Core concepts

The central interface in the Spring Data repository abstraction is Repository. It takes the domain class to manage as well as the identifier 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 and ListCrudRepository interfaces provide sophisticated CRUD functionality for the entity class that is being managed.

CrudRepository Interface

public interface CrudRepository<T, ID> extends Repository<T, ID> {

  <S extends T> S save(S entity);      (1)

  Optional<T> findById(ID primaryKey); (2)

  Iterable<T> findAll();               (3)

  long count();                        (4)

  void delete(T entity);               (5)

  boolean existsById(ID primaryKey);   (6)

  // … more functionality omitted.
}

1	Saves the given entity.
2	Returns the entity identified by the given ID.
3	Returns all entities.
4	Returns the number of entities.
5	Deletes the given entity.
6	Indicates whether an entity with the given ID exists.

The methods declared in this interface are commonly referred to as CRUD methods. ListCrudRepository offers equivalent methods, but they return List where the CrudRepository methods return an Iterable.

We also provide persistence technology-specific abstractions, such as 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 such as CrudRepository.

Additional to the CrudRepository, there are PagingAndSortingRepository and ListPagingAndSortingRepository which add additional methods to ease paginated access to entities:

PagingAndSortingRepository interface

public interface PagingAndSortingRepository<T, ID>  {

  Iterable<T> findAll(Sort sort);

  Page<T> findAll(Pageable pageable);
}

Extension interfaces are subject to be supported by the actual store module. While this documentation explains the general scheme, make sure that your store module supports the interfaces that you want to use.

To access the second page of User by a page size of 20, you could do something like the following:

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

ListPagingAndSortingRepository offers equivalent methods, but returns a List where the PagingAndSortingRepository methods return an Iterable.

In addition to query methods, query derivation for both count and delete queries is available. The following list shows the interface definition for a derived count query:

Derived Count Query

interface UserRepository extends CrudRepository<User, Long> {

  long countByLastname(String lastname);
}

The following listing shows the interface definition for a derived delete query:

Derived Delete Query

interface UserRepository extends CrudRepository<User, Long> {

  long deleteByLastname(String lastname);

  List<User> removeByLastname(String lastname);
}