId>
<!-- Comment this out -->
<!-- <scope>provided</scope> -->
</dependency>
Here is a good answer - Java Spring Boot - spring-boot-starter-tomcat dependency doesn't work with scope provided when running locally
If you still need this project to run in an external Tomcat container and thus want to mark the spring-boot-spring-boot-starter dependency as "provided", you can specify a separate profile for that configuration - https://stackoverflow.com/a/42302247