JPA and Spring Data JPA

The Java Persistence API is a standard technology that lets you “map” objects to relational databases. The spring-boot-starter-data-jpa POM provides a quick way to get started. It provides the following key dependencies:

Hibernate: One of the most popular JPA implementations.
Spring Data JPA: Helps you to implement JPA-based repositories.
Spring ORM: Core ORM support from the Spring Framework.

We do not go into too many details of JPA or Spring Data here. You can follow the “Accessing Data with JPA” guide from spring.io and read the Spring Data JPA and Hibernate reference documentation.

Entity Classes

Traditionally, JPA “Entity” classes are specified in a persistence.xml file. With Spring Boot, this file is not necessary and “Entity Scanning” is used instead. By default, all packages below your main configuration class (the one annotated with @EnableAutoConfiguration or @SpringBootApplication) are searched.

Any classes annotated with @Entity, @Embeddable, or @MappedSuperclass are considered. A typical entity class resembles the following example:

Java
Kotlin

import java.io.Serializable;

import jakarta.persistence.Column;
import jakarta.persistence.Entity;
import jakarta.persistence.GeneratedValue;
import jakarta.persistence.Id;

@Entity
public class City implements Serializable {

	@Id
	@GeneratedValue
	private Long id;

	@Column(nullable = false)
	private String name;

	@Column(nullable = false)
	private String state;

	// ... additional members, often include @OneToMany mappings

	protected City() {
		// no-args constructor required by JPA spec
		// this one is protected since it should not be used directly
	}

	public City(String name, String state) {
		this.name = name;
		this.state = state;
	}

	public String getName() {
		return this.name;
	}

	public String getState() {
		return this.state;
	}

	// ... etc

}

import jakarta.persistence.Column
import jakarta.persistence.Entity
import jakarta.persistence.GeneratedValue
import jakarta.persistence.Id
import java.io.Serializable

@Entity
class City : Serializable {

	@Id
	@GeneratedValue
	private val id: Long? = null

	@Column(nullable = false)
	var name: String? = null
		private set

	// ... etc
	@Column(nullable = false)
	var state: String? = null
		private set

	// ... additional members, often include @OneToMany mappings

	protected constructor() {
		// no-args constructor required by JPA spec
		// this one is protected since it should not be used directly
	}

	constructor(name: String?, state: String?) {
		this.name = name
		this.state = state
	}

}

You can customize entity scanning locations by using the @EntityScan annotation. See the “Separate @Entity Definitions from Spring Configuration” how-to.

Spring Data JPA Repositories

Spring Data JPA repositories are interfaces that you can define to access data. JPA queries are created automatically from your method names. For example, a CityRepository interface might declare a findAllByState(String state) method to find all the cities in a given state.

For more complex queries, you can annotate your method with Spring Data’s Query annotation.

Spring Data repositories usually extend from the Repository or CrudRepository interfaces. If you use auto-configuration, repositories are searched from the package containing your main configuration class (the one annotated with @EnableAutoConfiguration or @SpringBootApplication) down.

The following example shows a typical Spring Data repository interface definition:

Java
Kotlin

import org.springframework.boot.docs.data.sql.jpaandspringdata.entityclasses.City;
import org.springframework.data.domain.Page;
import org.springframework.data.domain.Pageable;
import org.springframework.data.repository.Repository;

public interface CityRepository extends Repository<City, Long> {

	Page<City> findAll(Pageable pageable);

	City findByNameAndStateAllIgnoringCase(String name, String state);

}

import org.springframework.boot.docs.data.sql.jpaandspringdata.entityclasses.City
import org.springframework.data.domain.Page
import org.springframework.data.domain.Pageable
import org.springframework.data.repository.Repository

interface CityRepository : Repository<City?, Long?> {

	fun findAll(pageable: Pageable?): Page<City?>?

	fun findByNameAndStateAllIgnoringCase(name: String?, state: String?): City?

}

Spring Data JPA repositories support three different modes of bootstrapping: default, deferred, and lazy. To enable deferred or lazy bootstrapping, set the spring.data.jpa.repositories.bootstrap-mode property to deferred or lazy respectively. When using deferred or lazy bootstrapping, the auto-configured EntityManagerFactoryBuilder will use the context’s AsyncTaskExecutor, if any, as the bootstrap executor. If more than one exists, the one named applicationTaskExecutor will be used.

When using deferred or lazy bootstrapping, make sure to defer any access to the JPA infrastructure after the application context bootstrap phase. You can use SmartInitializingSingleton to invoke any initialization that requires the JPA infrastructure. For JPA components (such as converters) that are created as Spring beans, use ObjectProvider to delay the resolution of dependencies, if any.

We have barely scratched the surface of Spring Data JPA. For complete details, see the Spring Data JPA reference documentation.

Spring Data Envers Repositories

If Spring Data Envers is available, JPA repositories are auto-configured to support typical Envers queries.

To use Spring Data Envers, make sure your repository extends from RevisionRepository as shown in the following example:

Java
Kotlin

import org.springframework.boot.docs.data.sql.jpaandspringdata.entityclasses.Country;
import org.springframework.data.domain.Page;
import org.springframework.data.domain.Pageable;
import org.springframework.data.repository.Repository;
import org.springframework.data.repository.history.RevisionRepository;

public interface CountryRepository extends RevisionRepository<Country, Long, Integer>, Repository<Country, Long> {

	Page<Country> findAll(Pageable pageable);

}

import org.springframework.boot.docs.data.sql.jpaandspringdata.entityclasses.Country
import org.springframework.data.domain.Page
import org.springframework.data.domain.Pageable
import org.springframework.data.repository.Repository
import org.springframework.data.repository.history.RevisionRepository

interface CountryRepository :
		RevisionRepository<Country?, Long?, Int>,
		Repository<Country?, Long?> {

	fun findAll(pageable: Pageable?): Page<Country?>?

}

For more details, check the Spring Data Envers reference documentation.

Creating and Dropping JPA Databases

By default, JPA databases are automatically created only if you use an embedded database (H2, HSQL, or Derby). You can explicitly configure JPA settings by using spring.jpa.* properties. For example, to create and drop tables you can add the following line to your application.properties:

Properties
YAML

spring.jpa.hibernate.ddl-auto=create-drop

spring:
  jpa:
    hibernate.ddl-auto: "create-drop"

Hibernate’s own internal property name for this (if you happen to remember it better) is hibernate.hbm2ddl.auto. You can set it, along with other Hibernate native properties, by using spring.jpa.properties.* (the prefix is stripped before adding them to the entity manager). The following line shows an example of setting JPA properties for Hibernate:

Properties
YAML

spring.jpa.properties.hibernate.globally_quoted_identifiers=true

spring:
  jpa:
    properties:
      hibernate:
        "globally_quoted_identifiers": "true"

The line in the preceding example passes a value of true for the hibernate.globally_quoted_identifiers property to the Hibernate entity manager.

By default, the DDL execution (or validation) is deferred until the ApplicationContext has started. There is also a spring.jpa.generate-ddl flag, but it is not used if Hibernate auto-configuration is active, because the ddl-auto settings are more fine-grained.

Open EntityManager in View

If you are running a web application, Spring Boot by default registers OpenEntityManagerInViewInterceptor to apply the “Open EntityManager in View” pattern, to allow for lazy loading in web views. If you do not want this behavior, you should set spring.jpa.open-in-view to false in your application.properties.