All versions intented for production use are distributed across Maven Central and the Spring release repository. As a result, the library can be included like any other maven dependency:

<dependency>
    <groupId>org.springframework.data</groupId>
    <artifactId>spring-data-couchbase</artifactId>
    <version>1.0.0.RELEASE</version>
</dependency>
            

This will pull in several dependencies, including the underlying Couchbase Java SDK, common Spring dependencies and also Jackson as the JSON mapping infrastructure.

You can also grab snapshots from the spring snapshot repository and milestone releases from the milestone repository. Here is an example on how to use the current SNAPSHOT dependency:

<dependency>
  <groupId>org.springframework.data</groupId>
  <artifactId>spring-data-couchbase</artifactId>
  <version>1.1.0.BUILD-SNAPSHOT</version>
</dependency>

<repository>
  <id>spring-libs-snapshot</id>
  <name>Spring Snapshot Repository</name>
  <url>http://repo.spring.io/libs-snapshot</url>
</repository>
            

Once you have all needed dependencies on the classpath, you can start configuring it. Both Java and XML config are supported. The next sections describe both approaches in detail.

The annotation based configuration approach is getting more and more popular. It allows you to get rid of XML configuration and treat configuration as part of your code directly. To get started, all you need to do is sublcass the AbstractCouchbaseConfiguration and implement the abstract methods.

Please make sure to have cglib support in the classpath so that the annotation based configuration works.

@Configuration
public class Config extends AbstractCouchbaseConfiguration {
    @Override
    protected List<String> bootstrapHosts() {
        return Collections.singletonList("127.0.0.1");
    }

    @Override
    protected String getBucketName() {
        return "beer-sample";
    }

    @Override
    protected String getBucketPassword() {
        return "";
    }
}
            

All you need to provide is a list of Couchbase nodes to bootstrap into (without any ports, just the IP address or hostname). Please note that while one host is sufficient in development, it is recommended to add 3 to 5 bootstrap nodes here. Couchbase will pick up all nodes from the cluster automatically, but it could be the case that the only node you've provided is experiencing issues while you are starting the application.

The bucketName and password should be the same as configured in Couchbase Server itself. In the example given, we are connecting to the beer-sample bucket which is one of the sample buckets shipped with Couchbase Server and has no password set by default.

Depending on how your environment is setup, the configuration will be automatically picked up by the context or you need to instantiate your own one. How to manage configurations is not scope of this manual, please refer to the spring documentation for more information on that topic.

While not immediately obvious, much more things can be customized and overriden as custom beans from this configuration - we'll touch them in the individual manual sections as needed (for example repositories, validation and custom converters).

The library provides a custom namespace that you can use in your XML configuration:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<beans:beans xmlns:beans="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
  xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
  xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/data/couchbase
  xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans
    http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans.xsd
    http://www.springframework.org/schema/data/couchbase
    http://www.springframework.org/schema/data/couchbase/spring-couchbase.xsd">

    <couchbase:couchbase bucket="beer-sample" password="" host="127.0.0.1" />
</beans:beans>
            

This code is equivalent to the java configuration approach shown above. It is also possible to configure templates and repositories, which is shown in the appropriate sections.

If you start your application, you should see Couchbase INFO level logging in the logs, indicating that the underlying Couchbase Java SDK is connecting to the database. If any errors are reported, make sure that the given credentials and host information is correct.

All entities should be annotated with the @Document annotation. Also, every field in the entity should be annotated with the @Field annotation. While this is - strictly speaking - optional, it helps to reduce edge cases and clearly shows the intent and design of the entity.

There is also a special @Id annotation which needs to be always in place. Best practice is to also name the property id. Here is a very simple User entity:

import org.springframework.data.annotation.Id;
import org.springframework.data.couchbase.core.mapping.Document;
import org.springframework.data.couchbase.core.mapping.Field;

@Document
public class User {

    @Id
    private String id;

    @Field
    private String firstname;

    @Field
    private String lastname;

    public User(String id, String firstname, String lastname) {
        this.id = id;
        this.firstname = firstname;
        this.lastname = lastname;
    }

    public String getId() {
        return id;
    }

    public String getFirstname() {
        return firstname;
    }

    public String getLastname() {
        return lastname;
    }
}
            

Couchbase Server supports automatic expiration for documents. The library implements support for it through the @Document annotation. You can set a expiry value which translates to the number of seconds until the document gets removed automatically. If you want to make it expire in 10 seconds after mutation, set it like @Document(expiry = 10).

If you want a different representation of the field name inside the document in contrast to the field name used in your entity, you can set a different name on the @Field annotation. For example if you want to keep your documents small you can set the firstname field to @Field("fname"). In the JSON document, you'll see {"fname": ".."} instead of {"firstname": ".."}.

The @Id annotation needs to be present because every document in Couchbase needs a unique key. This key needs to be any string with a length of maximum 250 characters. Feel free to use whatever fits your use case, be it a UUID, an email address or anything else.

The storage format of choice is JSON. It is great, but like many data representations it allows less datatypes than you could express in Java directly. Therefore, for all non-primitive types some form of conversion to and from supported types needs to happen.

For the following entity field types, you don't need to add special handling:

Since JSON supports objects ("maps") and lists, Map and List types can be converted naturally. If they only contain primitive field types from the last paragraph, you don't need to add special handling too. Here is an example:

@Document
public class User {

    @Id
    private String id;

    @Field
    private List<String> firstnames;

    @Field
    private Map<String, Integer> childrenAges;

    public User(String id, List<String> firstnames, Map<String, Integer> childrenAges) {
        this.id = id;
        this.firstnames = firstnames;
        this.childrenAges = childrenAges;
    }

}
            

Storing a user with some sample data could look like this as a JSON representation:

{
    "_class": "foo.User",
    "childrenAges": {
        "Alice": 10,
        "Bob": 5
    },
    "firstnames": [
        "Foo",
        "Bar",
        "Baz"
    ]
}
            

You don't need to break everything down to primitive types and Lists/Maps all the time. Of course, you can also compose other objects out of those primitive values. Let's modify the last example so that we want to store a List of Children:

@Document
public class User {

    @Id
    private String id;

    @Field
    private List<String> firstnames;

    @Field
    private List<Child> children;

    public User(String id, List<String> firstnames, List<Child> children) {
        this.id = id;
        this.firstnames = firstnames;
        this.children = children;
    }

    static class Child {
        private String name;
        private int age;

        Child(String name, int age) {
            this.name = name;
            this.age = age;
        }

    }

}
            

A populated object can look like:

{
  "_class": "foo.User",
  "children": [
    {
      "age": 4,
      "name": "Alice"
    },
    {
      "age": 3,
      "name": "Bob"
    }
  ],
  "firstnames": [
    "Foo",
    "Bar",
    "Baz"
  ]
}
            

Most of the time, you also need to store a temporal value like a Date. Since it can't be stored directly in JSON, a conversion needs to happen. The library implements default converters for Date, Calendar and JodaTime types (if on the classpath). All of those are represented by default in the document as a unix timestamp (number). You can always override the default behavior with custom converters as shown later. Here is an example:

@Document
public class BlogPost {

    @Id
    private String id;

    @Field
    private Date created;

    @Field
    private Calendar updated;

    @Field
    private String title;

    public BlogPost(String id, Date created, Calendar updated, String title) {
        this.id = id;
        this.created = created;
        this.updated = updated;
        this.title = title;
    }

}
            

A populated object can look like:

{
  "title": "a blog post title",
  "_class": "foo.BlogPost",
  "updated": 1394610843,
  "created": 1394610843897
}
                    

If you want to override a converter or implement your own one, this is also possible. The library implements the general Spring Converter pattern. You can plug in custom converters on bean creation time in your configuration. Here's how you can configure it (in your overriden AbstractCouchbaseConfiguration):

@Override
public CustomConversions customConversions() {
    return new CustomConversions(Arrays.asList(FooToBarConverter.INSTANCE, BarToFooConverter.INSTANCE));
}

@WritingConverter
public static enum FooToBarConverter implements Converter<Foo, Bar> {
    INSTANCE;

    @Override
    public Bar convert(Foo source) {
        return /* do your conversion here */;
    }

}

@ReadingConverter
public static enum BarToFooConverter implements Converter<Bar, Foo> {
    INSTANCE;

    @Override
    public Foo convert(Bar source) {
        return /* do your conversion here */;
    }

}
            

There are a few things to keep in mind with custom conversions:

Couchbase Server does not support multi-document transactions or rollback. To implement optimistic locking, Couchbase uses a CAS (compare and swap) approach. When a document is mutated, the CAS value also changes. The CAS is opaque to the client, the only thing you need to know is that it changes when the content or a meta information changes too.

In other datastores, similar behavior can be achieved through an arbitrary version field whith a incrementing counter. Since Couchbase supports this in a much better fashion, it is easy to implement. If you want automatic optimistic locking support, all you need to do is add a @Version annotation on a long field like this:

@Document
public class User {

        @Version
        private long version;

        // constructor, getters, setters...
}
            

If you load a document through the template or repository, the version field will be automatically populated with the current CAS value. It is important to note that you shouldn't access the field or even change it on your own. Once you save the document back, it will either succeed or fail with a OptimisticLockingFailureException. If you get such an exception, the further approach depends on what you want to achieve application wise. You should either retry the complete load-update-write cycle or propagate the error to the upper layers for proper handling.

The library supports JSR 303 validation, which is based on annotations directly in your entities. Of course you can add all kinds of validation in your service layer, but this way its nicely coupled to your actual entities.

To make it work, you need to include two additional dependencies. JSR 303 and a library that implements it, like the one supported by hibernate:

<dependency>
  <groupId>javax.validation</groupId>
  <artifactId>validation-api</artifactId>
</dependency>
<dependency>
  <groupId>org.hibernate</groupId>
  <artifactId>hibernate-validator</artifactId>
</dependency>
            

Now you need to add two beans to your configuration:

@Bean
public LocalValidatorFactoryBean validator() {
    return new LocalValidatorFactoryBean();
}

@Bean
public ValidatingCouchbaseEventListener validationEventListener() {
    return new ValidatingCouchbaseEventListener(validator());
}
            

Now you can annotate your fields with JSR303 annotations. If a validation on save() fails, a ConstraintViolationException is thrown.

@Size(min = 10)
@Field
private String name;
            

The central interface in Spring Data repository abstraction is Repository (probably not that much of a surprise). It takes the domain class to manage as well as the id type of the domain class as type arguments. This interface acts primarily as a marker interface to capture the types to work with and to help you to discover interfaces that extend this one. The CrudRepository provides sophisticated CRUD functionality for the entity class that is being managed.

public interface CrudRepository<T, ID extends Serializable>
    extends Repository<T, ID> {
                                                                                                                       
    <S extends T> S save(S entity);
                                                                                                                       
    T findOne(ID primaryKey);
                                                                                                                       
    Iterable<T> findAll();

    Long count();
                                                                                                                       
    void delete(T entity);
                                                                                                                       
    boolean exists(ID primaryKey);
                                                                                                                       
    // … more functionality omitted.
}

	Note
	We also provide persistence technology-specific abstractions like e.g. JpaRepository or MongoRepository. Those interfaces extend CrudRepository and expose the capabilities of the underlying persistence technology in addition to the rather generic persistence technology-agnostic interfaces like e.g. CrudRepository.

On top of the CrudRepository there is a PagingAndSortingRepository abstraction that adds additional methods to ease paginated access to entities:

public interface PagingAndSortingRepository<T, ID extends Serializable> 
  extends CrudRepository<T, ID> {

  Iterable<T> findAll(Sort sort);

  Page<T> findAll(Pageable pageable);
}

Accessing the second page of User by a page size of 20 you could simply do something like this:

PagingAndSortingRepository<User, Long> repository = // … get access to a bean
Page<User> users = repository.findAll(new PageRequest(1, 20));

In addition to finder methods, query derivation for both count and delete queries, is available.

public interface UserRepository extends CrudRepository<User, Long> {

  Long countByLastname(String lastname);

}

public interface UserRepository extends CrudRepository<User, Long> {

  Long deleteByLastname(String lastname);
  
  List<User> removeByLastname(String lastname);

}

Standard CRUD functionality repositories usually have queries on the underlying datastore. With Spring Data, declaring those queries becomes a four-step process:

The sections that follow explain each step.

3.2.1 Defining repository interfaces

As a first step you define a domain class-specific repository interface. The interface must extend Repository and be typed to the domain class and an ID type. If you want to expose CRUD methods for that domain type, extend CrudRepository instead of Repository.

Fine-tuning repository definition

Typically, your repository interface will extend Repository, CrudRepository or PagingAndSortingRepository. Alternatively, if you do not want to extend Spring Data interfaces, you can also annotate your repository interface with @RepositoryDefinition. Extending CrudRepository exposes a complete set of methods to manipulate your entities. If you prefer to be selective about the methods being exposed, simply copy the ones you want to expose from CrudRepository into your domain repository.

	Note
	This allows you to define your own abstractions on top of the provided Spring Data Repositories functionality.

Example 3.5. Selectively exposing CRUD methods

@NoRepositoryBean
interface MyBaseRepository<T, ID extends Serializable> extends Repository<T, ID> {

  T findOne(ID id);

  T save(T entity);
}

interface UserRepository extends MyBaseRepository<User, Long> {

  User findByEmailAddress(EmailAddress emailAddress);
}

In this first step you defined a common base interface for all your domain repositories and exposed findOne(…) as well as save(…).These methods will be routed into the base repository implementation of the store of your choice provided by Spring Data ,e.g. in the case if JPA SimpleJpaRepository, because they are matching the method signatures in CrudRepository. So the UserRepository will now be able to save users, and find single ones by id, as well as triggering a query to find Users by their email address.

	Note
	Note, that the intermediate repository interface is annotated with @NoRepositoryBean. Make sure you add that annotation to all repository interfaces that Spring Data should not create instances for at runtime.

3.2.2 Defining query methods

The repository proxy has two ways to derive a store-specific query from the method name. It can derive the query from the method name directly, or by using an manually defined query. Available options depend on the actual store. However, there's got to be an strategy that decides what actual query is created. Let's have a look at the available options.

Query lookup strategies

The following strategies are available for the repository infrastructure to resolve the query. You can configure the strategy at the namespace through the query-lookup-strategy attribute in case of XML configuration or via the queryLookupStrategy attribute of the Enable${store}Repositories annotation in case of Java config. Some strategies may not be supported for particular datastores.

CREATE

CREATE attempts to construct a store-specific query from the query method name. The general approach is to remove a given set of well-known prefixes from the method name and parse the rest of the method. Read more about query construction in the section called “Query creation”.

USE_DECLARED_QUERY

USE_DECLARED_QUERY tries to find a declared query and will throw an exception in case it can't find one. The query can be defined by an annotation somewhere or declared by other means. Consult the documentation of the specific store to find available options for that store. If the repository infrastructure does not find a declared query for the method at bootstrap time, it fails.

CREATE_IF_NOT_FOUND (default)

CREATE_IF_NOT_FOUND combines CREATE and USE_DECLARED_QUERY. It looks up a declared query first, and if no declared query is found, it creates a custom method name-based query. This is the default lookup strategy and thus will be used if you do not configure anything explicitly. It allows quick query definition by method names but also custom-tuning of these queries by introducing declared queries as needed.

Query creation

The query builder mechanism built into Spring Data repository infrastructure is useful for building constraining queries over entities of the repository. The mechanism strips the prefixes find…By, read…By, query…By, count…By, and get…By from the method and starts parsing the rest of it. The introducing clause can contain further expressions such as a Distinct to set a distinct flag on the query to be created. However, the first By acts as delimiter to indicate the start of the actual criteria. At a very basic level you can define conditions on entity properties and concatenate them with And and Or.

Example 3.6. Query creation from method names

public interface PersonRepository extends Repository<User, Long> {

  List<Person> findByEmailAddressAndLastname(EmailAddress emailAddress, String lastname);

  // Enables the distinct flag for the query
  List<Person> findDistinctPeopleByLastnameOrFirstname(String lastname, String firstname);
  List<Person> findPeopleDistinctByLastnameOrFirstname(String lastname, String firstname);

  // Enabling ignoring case for an individual property
  List<Person> findByLastnameIgnoreCase(String lastname);
  // Enabling ignoring case for all suitable properties
  List<Person> findByLastnameAndFirstnameAllIgnoreCase(String lastname, String firstname);

  // Enabling static ORDER BY for a query
  List<Person> findByLastnameOrderByFirstnameAsc(String lastname);
  List<Person> findByLastnameOrderByFirstnameDesc(String lastname);
}

The actual result of parsing the method depends on the persistence store for which you create the query. However, there are some general things to notice.

• The expressions are usually property traversals combined with operators that can be concatenated. You can combine property expressions with AND and OR. You also get support for operators such as Between, LessThan, GreaterThan, Like for the property expressions. The supported operators can vary by datastore, so consult the appropriate part of your reference documentation.

• The method parser supports setting an IgnoreCase flag for individual properties, for example,findByLastnameIgnoreCase(…)) or for all properties of a type that support ignoring case (usually Strings, for example, findByLastnameAndFirstnameAllIgnoreCase(…)). Whether ignoring cases is supported may vary by store, so consult the relevant sections in the reference documentation for the store-specific query method.

• You can apply static ordering by appending an OrderBy clause to the query method that references a property and by providing a sorting direction (Asc or Desc). To create a query method that supports dynamic sorting, see the section called “Special parameter handling”.

Property expressions

Property expressions can refer only to a direct property of the managed entity, as shown in the preceding example. At query creation time you already make sure that the parsed property is a property of the managed domain class. However, you can also define constraints by traversing nested properties. Assume Persons have Addresses with ZipCodes. In that case a method name of

List<Person> findByAddressZipCode(ZipCode zipCode);

creates the property traversal x.address.zipCode. The resolution algorithm starts with interpreting the entire part (AddressZipCode) as the property and checks the domain class for a property with that name (uncapitalized). If the algorithm succeeds it uses that property. If not, the algorithm splits up the source at the camel case parts from the right side into a head and a tail and tries to find the corresponding property, in our example, AddressZip and Code. If the algorithm finds a property with that head it takes the tail and continue building the tree down from there, splitting the tail up in the way just described. If the first split does not match, the algorithm move the split point to the left (Address, ZipCode) and continues.

Although this should work for most cases, it is possible for the algorithm to select the wrong property. Suppose the Person class has an addressZip property as well. The algorithm would match in the first split round already and essentially choose the wrong property and finally fail (as the type of addressZip probably has no code property). To resolve this ambiguity you can use _ inside your method name to manually define traversal points. So our method name would end up like so:

List<Person> findByAddress_ZipCode(ZipCode zipCode);

If your property names contain underscores (e.g. first_name) you can escape the underscore in the method name with a second underscore. For a first_name property the query method would have to be named findByFirst__name(…).

Special parameter handling

To handle parameters in your query you simply define method parameters as already seen in the examples above. Besides that the infrastructure will recognize certain specific types like Pageable and Sort to apply pagination and sorting to your queries dynamically.

Example 3.7. Using Pageable and Sort in query methods

Page<User> findByLastname(String lastname, Pageable pageable);

List<User> findByLastname(String lastname, Sort sort);

List<User> findByLastname(String lastname, Pageable pageable);

The first method allows you to pass an org.springframework.data.domain.Pageable instance to the query method to dynamically add paging to your statically defined query. Sorting options are handled through the Pageable instance too. If you only need sorting, simply add an org.springframework.data.domain.Sort parameter to your method. As you also can see, simply returning a List is possible as well. In this case the additional metadata required to build the actual Page instance will not be created (which in turn means that the additional count query that would have been necessary not being issued) but rather simply restricts the query to look up only the given range of entities.

	Note
	To find out how many pages you get for a query entirely you have to trigger an additional count query. By default this query will be derived from the query you actually trigger.

3.2.3 Creating repository instances

In this section you create instances and bean definitions for the repository interfaces defined. One way to do so is using the Spring namespace that is shipped with each Spring Data module that supports the repository mechanism although we generally recommend to use the Java-Config style configuration.

XML configuration

Each Spring Data module includes a repositories element that allows you to simply define a base package that Spring scans for you.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<beans:beans xmlns:beans="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
  xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
  xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/data/jpa"
  xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans
    http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans.xsd
    http://www.springframework.org/schema/data/jpa
    http://www.springframework.org/schema/data/jpa/spring-jpa.xsd">

  <repositories base-package="com.acme.repositories" />

</beans:beans>

In the preceding example, Spring is instructed to scan com.acme.repositories and all its subpackages for interfaces extending Repository or one of its subinterfaces. For each interface found, the infrastructure registers the persistence technology-specific FactoryBean to create the appropriate proxies that handle invocations of the query methods. Each bean is registered under a bean name that is derived from the interface name, so an interface of UserRepository would be registered under userRepository. The base-package attribute allows wildcards, so that you can define a pattern of scanned packages.

Using filters

By default the infrastructure picks up every interface extending the persistence technology-specific Repository subinterface located under the configured base package and creates a bean instance for it. However, you might want more fine-grained control over which interfaces bean instances get created for. To do this you use <include-filter /> and <exclude-filter /> elements inside <repositories />. The semantics are exactly equivalent to the elements in Spring's context namespace. For details, see Spring reference documentation on these elements.

For example, to exclude certain interfaces from instantiation as repository, you could use the following configuration:

Example 3.8. Using exclude-filter element

<repositories base-package="com.acme.repositories">
  <context:exclude-filter type="regex" expression=".*SomeRepository" />
</repositories>

This example excludes all interfaces ending in SomeRepository from being instantiated.

JavaConfig

The repository infrastructure can also be triggered using a store-specific @Enable${store}Repositories annotation on a JavaConfig class. For an introduction into Java-based configuration of the Spring container, see the reference documentation.^[1]

A sample configuration to enable Spring Data repositories looks something like this.

Example 3.9. Sample annotation based repository configuration

@Configuration
@EnableJpaRepositories("com.acme.repositories")
class ApplicationConfiguration {

  @Bean
  public EntityManagerFactory entityManagerFactory() {
    // …
  }
}

	Note
	The sample uses the JPA-specific annotation, which you would change according to the store module you actually use. The same applies to the definition of the EntityManagerFactory bean. Consult the sections covering the store-specific configuration.

Standalone usage

You can also use the repository infrastructure outside of a Spring container, e.g. in CDI environments. You still need some Spring libraries in your classpath, but generally you can set up repositories programmatically as well. The Spring Data modules that provide repository support ship a persistence technology-specific RepositoryFactory that you can use as follows.

Example 3.10. Standalone usage of repository factory

RepositoryFactorySupport factory = … // Instantiate factory here
UserRepository repository = factory.getRepository(UserRepository.class);

Often it is necessary to provide a custom implementation for a few repository methods. Spring Data repositories easily allow you to provide custom repository code and integrate it with generic CRUD abstraction and query method functionality.

3.3.1 Adding custom behavior to single repositories

To enrich a repository with custom functionality you first define an interface and an implementation for the custom functionality. Use the repository interface you provided to extend the custom interface.

Example 3.11. Interface for custom repository functionality

interface UserRepositoryCustom {

  public void someCustomMethod(User user);
}

Example 3.12. Implementation of custom repository functionality

class UserRepositoryImpl implements UserRepositoryCustom {

  public void someCustomMethod(User user) {
    // Your custom implementation
  }
}

	Note
	The implementation itself does not depend on Spring Data and can be a regular Spring bean. So you can use standard dependency injection behavior to inject references to other beans like a JdbTemplate, take part in aspects, and so on.

Example 3.13. Changes to the your basic repository interface

public interface UserRepository extends CrudRepository<User, Long>, UserRepositoryCustom {

  // Declare query methods here
}

Let your standard repository interface extend the custom one. Doing so combines the CRUD and custom functionality and makes it available to clients.

Configuration

If you use namespace configuration, the repository infrastructure tries to autodetect custom implementations by scanning for classes below the package we found a repository in. These classes need to follow the naming convention of appending the namespace element's attribute repository-impl-postfix to the found repository interface name. This postfix defaults to Impl.

Example 3.14. Configuration example

<repositories base-package="com.acme.repository" />

<repositories base-package="com.acme.repository" repository-impl-postfix="FooBar" />

The first configuration example will try to look up a class com.acme.repository.UserRepositoryImpl to act as custom repository implementation, whereas the second example will try to lookup com.acme.repository.UserRepositoryFooBar.

Manual wiring

The preceding approach works well if your custom implementation uses annotation-based configuration and autowiring only, as it will be treated as any other Spring bean. If your custom implementation bean needs special wiring, you simply declare the bean and name it after the conventions just described. The infrastructure will then refer to the manually defined bean definition by name instead of creating one itself.

Example 3.15. Manual wiring of custom implementations (I)

<repositories base-package="com.acme.repository" />

<beans:bean id="userRepositoryImpl" class="…">
  <!-- further configuration -->
</beans:bean>

This section documents a set of Spring Data extensions that enable Spring Data usage in a variety of contexts. Currently most of the integration is targeted towards Spring MVC.

3.4.1 Web support

Note

This section contains the documentation for the Spring Data web support as it is implemented as of Spring Data Commons in the 1.6 range. As it the newly introduced support changes quite a lot of things we kept the documentation of the former behavior in Section 3.4.3, “Legacy web support”. Also note that the JavaConfig support introduced in Spring Data Commons 1.6 requires Spring 3.2 due to some issues with JavaConfig and overridden methods in Spring 3.1.

Spring Data modules ships with a variety of web support if the module supports the repository programming model. The web related stuff requires Spring MVC JARs on the classpath, some of them even provide integration with Spring HATEOAS.

^[2]In general, the integration support is enabled by using the @EnableSpringDataWebSupport annotation in your JavaConfig configuration class.

Example 3.20. Enabling Spring Data web support

@Configuration
@EnableWebMvc
@EnableSpringDataWebSupport
class WebConfiguration { }

The @EnableSpringDataWebSupport annotation registers a few components we will discuss in a bit. It will also detect Spring HATEOAS on the classpath and register integration components for it as well if present.

Alternatively, if you are using XML configuration, register either SpringDataWebSupport or HateoasAwareSpringDataWebSupport as Spring beans:

Example 3.21. Enabling Spring Data web support in XML

<bean class="org.springframework.data.web.config.SpringDataWebConfiguration" />

<!-- If you're using Spring HATEOAS as well register this one *instead* of the former -->
<bean class="org.springframework.data.web.config.HateoasAwareSpringDataWebConfiguration" />

Basic web support

The configuration setup shown above will register a few basic components:

• A DomainClassConverter to enable Spring MVC to resolve instances of repository managed domain classes from request parameters or path variables.

• HandlerMethodArgumentResolver implementations to let Spring MVC resolve Pageable and Sort instances from request parameters.

DomainClassConverter

The DomainClassConverter allows you to use domain types in your Spring MVC controller method signatures directly, so that you don't have to manually lookup the instances via the repository:

Example 3.22. A Spring MVC controller using domain types in method signatures

@Controller
@RequestMapping("/users")
public class UserController {

  @RequestMapping("/{id}")
  public String showUserForm(@PathVariable("id") User user, Model model) {

    model.addAttribute("user", user);
    return "userForm";
  }
}

As you can see the method receives a User instance directly and no further lookup is necessary. The instance can be resolved by letting Spring MVC convert the path variable into the id type of the domain class first and eventually access the instance through calling findOne(…) on the repository instance registered for the domain type.

	Note
	Currently the repository has to implement CrudRepository to be eligible to be discovered for conversion.

HandlerMethodArgumentResolvers for Pageable and Sort

The configuration snippet above also registers a PageableHandlerMethodArgumentResolver as well as an instance of SortHandlerMethodArgumentResolver. The registration enables Pageable and Sort being valid controller method arguments

Example 3.23. Using Pageable as controller method argument

@Controller
@RequestMapping("/users")
public class UserController {

  @Autowired UserRepository repository;

  @RequestMapping
  public String showUsers(Model model, Pageable pageable) {

    model.addAttribute("users", repository.findAll(pageable));
    return "users";
  }
}

This method signature will cause Spring MVC try to derive a Pageable instance from the request parameters using the following default configuration:

Table 3.1. Request parameters evaluated for Pageable instances

page	Page you want to retrieve.
size	Size of the page you want to retrieve.
sort	Properties that should be sorted by in the format property,property(,ASC|DESC). Default sort direction is ascending. Use multiple sort parameters if you want to switch directions, e.g. ?sort=firstname&sort=lastname,asc.

To customize this behavior extend either SpringDataWebConfiguration or the HATEOAS-enabled equivalent and override the pageableResolver() or sortResolver() methods and import your customized configuration file instead of using the @Enable-annotation.

In case you need multiple Pageables or Sorts to be resolved from the request (for multiple tables, for example) you can use Spring's @Qualifier annotation to distinguish one from another. The request parameters then have to be prefixed with ${qualifier}_. So for a method signature like this:

public String showUsers(Model model, 
      @Qualifier("foo") Pageable first,
      @Qualifier("bar") Pageable second) { … }

you have to populate foo_page and bar_page etc.

The default Pageable handed into the method is equivalent to a new PageRequest(0, 20) but can be customized using the @PageableDefaults annotation on the Pageable parameter.

Hypermedia support for Pageables

Spring HATEOAS ships with a representation model class PagedResources that allows enrichting the content of a Page instance with the necessary Page metadata as well as links to let the clients easily navigate the pages. The conversion of a Page to a PagedResources is done by an implementation of the Spring HATEOAS ResourceAssembler interface, the PagedResourcesAssembler.

Example 3.24. Using a PagedResourcesAssembler as controller method argument

@Controller 
class PersonController { 

  @Autowired PersonRepository repository; 

  @RequestMapping(value = "/persons", method = RequestMethod.GET) 
  HttpEntity<PagedResources<Person>> persons(Pageable pageable, 
    PagedResourcesAssembler assembler) { 

    Page<Person> persons = repository.findAll(pageable); 
    return new ResponseEntity<>(assembler.toResources(persons), HttpStatus.OK);
  }
}

Enabling the configuration as shown above allows the PagedResourcesAssembler to be used as controller method argument. Calling toResources(…) on it will cause the following:

• The content of the Page will become the content of the PagedResources instance.

• The PagedResources will get a PageMetadata instance attached populated with information form the Page and the underlying PageRequest.

• The PagedResources gets prev and next links attached depending on the page's state. The links will point to the URI the method invoked is mapped to. The pagination parameters added to the method will match the setup of the PageableHandlerMethodArgumentResolver to make sure the links can be resolved later on.

Assume we have 30 Person instances in the database. You can now trigger a request GET http://localhost:8080/persons and you'll see something similar to this:

{ "links" : [ { "rel" : "next", 
                "href" : "http://localhost:8080/persons?page=1&size=20 } 
  ], 
  "content" : [ 
     … // 20 Person instances rendered here
  ], 
  "pageMetadata" : { 
    "size" : 20, 
    "totalElements" : 30, 
    "totalPages" : 2, 
    "number" : 0
  } 
}

You see that the assembler produced the correct URI and also picks up the default configuration present to resolve the parameters into a Pageable for an upcoming request. This means, if you change that configuration, the links will automatically adhere to the change. By default the assembler points to the controller method it was invoked in but that can be customized by handing in a custom Link to be used as base to build the pagination links to overloads of the PagedResourcesAssembler.toResource(…) method.

