Spring Boot, MySQL, JPA,

Hibernate Restful CRUD API

Tutorial
author: Ramesh Fadatare

In this tutorial, we’ll build a Restful CRUD API for a simple user management
application. We’ll first build the APIs to create, retrieve, update and delete a
user, and then test them using postman.

Spring Boot has taken the Spring framework to the next level. It has drastically
reduced the configuration and setup time required for spring projects.

Learn Spring boot at   https://www.javaguides.net/p/spring-

boot-tutorial.html .

You can set up a project with almost zero configuration and start building the
things that actually matter to your application.

If you are new to Spring boot and want to get started with it quickly, then this
blog post is for you.

What we’ll build

We are building a simple User Management Application which has below
CRUD Rest APIs. Following five REST APIs (Controller handler methods) are
created for User resource:
High-level architecture of Spring boot
project

1. Creating a Spring Boot Application

There are many ways to create a Spring Boot application. You can refer below
articles to create a Spring Boot application.

>> Create Spring Boot Project With Spring Initializer

>> Create Spring Boot Project in Spring Tool Suite [STS]
Refer to the next step to create a project packaging structure.

2. Maven dependencies
Let's define all required maven dependencies in pom.xml file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<project

xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0"

xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"

xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0
https://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd">

<modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>

<parent>

<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>

<artifactId>spring-boot-starter-parent</artifactId>

<version>2.2.6.RELEASE</version>

<relativePath/>

<!-- lookup parent from repository -->

</parent>

<groupId>net.javaguides</groupId>

<artifactId>springboot-crud-restful-webservices</artifactId>

<version>0.0.1-SNAPSHOT</version>

<name>springboot-crud-restful-webservices</name>

<description>Demo project for Spring Boot Restful web

services</description>

<properties>

<java.version>1.8</java.version>

</properties>

<dependencies>

<dependency>
 <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>

<artifactId>spring-boot-starter-data-jpa</artifactId>

</dependency>

<dependency>

<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>

<artifactId>spring-boot-starter-web</artifactId>

</dependency>

<dependency>

<groupId>mysql</groupId>

<artifactId>mysql-connector-java</artifactId>

<scope>runtime</scope>

</dependency>

<dependency>

<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>

<artifactId>spring-boot-starter-test</artifactId>

<scope>test</scope>

<exclusions>

<exclusion>

<groupId>org.junit.vintage</groupId>

<artifactId>junit-vintage-engine</artifactId>

</exclusion>

</exclusions>

</dependency>

</dependencies>

<build>

<plugins>

<plugin>

<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>

<artifactId>spring-boot-maven-plugin</artifactId>
 </plugin>

</plugins>

</build>

</project>

3. Configuring MySQL Database

Since we’re using MySQL as our database, we need to configure the
database URL, username, and password so that Spring can establish a
connection with the database on startup.
Open src/main/resources/application.properties  file and add the following
properties to it:

spring.datasource.url = jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/usersDB?useSSL=false

spring.datasource.username = root

spring.datasource.password = root

## Hibernate Properties

# The SQL dialect makes Hibernate generate better SQL for the chosen database

spring.jpa.properties.hibernate.dialect =
org.hibernate.dialect.MySQL5InnoDBDialect

# Hibernate ddl auto (create, create-drop, validate, update)

spring.jpa.hibernate.ddl-auto = update

Don’t forget to change

the spring.datasource.username and spring.datasource.password as per your
MySQL installation. Also, create a database named usersDB in MySQL before
proceeding to the next section.
You don’t need to create any tables. The tables will automatically be created
by hibernate from the User  entity that we will define in the next step. This is
made possible by the property spring.jpa.hibernate.ddl-auto = update.

4. Create User JPA Entity

Let's create a User model or domain class with the following fields: 

 id - primary key
 firstName - user first name
 lastName - user last name
 emailId - user email ID

package net.javaguides.springboot.entity;

import javax.persistence.Column;

import javax.persistence.Entity;

import javax.persistence.GeneratedValue;

import javax.persistence.GenerationType;

import javax.persistence.Id;

import javax.persistence.Table;

@Entity

@Table(name = "users")

public class User {

@Id

@GeneratedValue(strategy = GenerationType.AUTO)

private long id;

@Column(name = "first_name")
private String firstName;

@Column(name = "last_name")

private String lastName;

@Column(name = "email")

private String email;

public User() {

public User(String firstName, String lastName, String email) {

super();

this.firstName = firstName;

this.lastName = lastName;

this.email = email;

public long getId() {

return id;

public void setId(long id) {

this.id = id;

public String getFirstName() {

return firstName;

public void setFirstName(String firstName) {

 this.firstName = firstName;

public String getLastName() {

return lastName;

public void setLastName(String lastName) {

this.lastName = lastName;

public String getEmail() {

return email;

public void setEmail(String email) {

this.email = email;

All your domain models must be annotated with @Entity annotation. It is used

to mark the class as a persistent Java class.

