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Best Practices For A Spring Boot-Ready Maven Library

This document provides best practices for creating a Spring Boot-ready Maven library that fetches and caches JSON game data. It covers aspects such as auto-configuration, efficient JSON parsing, deduplication using the Flyweight pattern, in-memory caching strategies, and ensuring thread safety and testability. The guidelines aim to facilitate easy integration, optimal performance, and maintainability of the library.

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0% found this document useful (0 votes)
11 views5 pages

Best Practices For A Spring Boot-Ready Maven Library

This document provides best practices for creating a Spring Boot-ready Maven library that fetches and caches JSON game data. It covers aspects such as auto-configuration, efficient JSON parsing, deduplication using the Flyweight pattern, in-memory caching strategies, and ensuring thread safety and testability. The guidelines aim to facilitate easy integration, optimal performance, and maintainability of the library.

Uploaded by

geddes.2
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Best Practices for a Spring Boot–Ready Maven

Library
This report outlines guidelines for designing a Maven library (with Spring Boot auto-configuration) that
periodically fetches and caches a large JSON payload of game data. We cover library architecture, efficient
parsing/deduplication, in-memory caching, consumer integration, thread safety, and testability.

Auto-Configuration & Library Packaging


• Use Spring Boot auto-configuration. Structure the library as a Spring Boot starter (e.g. spring-
boot-starter-games ). Provide an @AutoConfiguration class that defines beans for the data-
fetch service, JSON mapper, etc. Use @ConditionalOnClass(RestTemplate.class) and
@ConditionalOnMissingBean so beans are only created when needed and when the user hasn’t
overridden them 1 . List your auto-config classes in META-INF/spring/
org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.AutoConfiguration.imports so Spring Boot
will discover them 2 . This lets consumers add the starter dependency and get defaults with
minimal configuration.

• Expose interfaces and domain classes. Define clean interfaces (e.g. GameService ,
MarketService ) and domain model classes ( Game , Market , SubVendor ). The service
interface might offer methods like List<Game> getGames() . Provide default implementations in
the library but allow clients to supply their own via @ConditionalOnMissingBean . Encapsulate
data access behind these interfaces so consumers don’t depend on internal details.

• Configuration properties. Use a @ConfigurationProperties class (e.g. GamesProperties


with prefix games.fetch ) to allow users to set the REST endpoint URL, fetch interval, cache
settings, etc. Provide sensible defaults (e.g. fetch every 6 hours, expected JSON schema). This makes
configuration easy via application.yml without boilerplate.

• Scheduling support. To trigger the fetch every 6 hours, use Spring’s


@Scheduled(fixedRateString = "${games.fetch.interval:21600000}") on a method.
Ensure scheduling is enabled (for example, by annotating the auto-config class with
@EnableScheduling or instructing clients to add @EnableScheduling ). This decouples the
refresh logic into a background task.

Fetching and Parsing the JSON Payload


• REST client. Use Spring’s RestTemplate or WebClient to fetch the JSON. Expose the client as a
bean so it can be configured or mocked. In the auto-config class, a simple RestTemplate bean
with necessary HTTP message converters (e.g. Jackson) can be defined if none exists.

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• Streaming JSON parsing. Given the ~19 MB payload, use Jackson’s streaming API ( JsonParser ) or
ObjectMapper.readerForListOf(Game.class).readValue(...) to avoid loading the entire
JSON tree at once. For example, one can create a JsonParser , move it to the START_ARRAY , and
then loop:

while (parser.nextToken() == JsonToken.START_OBJECT) {


Game game = mapper.readValue(parser, Game.class);
// process game
}

This reads one Game at a time, keeping memory usage low 3 .

• Avoid unnecessary fields. If the JSON contains extraneous data, annotate your classes with
@JsonIgnoreProperties(ignoreUnknown=true) or use @JsonInclude to skip nulls,
reducing in-memory footprint. Consider mapping to lightweight DTOs if there are many fields you
don’t need.

Deduplicating Markets and SubVendors (Flyweight Pattern)


• Shared instances by ID. After parsing, iterate through all games and build maps keyed by ID for
Markets and SubVendors. For example, use Map<String, Market> marketById = new
HashMap<>(); . For each parsed Game , for each MarketDTO , look up or insert into
marketById , and set the game’s market reference to the shared object. Similarly handle
SubVendor . This ensures that only one Market or SubVendor instance exists per ID across all
games.

• Memory efficiency. This approach is effectively the Flyweight pattern: sharing immutable (or
treated-as-immutable) objects to save memory 4 . It reduces duplication especially if many games
reference the same market or vendor. Because the payload is large and memory-constrained,
deduplication can significantly cut memory usage.

• Concurrent-safe dedupe. Do this deduplication as part of the single-threaded parsing/refresh


process. After that completes, publish the final lists and maps to the rest of the application in a
thread-safe manner (e.g. by assigning to an AtomicReference or volatile field), so readers
always see a consistent, deduplicated snapshot.

In-Memory Caching Strategy


• Cache the parsed data. Once fetched and processed, store the list of games (and optionally the
maps of markets/subvendors) in an in-memory cache. Since data only updates every 6 hours, you
can cache indefinitely and refresh explicitly. For instance, maintain a single bean holding
volatile List<Game> gamesCache . The scheduled fetch replaces this cache atomically when
new data arrives.

