Should I use `src/main/webapp` to serve static content with Spring Boot?

Question

The documentation of Spring Boot states:

Do not use the src/main/webapp directory if your application will be packaged as a jar.

But surprisingly the Spring Boot Sample for static web files is using the /src/main/webapp directory. And also JHipster is using the webapp folder.

So I'm confused. Is the warning in the documentation of Spring Boot outdated? Is it now considered good practice to use src/main/webapp to serve static files with Spring Boot jar applications? And if not, what is the recommended practice now when using Spring Boot in a Maven setup?

Answer 1

From Spring Boot Reference Documentation (emphasis mine):

By default Spring Boot will serve static content from a directory called /static (or /public or /resources or /META-INF/resources) in the classpath or from the root of the ServletContext. It uses the ResourceHttpRequestHandler from Spring MVC so you can modify that behavior by adding your own WebMvcConfigurerAdapter and overriding the addResourceHandlers method.

In some of my (Maven) projects I am currently using src/main/resources/static because it's considered part of the classpath by default and IDEs (like Eclipse) tend to like this.