@Table annotation is used to provide the details of the table that this entity

will be mapped to.

@Id annotation is used to define the primary key.

@GeneratedValue annotation is used to define the primary key generation

strategy. In the above case, we have declared the primary key to be an Auto
Increment field.

@Column annotation is used to define the properties of the column that will be

mapped to the annotated field. You can define several properties like name,
length, nullable, updateable, etc.
5. Define UserRepository
Let's create a UserRepository to access User's data from the database.

Well, Spring Data JPA has comes with a JpaRepository interface which defines
methods for all the CRUD operations on the entity, and a default
implementation of JpaRepository called SimpleJpaRepository.

package net.javaguides.springboot.repository;

import org.springframework.data.jpa.repository.JpaRepository;

import org.springframework.stereotype.Repository;

import net.javaguides.springboot.entity.User;

@Repository

public interface UserRepository extends JpaRepository<User, Long>{

6. Creating Custom Business Exception

We’ll define the Rest APIs for creating, retrieving, updating, and deleting
a User in the next step.

The APIs will throw a ResourceNotFoundException whenever a User with a given

id is not found in the database.

Following is the definition of ResourceNotFoundException:

package net.javaguides.springboot.exception;
import org.springframework.http.HttpStatus;

import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.ResponseStatus;

@ResponseStatus(value = HttpStatus.NOT_FOUND)

public class ResourceNotFoundException extends RuntimeException {

private static final long serialVersionUID = 1 L;

public ResourceNotFoundException(String message) {

super(message);

7. Creating UserController - Building

CRUD Rest APIs
Let's create the REST APIs for creating, retrieving, updating and deleting
a User:

package net.javaguides.springboot.controller;

import java.util.List;

import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Autowired;

import org.springframework.http.ResponseEntity;

import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.DeleteMapping;

import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.GetMapping;

import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.PathVariable;

import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.PostMapping;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.PutMapping;

import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RequestBody;

import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RequestMapping;

import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RestController;

import net.javaguides.springboot.entity.User;

import net.javaguides.springboot.exception.ResourceNotFoundException;

import net.javaguides.springboot.repository.UserRepository;

@RestController

@RequestMapping("/api/users")

public class UserController {

@Autowired

private UserRepository userRepository;

// get all users

@GetMapping

public List < User > getAllUsers() {

return this.userRepository.findAll();

// get user by id

@GetMapping("/{id}")

public User getUserById(@PathVariable(value = "id") long userId) {

return this.userRepository.findById(userId)

.orElseThrow(() - > new ResourceNotFoundException("User not found

with id :" + userId));

}
 // create user

@PostMapping

public User createUser(@RequestBody User user) {

return this.userRepository.save(user);

// update user

@PutMapping("/{id}")

public User updateUser(@RequestBody User user, @PathVariable("id") long

userId) {

User existingUser = this.userRepository.findById(userId)

.orElseThrow(() - > new ResourceNotFoundException("User not found

with id :" + userId));

existingUser.setFirstName(user.getFirstName());

existingUser.setLastName(user.getLastName());

existingUser.setEmail(user.getEmail());

return this.userRepository.save(existingUser);

// delete user by id

@DeleteMapping("/{id}")

public ResponseEntity < User > deleteUser(@PathVariable("id") long userId)

{

User existingUser = this.userRepository.findById(userId)

.orElseThrow(() - > new ResourceNotFoundException("User not found

with id :" + userId));

this.userRepository.delete(existingUser);

return ResponseEntity.ok().build();

}
8. Running the Application
We have successfully developed all the CRUD Rest APIs for the User model.
Now it's time to deploy our application in a servlet container(embedded
tomcat). 

Two ways we can start the standalone Spring boot application. 

1. From the root directory of the application and type the following command
to run it -

$ mvn spring-boot:run

2. From your IDE, run the SpringBootCrudRestApplication.main() method as a

standalone Java class that will start the embedded Tomcat server on port 8080
and point the browser to http://localhost:8080/.

9. Demo
The demo of this tutorial covered in below YouTube video tutorial:

10. Conclusion
Congratulations guys! We successfully built a Restful CRUD API using Spring
Boot, Mysql, JPA, and Hibernate.

You can find the source code for this tutorial on my GitHub repository. Feel
free to clone the repository and build upon it.
Thank you for reading. Please ask any questions in the comment section
below.