Simplification of the Spring Batch API

December 7th, 2025

2 minute read

Spring Spring boot Spring Batch Advent of Spring

Introduction

Spring Boot 4 has been released last month! Considering all the new features it has, I decided to write about these features throughout the month of December. It will be an advent of Spring Boot 4 related tips!

A few days ago, I talked about the modularization of Spring Batch. This wasn’t the only change in Spring Batch though! Some of its API components have been simplified, and I’ll go over them!

JobRepository vs JobExplorer

Whenever you use Spring Batch, you somehow have to keep track of which job instance is running and what is its execution state. To do this, Spring Batch provided a JobRepository to store the job instance information.

To retrieve the job instance information on the other hand, you would typically use the JobExplorer interface. This didn’t support storing the metadata, but provided a readonly view of the information stored within JobRepository.

// An example of the JobExplorer API
var jobInstances = jobExplorer.getJobInstances(jobName, 0, 10);
var jobExecutions = jobExplorer.getJobExecutions(jobInstances.getFirst());
var isRunning = jobExecutions.getFirst().isRunning();

Starting with Spring Boot 4 and Spring Batch 6, JobRepository now extends the JobExplorer interface. This means you now only ever need to autowire JobRepository, and you can call the same methods that you used to execute on JobExplorer.

// Works since Spring Boot 4
var jobInstances = jobRepository.getJobInstances(jobName, 0, 10);
var jobExecutions = jobRepository.getJobExecutions(jobInstances.getFirst());
var isRunning = jobExecutions.getFirst().isRunning();

JobOperator vs JobLauncher

If you try to launch a Spring Batch job, you typically use the JobLauncher interface. Stopping a job on the other hand happened typically with the JobOperator interface.

// Prior to Spring Boot 4
jobLauncher.run(job, jobParameters);
var jobExecutions = jobExplorer.findRunningJobExecutions(jobName);
jobExplorer.stop(jobExecutions.getFirst().getId());

To simplify this, JobOperator now extends the JobLauncher interface. This means you now have a single interface you can use to both start and stop Spring Batch jobs.

// Starting with Spring Boot 4
jobOperator.run(job, jobParameters);
var jobExecutions = jobRepository.findRunningJobExecutions(jobName);
jobOperator.stop(jobExecutions.getFirst().getId());

Conclusion

Spring Batch combined some API’s that had a high cohesion (storing + retrieving metadata and starting + stopping jobs). Instead of using four different components, you now only need two. This results in easier to follow code, and thus less complexity!

This blogpost is a part of the Advent of Spring Boot 2025 series.