Spring Explorer

Scans your workspace and shows your Spring beans in a dedicated editor panel, grouped by dependency level: the length of the longest chain of project beans each one injects.

• Level 0 — beans that inject no other project bean (repositories, mappers, leaf services…)
• Level N — beans whose deepest injected dependency is at level N − 1 (controllers usually sit at the top)

Usage

Run Spring Explorer: Open from the Command Palette (Ctrl+Shift+P / Cmd+Shift+P), or right-click a .java file and choose Spring Explorer: Reveal Bean. The workspace is analyzed the first time the panel opens; use the ⟳ button to re-analyze after changes.

Views

• Board — one column per stereotype (controllers, services, repositories…). Select a bean to highlight what it injects (green) and what injects it (purple).
• Hierarchy — top-level beans (not injected by any other bean, typically controllers) at the root; expand one to see what it injects, recursively. Circular dependencies are marked ↻ circular.
• Endpoints — every HTTP endpoint grouped by controller, with its method and full path (class-level @RequestMapping prefix included). Click one to jump to its handler.

What is detected

• Beans — @Component, @Service, @Repository, @Controller, @RestController, @Configuration, @SpringBootApplication, @ControllerAdvice, @Named, custom stereotype annotations (e.g. @UseCase meta-annotated with @Service), @Bean methods, Spring Data repository interfaces, MyBatis/MapStruct @Mappers, @FeignClients and DGS @DgsComponents
• Injection — constructor injection (explicit, single implicit constructor, records, Lombok @RequiredArgsConstructor / @AllArgsConstructor), @Autowired / @Inject / @Resource fields and setters, and @Bean method parameters
• Resolution — interfaces resolve to their implementations, honoring @Qualifier, @Primary and bean names; List<T>, Set<T>, Map<String, T>, Optional<T> and ObjectProvider<T> are unwrapped
• External dependencies — injected types no project bean provides (JdbcTemplate, RestTemplate…) are listed in the details pane

Features

• Details pane for the selected bean: bean name, stereotype, level, injects, injected by, external dependencies, endpoints, and notable annotations (@Primary, @Profile, @Transactional…)
• Filter by name and an Unused only toggle: services, components, repositories, mappers and clients no project bean injects. Framework-invoked beans (controllers, configurations, listeners, @Scheduled jobs, filters, runners, beans referenced from SpEL…) are never reported as unused.
• Follows the active editor: switching files selects that file's bean
• Double-click a bean (or use Open file) to open its source beside the panel
• No Java language server or build required — sources are parsed directly; uses your VS Code theme colors

Limitations

The analysis is static and source-based: beans registered programmatically, through auto-configuration from libraries, or conditionally (@Profile, @ConditionalOn…) are shown as declared, without evaluating which ones would be active. Test sources (src/test) are ignored.

Feedback

If you have suggestions or encounter issues, please open an issue in the repository.

License

MIT