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Once the early-adopter seats are all used, the price will go up and stay at $33/year.

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Azure Container Apps is a fully managed serverless container service that enables you to build and deploy modern, cloud-native Java applications and microservices at scale. It offers a simplified developer experience while providing the flexibility and portability of containers.

Of course, Azure Container Apps has really solid support for our ecosystem, from a number of build options, managed Java components, native metrics, dynamic logger, and quite a bit more.

To learn more about Java features on Azure Container Apps, visit the documentation page.

You can also ask questions and leave feedback on the Azure Container Apps GitHub page.

Partner – Microsoft – NPI EA (cat= Spring Boot)
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Azure Container Apps is a fully managed serverless container service that enables you to build and deploy modern, cloud-native Java applications and microservices at scale. It offers a simplified developer experience while providing the flexibility and portability of containers.

Of course, Azure Container Apps has really solid support for our ecosystem, from a number of build options, managed Java components, native metrics, dynamic logger, and quite a bit more.

To learn more about Java features on Azure Container Apps, you can get started over on the documentation page.

And, you can also ask questions and leave feedback on the Azure Container Apps GitHub page.

Partner – Orkes – NPI EA (cat=Spring)
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Modern software architecture is often broken. Slow delivery leads to missed opportunities, innovation is stalled due to architectural complexities, and engineering resources are exceedingly expensive.

Orkes is the leading workflow orchestration platform built to enable teams to transform the way they develop, connect, and deploy applications, microservices, AI agents, and more.

With Orkes Conductor managed through Orkes Cloud, developers can focus on building mission critical applications without worrying about infrastructure maintenance to meet goals and, simply put, taking new products live faster and reducing total cost of ownership.

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Partner – Orkes – NPI EA (tag=Microservices)
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Modern software architecture is often broken. Slow delivery leads to missed opportunities, innovation is stalled due to architectural complexities, and engineering resources are exceedingly expensive.

Orkes is the leading workflow orchestration platform built to enable teams to transform the way they develop, connect, and deploy applications, microservices, AI agents, and more.

With Orkes Conductor managed through Orkes Cloud, developers can focus on building mission critical applications without worrying about infrastructure maintenance to meet goals and, simply put, taking new products live faster and reducing total cost of ownership.

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Mocking is an essential part of unit testing, and the Mockito library makes it easy to write clean and intuitive unit tests for your Java code.

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eBook – Java Concurrency – NPI EA (cat=Java Concurrency)
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eBook – Java Streams – NPI EA (cat=Java Streams)
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Since its introduction in Java 8, the Stream API has become a staple of Java development. The basic operations like iterating, filtering, mapping sequences of elements are deceptively simple to use.

But these can also be overused and fall into some common pitfalls.

To get a better understanding on how Streams work and how to combine them with other language features, check out our guide to Java Streams:

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Explore Spring Boot 3 and Spring 6 in-depth through building a full REST API with the framework:

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Yes, Spring Security can be complex, from the more advanced functionality within the Core to the deep OAuth support in the framework.

I built the security material as two full courses - Core and OAuth, to get practical with these more complex scenarios. We explore when and how to use each feature and code through it on the backing project.

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Course – All Access – NPI EA (cat= Spring)
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Spring Data JPA is a great way to handle the complexity of JPA with the powerful simplicity of Spring Boot.

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End-to-end testing is a very useful method to make sure that your application works as intended. This highlights issues in the overall functionality of the software, that the unit and integration test stages may miss.

Playwright is an easy-to-use, but powerful tool that automates end-to-end testing, and supports all modern browsers and platforms.

When coupled with LambdaTest (an AI-powered cloud-based test execution platform) it can be further scaled to run the Playwright scripts in parallel across 3000+ browser and device combinations:

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1. Overview

In the most basic sense, a program is a list of instructions. Control structures are programming blocks that can change the path we take through those instructions.

In this tutorial, we’ll explore control structures in Java.

There are three kinds of control structures:

  • Conditional Branches, which we use for choosing between two or more paths. There are three types in Java: if/else/else if, ternary operator and switch.
  • Loops that are used to iterate through multiple values/objects and repeatedly run specific code blocks. The basic loop types in Java are for, while and do while.
  • Branching Statements, which are used to alter the flow of control in loops. There are two types in Java: break and continue.

2. If/Else/Else If

The if/else statement is the most basic of control structures, but can also be considered the very basis of decision making in programming.

While if can be used by itself, the most common use-scenario is choosing between two paths with if/else:

if (count > 2) {
    System.out.println("Count is higher than 2");
} else {
    System.out.println("Count is lower or equal than 2");
}

Theoretically, we can infinitely chain or nest if/else blocks but this will hurt code readability, and that’s why it’s not advised.

We’ll explore alternative statements in the rest of this article.

3. Ternary Operator

We can use a ternary operator as a shorthand expression that works like an if/else statement.

Let’s see our if/else example again:

if (count > 2) {
    System.out.println("Count is higher than 2");
} else {
    System.out.println("Count is lower or equal than 2");
}

We can refactor this with a ternary as follows:

System.out.println(count > 2 ? "Count is higher than 2" : "Count is lower or equal than 2");

While ternary can be a great way to make our code more readable, it isn’t always a good substitute for if/else.

