ZCW-SpringZero

Getting Started Building a RESTful Web Service

Introduction

This Getting Started guide will walk you through the process of creating a simple REST service using Spring.

To help you get started, we've provided an initial project structure as well as the completed project for you in GitHub:

$ git clone https://github.com/springframework-meta/gs-rest-service.git

In the start folder, you'll find a bare project, ready for you to copy-n-paste code snippets from this document. In the complete folder, you'll find the complete project code.

Before we can write the REST service itself, there's some initial project setup that's required. Or, you can skip straight to the fun part.

Adding dependencies

First you'll need to set up a basic build script. You can use any build system you like, but we've included snippets for Maven and Gradle here. If you're not familiar with either of these, you can refer to our Getting Started with Maven or Getting Started with Gradle guides.

Add the Spring MVC and Jackson JSON libraries as dependencies:

Maven [copy complete pom.xml to clipboard]

<dependencies>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-webmvc</artifactId>
        <version>3.2.2.RELEASE</version>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>com.fasterxml.jackson.core</groupId>
        <artifactId>jackson-core</artifactId>
        <version>2.1.4</version>
    </dependency>
</dependencies>

Gradle [copy complete build.gradle to clipboard]

compile 'org.springframework:spring-webmvc:3.2.2.RELEASE'
compile 'com.fasterxml.jackson.core:jackson-core:2.1.4'

Creating a Configuration Class

The first step is to set up a simple Spring configuration class. It'll look like this:

src/main/java/hello/HelloWorldConfiguration.java

package hello;

import org.springframework.context.annotation.ComponentScan;
import org.springframework.context.annotation.Configuration;
import org.springframework.web.servlet.config.annotation.EnableWebMvc;

@Configuration
@EnableWebMvc
@ComponentScan
public class HelloWorldConfiguration {
}

This class is concise, but there's plenty going on under the hood. @EnableWebMvc handles the registration of a number of components that enable Spring's support for annotation-based controllers—you'll build one of those in an upcoming step. And we've also annotated the configuration class with @ComponentScan which tells Spring to scan the hello package for those controllers (along with any other annotated component classes).

Setting up the Spring DispatcherServlet

Spring's DispatcherServlet will do the work of accepting incoming HTTP requests and routing them to our controller. The simplest way to configure and register the DispatcherServlet is with a WebApplicationInitializer class as follows:

src/main/java/hello/HelloWorldWebAppInitializer.java

package hello;

import org.springframework.web.servlet.support.AbstractAnnotationConfigDispatcherServletInitializer;

public class HelloWorldWebAppInitializer extends AbstractAnnotationConfigDispatcherServletInitializer {

	@Override
	protected String[] getServletMappings() {
		return new String[] { "/" };
	}

	@Override
	protected Class<?>[] getRootConfigClasses() {
		return null;
	}

	@Override
	protected Class<?>[] getServletConfigClasses() {
		return new Class[] { HelloWorldConfiguration.class };
	}

}

By extending AbstractAnnotationConfigDispatcherServletInitializer, our web application initializer will get a DispatcherServlet that is configured with @Configuration-annotated classes. All we must do is tell it where those configuration classes are and what path(s) to map DispatcherServlet to.

With regard to the servlet path mappings, getServletMappings() returns a single-entry array of String specifying that DispatcherServlet should be mapped to "/".

The getRootConfigClasses() and getServletConfigClasses() methods specify the configuration classes. The Class array returned from getRootConfigClasses() specifies the classes for the root context provided to ContextLoaderListener. Similarly, the Class array returned from getServletConfigClasses() specifies the classes for the servlet application context provided to DispatcherServlet.

For our purposes there will only be a servlet application context, so getRootConfigClasses() returns null. getServletConfigClasses(), however, specifies HelloWorldConfiguration as the only configuration class.

Creating a Representation Class

With the essential Spring MVC configuration out of the way, it's time to get to the nuts and bolts of our REST service by creating a resource representation class and an endpoint controller.

Before we get too carried away with building the endpoint controller, we need to give some thought to what our API will look like.

What we want is to handle GET requests for /hello-world, optionally with a name query parameter. In response to such a request, we'd like to send back JSON, representing a greeting, that looks something like this:

{
	"id": 1,
	"content": "Hello, stranger!"
}

The id field is a unique identifier for the greeting, and content is the textual representation of the greeting.

To model the greeting representation, we’ll create a representation class:

src/main/java/hello/Greeting.java

package hello;

public class Greeting {

	private final long id;
	private final String content;

	public Greeting(long id, String content) {
	this.id = id;
	this.content = content;
	}

	public long getId() {
	return id;
	}

	public String getContent() {
	return content;
	}

}

Now that we've got our representation class, let's create the endpoint controller that will serve it.

Creating a Resource Controller

In Spring, REST endpoints are just Spring MVC controllers. The following Spring MVC controller handles a GET request for /hello-world and returns our Greeting resource:

src/main/java/hello/HelloWorldController.java

package hello;
import java.util.concurrent.atomic.AtomicLong;
import org.springframework.stereotype.Controller;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RequestMapping;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RequestMethod;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RequestParam;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.ResponseBody;

@Controller
@RequestMapping("/hello-world")
public class HelloWorldController {
	
	private static final String template = "Hello, %s!";
	private final AtomicLong counter = new AtomicLong();

	@RequestMapping(method=RequestMethod.GET)
	public @ResponseBody Greeting sayHello(@RequestParam(value="name", required=false, defaultValue="Stranger") String name) {
		return new Greeting(counter.incrementAndGet(), String.format(template, name));
	}
	
}

The key difference between a human-facing controller and a REST endpoint controller is in how the response is created. Rather than rely on a view (such as JSP) to render model data in HTML, an endpoint controller simply returns the data to be written directly to the body of the response.

The magic is in the @ResponseBody annotation. @ResponseBody tells Spring MVC to not render a model into a view, but rather to write the returned object into the response body. It does this by using one of Spring's message converters. Because Jackson 2 is in the classpath, this means that MappingJackson2HttpMessageConverter will handle the conversion of Greeting to JSON if the request's Accept header specifies that JSON should be returned.

Building and Running the REST Service

NOTE: This section is a very important section, because it shows the user how all of the work done up to this point comes together and runs. The challenge here, however, is that there's no easy way to run this application. Gradle's Jetty plugin seems easy and natural, but it uses an older, non-Servlet 3 version of Jetty, so the application initializer will not work. There is a Gradle Tomcat plugin, but it's quite involved setup-wise. And loading this into any IDE and running it is far more involved than either of the Gradle-based options. It would be really nice to leverage Spring Bootstrap/Catalyst for running the sample. That's likely what will happen, but at this point it's too risky of an option until bootstrap/catalyst stabilizes.

Next Steps

Congratulations! You have just developed a simple REST service using Spring. This is a basic foundation for building a complete REST API in Spring.

There's more to building REST services than is covered here. You may want to continue your exploration of Spring and REST with the following Getting Started guides:

• Handling POST, PUT, and GET requests in REST services
• Creating self-describing APIs with HATEOAS
• Securing a REST service with HTTP Basic
• Securing a REST service with OAuth
• Consuming REST services
• Testing REST services