Neither Spring Boot Actuator + Hal-Browser nor DevTools working - spring

Question

Updated: Attached pom.xml and application.property and some more error / warning msgs.
Hi I am very new to Spring Boot and just taking some classes on Udemy for it.
While following through a class, I create a starter project via spring.io and added actuator and Hal browser dependencies including Dev tools.
Just ran my app and tried to go to localhost:8080/application & /browser as well but I get 404.
What am I doing wrong?
I wrote a simple bean which returns a hard coded value and then print that, I changed the value to test Dev tools and it didn’t restart the resource , I had to kill and restart the app to reflect the new changes ..
How can I check what the issue ?
I can provide console grab if needed.
Please help.
Update: I don't know the significance of the following so putting it in here.
in the XML editor hal is red underlined with the following msg on hover:
The managed version is 3.0.5.RELEASE The artifact is managed in org.springframework.data:spring-data-releasetrain:Kay-SR5
in the XML editor devtools is red underlined with the following msg on hover:
The managed version is 2.0.0.RELEASE The artifact is managed in org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-dependencies:2.0.0.RELEASE
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 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd">
<modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
<groupId>com.myoxigen.training.springboot</groupId>
<artifactId>library</artifactId>
<version>0.0.1-SNAPSHOT</version>
<packaging>jar</packaging>
<name>library</name>
<description>Demo project for Spring Boot</description>
<parent>
<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-boot-starter-parent</artifactId>
<version>2.0.0.RELEASE</version>
<relativePath/> <!-- lookup parent from repository -->
</parent>
<properties>
<project.build.sourceEncoding>UTF-8</project.build.sourceEncoding>
<project.reporting.outputEncoding>UTF-8</project.reporting.outputEncoding>
<java.version>1.8</java.version>
</properties>
<dependencies>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-boot-starter-web</artifactId>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-boot-starter-actuator</artifactId>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework.data</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-data-rest-hal-browser</artifactId>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-boot-starter-test</artifactId>
<scope>test</scope>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-boot-devtools</artifactId>
</dependency>
</dependencies>
<build>
<plugins>
<plugin>
<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-boot-maven-plugin</artifactId>
</plugin>
</plugins>
</build>
</project>
application.properties file:
logging.level.org.springframework = DEBUG
management.security.enabled=false

Answer 1

Note: This answer is based on Spring Boot 2 (paths and properties have changed from version 1).
Your pom.xml looks fine to me. To get the "HAL Browser" to work with actuator you should have starters: web, actuator, and Rest Repositories HAL Browser. I recommend Spring Initializr as a nice way to construct an initial valid project structure.
The default path for the actuator is /actuator. Health, for example, is at /actuator/health.
To view the actuator endpoints in the HAL Browser, go to /browser/index.html#/actuator.
You can change the actuator path in application.properties by setting the following.
management.endpoints.web.base-path=/actuator
To run your server, use the following console command:
./mvnw clean spring-boot:run
If you have DevTools in your project, then changes to files in your classpath will restart the server. See my further comments on how to take advantage of DevTools here.
Here's the relevant documentation on a single page for easy searching:
https://docs.spring.io/spring-boot/docs/2.0.0.RELEASE/reference/htmlsingle
https://docs.spring.io/spring-boot/docs/current/reference/htmlsingle

Answer 2

Add this Dependency:
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework.data</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-data-rest-hal-browser</artifactId>
<version>3.3.5.RELEASE</version>
</dependency>`enter code here`
And then go to link:
http://localhost:8080/browser/index.html#

Answer 3

Spring Boot 2.2 apps should use spring-data-rest-hal-explorer rather than spring-data-rest-hal-browser
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework.data</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-data-rest-hal-explorer</artifactId>
</dependency>

Answer 4

For enabling actuator, add this into the property file (application.properties)
management.endpoints.web.exposure.include=*
Restart the Spring boot application and access the actuator endpoints using:
http://localhost:8080/actuator/
the health of the application can also be monitored using:
http://localhost:8080/actuator/health
dependency required:
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-boot-starter-actuator</artifactId>
</dependency>

Answer 5

Ain't you were studying a course by "in28minutes"? =) Anyway when I studied on a Spring Boot for Beginners in 10 Steps course, I faced the same issue with accessing http://localhost:8080/application.
For http://localhost:8080/browser I got a plain json:
{"cause":null,"message":"Fragment must not be empty"}
In pom.xml I had the same dependencies as you outlined in question.
Some googling brought me to this article. In section named "II. Hal Browser" you can see a screenshot, where in browser a link is http://localhost:8080/browser/index.html#. If use this link, then Hal Browser should magically appear.
So /index.html# was the only puzzle piece you missed.
Note: above approach worked with Spring Boot version 2.1.7
EDIT: despite the fact that Hal Browser itself works with above approach, it still doesn't show actuator endpoints. And DevTools also ain't working for me.