As you've just seen there are a few keywords triggering geo-spatial operations within a MongoDB query. The Near keyword allows some further modification. Let's have look at some examples:

public interface PersonRepository extends MongoRepository<Person, String>

  // { 'location' : { '$near' : [point.x, point.y], '$maxDistance' : distance}}
  List<Person> findByLocationNear(Point location, Distance distance);
}

Adding a Distance parameter to the query method allows restricting results to those within the given distance. If the Distance was set up containing a Metric we will transparently use $nearSphere instead of $code.

Point point = new Point(43.7, 48.8);
Distance distance = new Distance(200, Metrics.KILOMETERS);
… = repository.findByLocationNear(point, distance);
// {'location' : {'$nearSphere' : [43.7, 48.8], '$maxDistance' : 0.03135711885774796}}

As you can see using a Distance equipped with a Metric causes $nearSphere clause to be added instead of a plain $near. Beyond that the actual distance gets calculated according to the Metrics used.

public interface PersonRepository extends MongoRepository<Person, String>

  // {'geoNear' : 'location', 'near' : [x, y] }
  GeoResults<Person> findByLocationNear(Point location);

  // No metric: {'geoNear' : 'person', 'near' : [x, y], maxDistance : distance }
  // Metric: {'geoNear' : 'person', 'near' : [x, y], 'maxDistance' : distance, 
  //          'distanceMultiplier' : metric.multiplier, 'spherical' : true }
  GeoResults<Person> findByLocationNear(Point location, Distance distance);

  // {'geoNear' : 'location', 'near' : [x, y] }
  GeoResults<Person> findByLocationNear(Point location);
}

By adding the annotation org.springframework.data.mongodb.repository.Query repository finder methods you can specify a MongoDB JSON query string to use instead of having the query derived from the method name. For example

public interface PersonRepository extends MongoRepository<Person, String>

  @Query("{ 'firstname' : ?0 }")
  List<Person> findByThePersonsFirstname(String firstname);

}

The placeholder ?0 lets you substitute the value from the method arguments into the JSON query string.

You can also use the filter property to restrict the set of properties that will be mapped into the Java object. For example,

public interface PersonRepository extends MongoRepository<Person, String>

  @Query(value="{ 'firstname' : ?0 }", fields="{ 'firstname' : 1, 'lastname' : 1}")
  List<Person> findByThePersonsFirstname(String firstname);

}

This will return only the firstname, lastname and Id properties of the Person objects. The age property, a java.lang.Integer, will not be set and its value will therefore be null.

MongoDB repository support integrates with the QueryDSL project which provides a means to perform type-safe queries in Java. To quote from the project description, "Instead of writing queries as inline strings or externalizing them into XML files they are constructed via a fluent API." It provides the following features

Please refer to the QueryDSL documentation which describes how to bootstrap your environment for APT based code generation using Maven or using Ant.

Using QueryDSL you will be able to write queries as shown below

QPerson person = new QPerson("person");
List<Person> result = repository.findAll(person.address.zipCode.eq("C0123"));

Page<Person> page = repository.findAll(person.lastname.contains("a"), 
                                       new PageRequest(0, 2, Direction.ASC, "lastname"));

QPerson is a class that is generated (via the Java annotation post processing tool) which is a Predicate that allows you to write type safe queries. Notice that there are no strings in the query other than the value "C0123".

You can use the generated Predicate class via the interface QueryDslPredicateExecutor which is shown below

public interface QueryDslPredicateExecutor<T> {

  T findOne(Predicate predicate);

  List<T> findAll(Predicate predicate);

  List<T> findAll(Predicate predicate, OrderSpecifier<?>... orders);

  Page<T> findAll(Predicate predicate, Pageable pageable);

  Long count(Predicate predicate);
}

To use this in your repository implementation, simply inherit from it in additiion to other repository interfaces. This is shown below

public interface PersonRepository extends MongoRepository<Person, String>, QueryDslPredicateExecutor<Person> {

   // additional finder methods go here

}

We think you will find this an extremely powerful tool for writing MongoDB queries.

Instances of the repository interfaces are usually created by a container, which Spring is the most natural choice when working with Spring Data. As of version 1.3.0 Spring Data MongoDB ships with a custom CDI extension that allows using the repository abstraction in CDI environments. The extension is part of the JAR so all you need to do to activate it is dropping the Spring Data MongoDB JAR into your classpath. You can now set up the infrastructure by implementing a CDI Producer for the MongoTemplate:

class MongoTemplateProducer {

    @Produces
    @ApplicationScoped
    public MongoOperations createMongoTemplate() throws UnknownHostException, MongoException {

        MongoDbFactory factory = new SimpleMongoDbFactory(new Mongo(), "database");
        return new MongoTemplate(factory);
    }
}

The Spring Data MongoDB CDI extension will pick up the MongoTemplate available as CDI bean and create a proxy for a Spring Data repository whenever an bean of a repository type is requested by the container. Thus obtaining an instance of a Spring Data repository is a matter of declaring an @Inject-ed property:

class RepositoryClient {

  @Inject
  PersonRepository repository;

  public void businessMethod() {

    List<Person> people = repository.findAll();
  }
}