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• Use Spring Cache abstraction. Alternatively, annotate the getter method with
@Cacheable("games") and trigger an update via @CachePut or cache eviction. Spring Boot will
auto-configure a suitable cache manager if @EnableCaching is on 5 . For a simple in-memory
store, you can use caffeine or ConcurrentHashMap.

• High-performance cache (Caffeine). Caffeine is a recommended high-speed cache that integrates


with Spring’s cache abstraction 6 7 . It supports eviction policies, expiration, and is thread-safe
with concurrent reads/writes. In practice, include Caffeine as a dependency and configure a
CaffeineCacheManager bean if advanced control is needed. Otherwise, a manually-managed
AtomicReference<List<Game>> or ConcurrentHashMap is sufficient for this fixed-size refresh
use-case.

• Cache consistency. Ensure that readers accessing cached data don’t see partially-built state. For
example, build new data off of local maps, then do a single assignment (e.g.
gamesCache.set(newList) ). Using AtomicReference or marking the cache field volatile
ensures changes are safely published 8 .

Integration and Configuration


• Minimal setup for consumers. By using auto-configuration and defaults, consuming applications
should only need to add the starter dependency and (optionally) supply configuration properties
(endpoint URL, refresh interval) in application.yml . No manual @Bean definitions or extra
annotation scans should be required.

• Override points. Document how clients can override behavior: e.g., they could provide their own
GameService bean or configure a different RestTemplate . Use
@ConditionalOnMissingBean in your config so client beans take precedence.

• Externalizing parameters. Key parameters (REST URL, time interval, cache settings) should be
externalized into properties. For example:

games:
fetch:
url: http://internal/api/games
interval-ms: 21600000 # 6 hours by default

Use a @ConfigurationProperties class to bind these, and reference them in your


@Scheduled annotation and fetch logic.

• Auto-configuration side-effects. Avoid surprising auto-configuration: do not enable unrelated


component scanning or beans. Only configure what's needed. For example, if web support is not
needed, don’t include MVC beans. If you enable scheduling, document that (or auto-enable it only if
scheduling is on the classpath).

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Thread Safety and Concurrency
• Immutable or thread-safe data. After constructing the deduplicated game/market/subvendor
objects, treat them as effectively immutable (do not modify them). This ensures any thread can
safely read the cached list concurrently.

• Atomic updates. When the scheduler fetches new data, build the new structures (games list, maps)
in a local scope. Then replace the old cache in one atomic step (e.g.
atomicReference.set(newData) ). This avoids partially updated states. As noted, an
AtomicReference provides volatile-like semantics for thread-safe publication 8 .

• Concurrent collections if needed. If you allow in-place updates or incremental refresh, use
concurrent collections (e.g. ConcurrentHashMap ) for storing objects. In our scheduled-refresh
model, simple replacement is cleaner and usually sufficient.

• Avoid blocking. Since the fetch runs infrequently, it can take locks or do I/O without impacting
normal operation. But ensure the fetch method catches exceptions so a failed fetch won’t break the
scheduler or leave the cache empty.

Testability
• Unit tests for parsing and dedupe. Write plain unit tests for the JSON-to-objects mapping and
deduplication logic. Mock JSON strings (with duplicate IDs) and verify the output contains unique
Market / SubVendor objects (by comparing object references or using identity maps).

• Mocking REST calls. Use Spring’s MockRestServiceServer to test the HTTP fetch logic. For
example, configure a RestTemplate and bind a MockRestServiceServer to it, then simulate
the JSON response. This lets you test the fetch-and-parse without real HTTP 9 .

• Integration tests with Spring context. Create a test that loads the auto-config (e.g. using
@SpringBootTest or @ContextConfiguration ), sets the fetch URL to a local stub server or
uses MockRestServiceServer , and verifies that the scheduled update populates the cache
correctly. Ensure test coverage of conditional loading (e.g. behavior when a bean is overridden).

• Thread-safety tests. For multithreading, tests can be harder, but at least confirm that after refresh,
concurrent readers see a consistent snapshot. A simple test: while one thread triggers fetch() ,
another calls getGames() repeatedly and assert no exceptions or partial data.

By following these practices—clear modular design, Spring Boot auto-configuration, efficient streaming/
deduplication, robust caching, and solid testing—you ensure the library is easy to integrate, performant
under memory constraints, and maintainable.

Sources: Spring Boot auto-configuration guide 1 2 ; Jackson streaming example 3 ; Flyweight design
pattern (object sharing) 4 ; Spring caching documentation 5 ; Caffeine cache overview 6 ; concurrency
(AtomicReference) 8 ; Spring MockRestServiceServer testing 9 .

4
1 2 Creating Your Own Auto-configuration :: Spring Boot
https://docs.spring.io/spring-boot/reference/features/developing-auto-configuration.html

3 Use Jackson To Stream Parse an Array of Json Objects - Stack Overflow


https://stackoverflow.com/questions/24835431/use-jackson-to-stream-parse-an-array-of-json-objects

4 Flyweight Design Pattern | GeeksforGeeks


https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/flyweight-design-pattern/

5 Caching :: Spring Boot


https://docs.spring.io/spring-boot/reference/io/caching.html

6 7 Caffeine Cache in Java Application | by Srikanth Dannarapu | Javarevisited | Medium


https://medium.com/javarevisited/caffeine-cache-f106cee91925

8 java - Spring bean field thread safety - Stack Overflow


https://stackoverflow.com/questions/65784935/spring-bean-field-thread-safety

9 Testing Client Applications :: Spring Framework


https://docs.spring.io/spring-framework/reference/testing/spring-mvc-test-client.html

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