4. Switch

If we have multiple cases to choose from, we can use a switch statement.

Let’s again see a simple example:

int count = 3;
switch (count) {
case 0:
    System.out.println("Count is equal to 0");
    break;
case 1:
    System.out.println("Count is equal to 1");
    break;
default:
    System.out.println("Count is either negative, or higher than 1");
    break;
}

Three or more if/else statements can be hard to read. As one of the possible workarounds, we can use switch, as seen above.

And also keep in mind that switch has scope and input limitations that we need to remember before using it.

5. Loops

We use loops when we need to repeat the same code multiple times in succession.

Let’s see a quick example of comparable for and while type of loops:

for (int i = 1; i <= 50; i++) {
    methodToRepeat();
}

int whileCounter = 1;
while (whileCounter <= 50) {
    methodToRepeat();
    whileCounter++;
}

Both code blocks above will call methodToRepeat 50 times.

6. Break

We need to use break to exit early from a loop.

Let’s see a quick example:

List<String> names = getNameList();
String name = "John Doe";
int index = 0;
for ( ; index < names.length; index++) {
    if (names[index].equals(name)) {
        break;
    }
}

Here, we are looking for a name in a list of names, and we want to stop looking once we’ve found it.

A loop would normally go to completion, but we’ve used break here to short-circuit that and exit early.

7. Continue

Simply put, continue means to skip the rest of the loop we’re in:

List<String> names = getNameList();
String name = "John Doe";
String list = "";
for (int i = 0; i < names.length; i++) { 
    if (names[i].equals(name)) {
        continue;
    }
    list += names[i];
}

Here, we skip appending the duplicate names into the list.

As we’ve seen here, break and continue can be handy when iterating, though they can often be rewritten with return statements or other logic.

8. Conclusion

In this quick article, we learned what control structures are and how to use them to manage flow control in our Java programs.

The code backing this article is available on GitHub. Once you're logged in as a Baeldung Pro Member, start learning and coding on the project.
Baeldung Pro – NPI EA (cat = Baeldung)
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Baeldung Pro comes with both absolutely No-Ads as well as finally with Dark Mode, for a clean learning experience:

>> Explore a clean Baeldung

Once the early-adopter seats are all used, the price will go up and stay at $33/year.

Partner – Microsoft – NPI EA (cat = Spring Boot)
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Azure Container Apps is a fully managed serverless container service that enables you to build and deploy modern, cloud-native Java applications and microservices at scale. It offers a simplified developer experience while providing the flexibility and portability of containers.

Of course, Azure Container Apps has really solid support for our ecosystem, from a number of build options, managed Java components, native metrics, dynamic logger, and quite a bit more.

To learn more about Java features on Azure Container Apps, visit the documentation page.

You can also ask questions and leave feedback on the Azure Container Apps GitHub page.

Partner – Orkes – NPI EA (cat = Spring)
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Modern software architecture is often broken. Slow delivery leads to missed opportunities, innovation is stalled due to architectural complexities, and engineering resources are exceedingly expensive.

Orkes is the leading workflow orchestration platform built to enable teams to transform the way they develop, connect, and deploy applications, microservices, AI agents, and more.

With Orkes Conductor managed through Orkes Cloud, developers can focus on building mission critical applications without worrying about infrastructure maintenance to meet goals and, simply put, taking new products live faster and reducing total cost of ownership.

Try a 14-Day Free Trial of Orkes Conductor today.

Partner – Orkes – NPI EA (tag = Microservices)
announcement - icon

Modern software architecture is often broken. Slow delivery leads to missed opportunities, innovation is stalled due to architectural complexities, and engineering resources are exceedingly expensive.

Orkes is the leading workflow orchestration platform built to enable teams to transform the way they develop, connect, and deploy applications, microservices, AI agents, and more.

With Orkes Conductor managed through Orkes Cloud, developers can focus on building mission critical applications without worrying about infrastructure maintenance to meet goals and, simply put, taking new products live faster and reducing total cost of ownership.

Try a 14-Day Free Trial of Orkes Conductor today.

eBook – HTTP Client – NPI EA (cat=HTTP Client-Side)
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The Apache HTTP Client is a very robust library, suitable for both simple and advanced use cases when testing HTTP endpoints. Check out our guide covering basic request and response handling, as well as security, cookies, timeouts, and more:

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eBook – Java Concurrency – NPI EA (cat=Java Concurrency)
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Handling concurrency in an application can be a tricky process with many potential pitfalls. A solid grasp of the fundamentals will go a long way to help minimize these issues.

Get started with understanding multi-threaded applications with our Java Concurrency guide:

>> Download the eBook

eBook – Java Streams – NPI EA (cat=Java Streams)
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Since its introduction in Java 8, the Stream API has become a staple of Java development. The basic operations like iterating, filtering, mapping sequences of elements are deceptively simple to use.

But these can also be overused and fall into some common pitfalls.

To get a better understanding on how Streams work and how to combine them with other language features, check out our guide to Java Streams:

>> Join Pro and download the eBook

eBook – Persistence – NPI EA (cat=Persistence)
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Working on getting your persistence layer right with Spring?

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Course – LS – NPI EA (cat=REST)

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Course – Spring Sale 2025 – NPI EA (cat= Baeldung)
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