yuhang2685/SpringBoot-DataRest

SpringBoot-DataRest

In this project we show how to construct a RESTful web service using SpringBoot Data Rest and JPA.

Author: Dr. YUHANG ZHAO

Introduction:

In general, Spring Data REST is built on top of the Spring Data repositories and makes it easy to build hypermedia-driven REST web services that connect to Spring Data repositories. Spring Data provides common abstractions to integrate with different kinds of data stores, both SQL-based and No SQL-based.

Spring Data REST also builds on top of Spring MVC. It creates a collection of Spring MVC controllers, JSON converters, and other beans to provide a RESTful front end. These components link up to the Spring Data JPA backend.

Therefore it takes away a lot of the manual work usually associated with those tasks, and makes it simpler for implementing basic CRUD functionality for web applications. More detailed, Spring Data REST analyzes your application’s domain model, and exposes hypermedia-driven HTTP resources for aggregates contained in the model. At runtime, Spring Data REST automatically creates an implementation of the repository interface. Then it uses the @RepositoryRestResource annotation to direct Spring MVC to create RESTful endpoints.

When to use Spring Data Rest?

Remember to use Spring Data Rest only for simple projects. It is great to use when you are building a prototype for your application. However, when it comes to production applications, you need to think twice before using Spring Data Rest.

Overview of key points:

Dependency for JPA and data-rest are both needed;
The @RepositoryRestResource annotation is optional and is used to customize the REST endpoint. If we decided to omit it, Spring would automatically create an endpoint using the lower case of the class name, i.e., “/student”, instead of the user specified one.
In order to make POST work, it needs @GeneratedValue(strategy=GenerationType.AUTO), and the table must have the primary key "auto incremented";

Testing REST API

Note that Spring Data REST uses the HAL format JSON output, which is a simple format that gives a consistent and easy way to hyperlink between resources in your API, which makes your API explorable. In other words, HAL format is flexible and offers a convenient way to supply links adjacent to the data that is served.

Once you have the Entity and RepositoryRestResource, you now have a fully-functional REST API, and you are ready to fire your requests: