29. Working with NoSQL technologies

Spring Data provides additional projects that help you access a variety of NoSQL technologies including MongoDB, Neo4J, Elasticsearch, Solr, Redis, Gemfire, Couchbase and Cassandra. Spring Boot provides auto-configuration for Redis, MongoDB, Elasticsearch, and Solr; you can make use of the other projects, but you will need to configure them yourself. Refer to the appropriate reference documentation at projects.spring.io/spring-data.

29.1 Redis

Redis is a cache, message broker and richly-featured key-value store. Spring Boot offers basic auto-configuration for the Jedis client library and abstractions on top of it provided by Spring Data Redis. There is a spring-boot-starter-redis ‘Starter POM’ for collecting the dependencies in a convenient way.

29.1.1 Connecting to Redis

You can inject an auto-configured RedisConnectionFactory, StringRedisTemplate or vanilla RedisTemplate instance as you would any other Spring Bean. By default the instance will attempt to connect to a Redis server using localhost:6379:

@Component
public class MyBean {

    private StringRedisTemplate template;

    @Autowired
    public MyBean(StringRedisTemplate template) {
        this.template = template;
    }

    // ...

}

If you add a @Bean of your own of any of the auto-configured types it will replace the default (except in the case of RedisTemplate the exclusion is based on the bean name ‘redisTemplate’ not its type). If commons-pool2 is on the classpath you will get a pooled connection factory by default.

29.2 MongoDB

MongoDB is an open-source NoSQL document database that uses a JSON-like schema instead of traditional table-based relational data. Spring Boot offers several conveniences for working with MongoDB, including the spring-boot-starter-data-mongodb ‘Starter POM’.

29.2.1 Connecting to a MongoDB database

You can inject an auto-configured org.springframework.data.mongodb.MongoDbFactory to access Mongo databases. By default the instance will attempt to connect to a MongoDB server using the URL mongodb://localhost/test:

import org.springframework.data.mongodb.MongoDbFactory;
import com.mongodb.DB;

@Component
public class MyBean {

    private final MongoDbFactory mongo;

    @Autowired
    public MyBean(MongoDbFactory mongo) {
        this.mongo = mongo;
    }

    // ...

    public void example() {
        DB db = mongo.getDb();
        // ...
    }

}

You can set spring.data.mongodb.uri property to change the url, or alternatively specify a host/port. For example, you might declare the following in your application.properties:

spring.data.mongodb.host=mongoserver
spring.data.mongodb.port=27017
[Tip]Tip

If spring.data.mongodb.port is not specified the default of 27017 is used. You could simply delete this line from the sample above.

[Tip]Tip

If you aren’t using Spring Data Mongo you can inject com.mongodb.Mongo beans instead of using MongoDbFactory.

You can also declare your own MongoDbFactory or Mongo bean if you want to take complete control of establishing the MongoDB connection.

29.2.2 MongoTemplate

Spring Data Mongo provides a MongoTemplate class that is very similar in its design to Spring’s JdbcTemplate. As with JdbcTemplate Spring Boot auto-configures a bean for you to simply inject:

import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Autowired;
import org.springframework.data.mongodb.core.MongoTemplate;
import org.springframework.stereotype.Component;

@Component
public class MyBean {

    private final MongoTemplate mongoTemplate;

    @Autowired
    public MyBean(MongoTemplate mongoTemplate) {
        this.mongoTemplate = mongoTemplate;
    }

    // ...

}

See the MongoOperations Javadoc for complete details.

29.2.3 Spring Data MongoDB repositories

Spring Data includes repository support for MongoDB. As with the JPA repositories discussed earlier, the basic principle is that queries are constructed for you automatically based on method names.

In fact, both Spring Data JPA and Spring Data MongoDB share the same common infrastructure; so you could take the JPA example from earlier and, assuming that City is now a Mongo data class rather than a JPA @Entity, it will work in the same way.

package com.example.myapp.domain;

import org.springframework.data.domain.*;
import org.springframework.data.repository.*;

public interface CityRepository extends Repository<City, Long> {

    Page<City> findAll(Pageable pageable);

    City findByNameAndCountryAllIgnoringCase(String name, String country);

}
[Tip]Tip

For complete details of Spring Data MongoDB, including its rich object mapping technologies, refer to their reference documentation.

29.3 Gemfire

Spring Data Gemfire provides convenient Spring-friendly tools for accessing the Pivotal Gemfire data management platform. There is a spring-boot-starter-data-gemfire ‘Starter POM’ for collecting the dependencies in a convenient way. There is currently no auto-configuration support for Gemfire, but you can enable Spring Data Repositories with a single annotation (@EnableGemfireRepositories).

29.4 Solr

Apache Solr is a search engine. Spring Boot offers basic auto-configuration for the Solr client library and abstractions on top of it provided by Spring Data Solr. There is a spring-boot-starter-data-solr ‘Starter POM’ for collecting the dependencies in a convenient way.

29.4.1 Connecting to Solr

You can inject an auto-configured SolrServer instance as you would any other Spring bean. By default the instance will attempt to connect to a server using localhost:8983/solr:

@Component
public class MyBean {

    private SolrServer solr;

    @Autowired
    public MyBean(SolrServer solr) {
        this.solr = solr;
    }

    // ...

}

If you add a @Bean of your own of type SolrServer it will replace the default.

29.4.2 Spring Data Solr repositories

Spring Data includes repository support for Apache Solr. As with the JPA repositories discussed earlier, the basic principle is that queries are constructed for you automatically based on method names.

In fact, both Spring Data JPA and Spring Data Solr share the same common infrastructure; so you could take the JPA example from earlier and, assuming that City is now a @SolrDocument class rather than a JPA @Entity, it will work in the same way.

[Tip]Tip

For complete details of Spring Data Solr, refer to their reference documentation.

29.5 Elasticsearch

Elasticsearch is an open source, distributed, real-time search and analytics engine. Spring Boot offers basic auto-configuration for the Elasticsearch and abstractions on top of it provided by Spring Data Elasticsearch. There is a spring-boot-starter-data-elasticsearch ‘Starter POM’ for collecting the dependencies in a convenient way.

29.5.1 Connecting to Elasticsearch

You can inject an auto-configured ElasticsearchTemplate or Elasticsearch Client instance as you would any other Spring Bean. By default the instance will attempt to connect to a local in-memory server (a NodeClient in Elasticsearch terms), but you can switch to a remote server (i.e. a TransportClient) by setting spring.data.elasticsearch.cluster-nodes to a comma-separated ‘host:port’ list.

@Component
public class MyBean {

    private ElasticsearchTemplate template;

    @Autowired
    public MyBean(ElasticsearchTemplate template) {
        this.template = template;
    }

    // ...

}

If you add a @Bean of your own of type ElasticsearchTemplate it will replace the default.

29.5.2 Spring Data Elasticsearch repositories

Spring Data includes repository support for Elasticsearch. As with the JPA repositories discussed earlier, the basic principle is that queries are constructed for you automatically based on method names.

In fact, both Spring Data JPA and Spring Data Elasticsearch share the same common infrastructure; so you could take the JPA example from earlier and, assuming that City is now an Elasticsearch @Document class rather than a JPA @Entity, it will work in the same way.

[Tip]Tip

For complete details of Spring Data Elasticsearch, refer to their reference documentation.