[ { "_class" : "com.acme.Person",
 "firstname" : "Dave",
  "lastname" : "Matthews" },
  { "_class" : "com.acme.Person",
 "firstname" : "Carter",
  "lastname" : "Beauford" } ]

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
  xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
  xmlns:repository="http://www.springframework.org/schema/data/repository"
  xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans
    http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans.xsd
    http://www.springframework.org/schema/data/repository
    http://www.springframework.org/schema/data/repository/spring-repository.xsd">

  <repository:jackson-populator locations="classpath:data.json" />

</beans>

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
  xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
  xmlns:repository="http://www.springframework.org/schema/data/repository"
  xmlns:oxm="http://www.springframework.org/schema/oxm"
  xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans
    http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans.xsd
    http://www.springframework.org/schema/data/repository
    http://www.springframework.org/schema/data/repository/spring-repository.xsd
    http://www.springframework.org/schema/oxm
    http://www.springframework.org/schema/oxm/spring-oxm.xsd">

  <repository:unmarshaller-populator locations="classpath:data.json" unmarshaller-ref="unmarshaller" />

  <oxm:jaxb2-marshaller contextPath="com.acme" />

</beans>

@Controller
@RequestMapping("/users")
public class UserController {

  private final UserRepository userRepository;

  @Autowired
  public UserController(UserRepository userRepository) {
    Assert.notNull(repository, "Repository must not be null!");
    userRepository = userRepository;
  }

  @RequestMapping("/{id}")
  public String showUserForm(@PathVariable("id") Long id, Model model) {
    
    // Do null check for id
    User user = userRepository.findOne(id);
    // Do null check for user

    model.addAttribute("user", user);
    return "user";
  }
}

<bean class="….web.servlet.mvc.annotation.AnnotationMethodHandlerAdapter">
  <property name="webBindingInitializer">
    <bean class="….web.bind.support.ConfigurableWebBindingInitializer">
      <property name="propertyEditorRegistrars">
        <bean class="org.springframework.data.repository.support.DomainClassPropertyEditorRegistrar" />
      </property>
    </bean>
  </property>
</bean>

@Controller
@RequestMapping("/users")
public class UserController {

  @RequestMapping("/{id}")
  public String showUserForm(@PathVariable("id") User user, Model model) {

    model.addAttribute("user", user);
    return "userForm";
  }
}

<mvc:annotation-driven conversion-service="conversionService" />

<bean class="org.springframework.data.repository.support.DomainClassConverter">
  <constructor-arg ref="conversionService" />
</bean>

class WebConfiguration extends WebMvcConfigurationSupport {

  // Other configuration omitted

  @Bean
  public DomainClassConverter<?> domainClassConverter() {
    return new DomainClassConverter<FormattingConversionService>(mvcConversionService());
  }
}

@Controller
@RequestMapping("/users")
public class UserController {

  // DI code omitted

  @RequestMapping
  public String showUsers(Model model, HttpServletRequest request) {

    int page = Integer.parseInt(request.getParameter("page"));
    int pageSize = Integer.parseInt(request.getParameter("pageSize"));

    Pageable pageable = new PageRequest(page, pageSize);

    model.addAttribute("users", userService.getUsers(pageable));
    return "users";
  }
}

@Configuration
public class WebConfig extends WebMvcConfigurationSupport {

  @Override
  public void configureMessageConverters(List<HttpMessageConverter<?>> converters) {
    converters.add(new PageableHandlerArgumentResolver());
  }
}

<bean class="….web.servlet.mvc.method.annotation.RequestMappingHandlerAdapter">
  <property name="customArgumentResolvers">
    <list>
      <bean class="org.springframework.data.web.PageableHandlerArgumentResolver" />
    </list>
  </property>
</bean>

@Controller
@RequestMapping("/users")
public class UserController {

  @RequestMapping
  public String showUsers(Model model, Pageable pageable) {

    model.addAttribute("users", userRepository.findAll(pageable));
    return "users";
  }
}

public String showUsers(Model model, 
      @Qualifier("foo") Pageable first,
      @Qualifier("bar") Pageable second) { … }

public String showUsers(Model model, 
  @PageableDefaults(pageNumber = 0, value = 30) Pageable pageable) { … }

While support for repositories is always present, you need to enable them in general or for a specific namespace. If you extend AbstractCouchbaseConfiguration, just use the @EnableCouchbaseRepositories annotation. It provides lots of possible options to narrow or customize the search path, one of the most common ones is basePackages.

@Configuration
@EnableCouchbaseRepositories(basePackages = {"com.couchbase.example.repos"})
public class Config extends AbstractCouchbaseConfiguration {
    //...
}
            

XML-based configuration is also available:

<couchbase:repositories base-package="com.couchbase.example.repos" />
            

In the simplest case, your repository will extend the CrudRepository<T, String>, where T is the entity that you want to expose. Let's look at a repository for a user:

import org.springframework.data.repository.CrudRepository;

public interface UserRepository extends CrudRepository<User, String> {
}
            

Please note that this is just an interface and not an actual class. In the background, when your context gets initialized, actual implementations for your repository descriptions get created and you can access them through regular beans. This means you will save lots of boilerplate code while still exposing full CRUD semantics to your service layer and application.

Now, let's imagine we @Autowrie the UserRepository to a class that makes use of it. What methods do we have available?

Now thats awesome! Just by defining an interface we get full CRUD functionality on top of our managed entity. All methods suffixed with (*) in the table are backed by Views, which is explained later.

If you are coming from other datastore implementations, you might want to implement the PagingAndSortingRepository as well. Note that as of now, it is not supported but will be in the future.

