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);
}

Entity State Detection Strategies

The following table describes the strategies that Spring Data offers for detecting whether an entity is new:

Table 1. Options for detection whether an entity is new in Spring Data

@Id-Property inspection (the default)

By default, Spring Data inspects the identifier property of the given entity. If the identifier property is null or 0 in case of primitive types, then the entity is assumed to be new. Otherwise, it is assumed to not be new.

@Version-Property inspection

If a property annotated with @Version is present and null, or in case of a version property of primitive type 0 the entity is considered new. If the version property is present but has a different value, the entity is considered to not be new. If no version property is present Spring Data falls back to inspection of the identifier property.

Implementing Persistable

If an entity implements Persistable, Spring Data delegates the new detection to the isNew(…) method of the entity. See the Javadoc for details.

Note: Properties of Persistable will get detected and persisted if you use AccessType.PROPERTY. To avoid that, use @Transient.

Providing a custom EntityInformation implementation

You can customize the EntityInformation abstraction used in the repository base implementation by creating a subclass of the module specific repository factory and overriding the getEntityInformation(…) method. You then have to register the custom implementation of module specific repository factory as a Spring bean. Note that this should rarely be necessary.