In this article, we'll take a look at some of the best practices for building RESTful web services with Spring Boot.
We'll cover the following topics:
When designing a REST API, it's important to consider the following factors:
Your API should be designed in a way that makes it easy for developers to consume. It should be easy to understand and use, and it should be consistent.
When designing the endpoints for your API, you should use a consistent naming convention. For example, you might use the following convention:
/{resource}/{id}
where {resource} is the name of the resource and {id} is the identifier of the resource.
It's also a good idea to use HTTP methods in a consistent way. For example, you might use the following convention:
GET /{resource}/{id}
POST /{resource}
PUT /{resource}/{id}
DELETE /{resource}/{id}
where GET is used to retrieve a resource, POST is used to create a resource, PUT is used to update a resource, and DELETE is used to delete a resource.
When designing the endpoints for your API, there are a few best practices to keep in mind:
Now that we've covered some of the best practices for designing a REST API, let's take a look at how to implement a REST API with Spring Boot.
Spring Boot makes it easy to create stand-alone, production-grade Spring-based Applications that you can "just run". We'll use Spring Boot to create a simple API that exposes a single resource.
First, we need to add the following dependencies to our project:
Let's start by creating an entity. We'll use the following convention for our entity names:
{resource}_{operation}
where {resource} is the name of the resource and {operation} is the operation being performed on the resource.
For our example, we'll create an entity called user_create
.
@Entity
@Table(name = "user_create")
public class UserCreate {
@Id
@GeneratedValue(strategy = GenerationType.IDENTITY)
private Long id;
@Column(name = "name")
private String name;
@Column(name = "email")
private String email;
// getters and setters
}
Next, we'll create a repository for our entity. We'll use the following convention for our repository names:
{resource}Repository
where {resource} is the name of the resource.
For our example, we'll create a repository called UserCreateRepository
.
public interface UserCreateRepository extends JpaRepository<UserCreate, Long> {
}
Now, we'll create a service for our entity. We'll use the following convention for our service names:
{resource}Service
where {resource} is the name of the resource.
For our example, we'll create a service called UserCreateService
.
@Service
public class UserCreateService {
@Autowired
private UserCreateRepository userCreateRepository;
public UserCreate create(UserCreate userCreate) {
return userCreateRepository.save(userCreate);
}
}
Finally, we'll create a controller for our entity. We'll use the following convention for our controller names:
{resource}Controller
where {resource} is the name of the resource.
For our example, we'll create a controller called UserCreateController
.
@RestController
@RequestMapping("/user-creates")
public class UserCreateController {
@Autowired
private UserCreateService userCreateService;
@PostMapping
public UserCreate create(@RequestBody UserCreate userCreate) {
return userCreateService.create(userCreate);
}
}
That's all we need to do to create a simple REST API with Spring Boot.
When testing a REST API, there are a few things to keep in mind:
To test our example API, we can use the following curl commands:
# create a user
curl -X POST -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d '{"name":"John Doe","email":"john.doe@example.com"}' http://localhost:8080/user-creates
# get a user
curl -X GET http://localhost:8080/user-creates/1
# update a user
curl -X PUT -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d '{"name":"John Doe","email":"john.doe@example.com"}' http://localhost:8080/user-creates/1
# delete a user
curl -X DELETE http://localhost:8080/user-creates/1
When securing a REST API, there are a few things to keep in mind:
Authentication is the process of verifying the identity of a user. Authorization is the process of determining what a user is allowed to do. Rate limiting is the process of limiting the number of requests that a user can make.
There are many ways to secure a REST API, but one of the most popular ways is to use JSON Web Tokens (JWT).
To secure our example API with JWT, we can use the following curl commands:
# login
curl -X POST -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d '{"username":"john.doe","password":"password"}' http://localhost:8080/auth/login
# get a user
curl -X GET -H "Authorization: Bearer <token>" http://localhost:8080/user-creates/1
# logout
curl -X POST -H "Authorization: Bearer <token>" http://localhost:8080/auth/logout
In this article, we've covered some of the best practices for building RESTful web services with Spring Boot. We've looked at how to design a REST API, how to implement a REST API with Spring Boot, how to test a REST API, and how to secure a REST API.