Article Summary
The Model Context Protocol (MCP) facilitates AI models' interaction with external tools and APIs, enhancing their real-time capabilities.
- The article demonstrates building a simple `mcp-server` using Spring Boot, providing a 'current time' tool.
- It integrates this MCP server with Spring AI, utilizing Spring AI's tool calling features.
- A Spring AI `Function` is defined to internally invoke the MCP-powered tool via the `mcp-client-java` library.
- The implementation showcases how Spring AI's `ToolExecutor` and `ToolRunner` manage the execution of these MCP-backed tools.
- The integration provides a practical method for developers to extend Spring AI applications with external capabilities defined by MCP.