While the exposed methods provide you with a great variety of access patterns, very often you need to define custom ones. You can do this by adding method declarations to your interface, which will be automatically resolved to view requests in the background. Here is an example:

public interface UserRepository extends CrudRepository<User, String> {

    List<User> findAllAdmins();

    List<User> findByFirstname(Query query);
}

            

Since we've came across views now multiple times and the findByFirstname(Query query) exposes a yet unknown parameter, let's cover that next.

As a rule of thumb, all repository access methods which are not "by a specific key" require a backing view to find the one or more matching entities. We'll only cover views to the extend which they are needed, if you need in-depth information about them please refer to the official Couchbase Server manual and the Couchbase Java SDK manual.

To cover the basic CRUD methods from the CrudRepository, one view needs to be implemented in Couchbase Server. It basically returns all documents for the specific entity and also adds the optional reduce function _count.

Since every view has a design document and view name, by convention we default to all as the view name and the lower-cased entity name as the design document name. So if your entity is named User, then the code expects the all view in the user design document. It needs to look like this:

// do not forget the _count reduce function!
function (doc, meta) {
  if (doc._class == "namespace.to.entity.User") {
    emit(null, null);
  }
}
            

Note that the important part in this map function is to only include the document IDs which correspond to our entity. Because the library always adds the _class property, this is a quick and easy way to do it. If you have another property in your JSON which does the same job (like a explicit type field), then you can use that as well - you don't have to stick to _class all the time.

Also make sure to publish your design documents into production so that they can be picked up by the library! Also, if you are curious why we use emit(null, null) in the view: the document id is always sent over to the client implicitly, so we can shave off a view bytes in our view by not duplicating the id. If you use emit(meta.id, null) it won't hurt much too.

Implementing your custom repository finder methods works the same way. The findAllAdmins calls the allAdmins view in the user design document. Imagine we have a field on our entity which looks like boolean isAdmin. We can write a view like this to expose them (we don't need a reduce function for this one):

function (doc, meta) {
  if (doc._class == "namespace.to.entity.User" && doc.isAdmin) {
    emit(null, null);
  }
}
            

By now, we've never actually customized our view at query time. This is where the special Query argument comes along - like in our findByFirstname(Query query) method.

function (doc, meta) {
  if (doc._class == "namespace.to.entity.User") {
    emit(doc.firstname, null);
  }
}
            

This view not only emits the document id, but also the firstname of every user as the key. We can now run a Query which returns us all users with a firstname of "Michael" or "Thomas".

// Load the bean, or @Autowire it
UserRepository repo = ctx.getBean(UserRepository.class);

// Create the CouchbaseClient Query object
Query query = new Query();

// Filter on those two keys
query.setKeys(ComplexKey.of("Michael", "Thomas"));

// Run the query and get all matching users returned
List<User> users = repo.findByFirstname(query));
            

On all custom finder methods, you can use the @View annotation to both customize the design document and view name (to override the conventions).

Please keep in mind that by default, the Stale.UPDATE_AFTER mechanism is used. This means that whatever is in the index gets returned, and then the index gets updated. This strikes a good balance between performance and data freshness. You can tune the behavior through the setStale() method on the query object. For more details on behavior, please consult the Couchbase Server and Java SDK documentation directly.

The template can be accessed through the couchbaseTemplate bean out of your context. Once you've got a reference to it, you can run all kinds of operations against it. Other than through a repository, in a template you need to always specifiy the target entity type which you want to get converted.

To mutate documents, you'll find save, insert and update methods exposed. Saving will insert or update the document, insert will fail if it has been created already and update only works against documents that have already been created.

Since Couchbase Server has different levels of persistence (by default you'll get a positive response if it has been acknowledged in the managed cache), you can provide higher durability options through the overloaded PersistTo and/or ReplicateTo options. The behaviour is part of the Couchbase Java SDK, please refer to the official documentation for more details.

Remvoing docouments through the remove methods works exactly the same.

If you want to load documents, you can do that through the findById method, which is the fastest and if possible your tool of choice. The find methods for views are findByView which converts it into the target entity, but also querView which exposes lower level semantics.

If you really need low-level semantics, the couchbaseClient bean is also always in scope.

Technically, caching is not part of spring-data, but is implemented directly in the spring core. Most database implementations in the spring-data package can't support @Cacheable, because it is not possible to store arbitrary data.

Couchbase supports both binary and JSON data, so you can get both out of the same database.

To make it work, you need to add the @EnableCaching annotation and configure the cacheManager bean:

@Configuration
@EnableCaching
public class Config extends AbstractCouchbaseConfiguration {
    // general methods

    @Bean
    public CouchbaseCacheManager cacheManager() throws Exception {
        HashMap<String, CouchbaseClient> instances = new HashMap<String, CouchbaseClient>();
        instances.put("persistent", couchbaseClient());
        return new CouchbaseCacheManager(instances);
    }
}
            

The persistent identifier can then be used on the @Cacheable annotation to identify the cache manager to use (you can have more than one configured).

Once it is set up, you can annotate every method with the @Cacheable annotation to transparently cache it in your couchbase bucket. You can also customize how the key is generated.

@Cacheable(value="persistent", key="'longrunsim-'+#time")
public String simulateLongRun(long time) {
    try {
        Thread.sleep(time);
    } catch(Exception ex) {
        System.out.println("This shouldnt happen...");
    }
    return "Ive slept " + time + " miliseconds.;
}
            

If you run the method multiple times, you'll see a set operation happening first, followed by multiple get operations and no sleep time (which fakes the expensive execution). You can store whatever you want, if it is JSON of course you can access it through views and look at it in the Web UI.