This version is still in development and is not considered stable yet. For the latest stable version, please use Spring Data JPA 3.4.1!

Getting Started

An easy way to bootstrap setting up a working environment is to create a Spring-based project via start.spring.io or create a Spring project in Spring Tools.

Examples Repository

The GitHub spring-data-examples repository hosts several examples that you can download and play around with to get a feel for how the library works.

Hello World

Let’s start with a simple entity and its corresponding repository:

@Entity
class Person {

  @Id @GeneratedValue(strategy = GenerationType.AUTO)
  private Long id;
  private String name;

  // getters and setters omitted for brevity
}

interface PersonRepository extends Repository<Person, Long> {

  Person save(Person person);

  Optional<Person> findById(long id);
}

Create the main application to run, as the following example shows:

@SpringBootApplication
public class DemoApplication {

  public static void main(String[] args) {
    SpringApplication.run(DemoApplication.class, args);
  }

  @Bean
  CommandLineRunner runner(PersonRepository repository) {
    return args -> {

      Person person = new Person();
      person.setName("John");

      repository.save(person);
      Person saved = repository.findById(person.getId()).orElseThrow(NoSuchElementException::new);
    };
  }
}

Even in this simple example, there are a few notable things to point out:

  • Repository instances are automatically implemented. When used as parameters of @Bean methods, these will be autowired without further need for annotations.

  • The basic repository extends Repository. We suggest to consider how much API surface you want to expose towards your application. More complex repository interfaces are ListCrudRepository or JpaRepository.