Spring Boot PostgreSQL

last modified August 2, 2023

In this article we show how to use PostgreSQL database in a Spring Boot application.

Spring is a popular Java application framework for creating enterprise applications. Spring Boot is an evolution of Spring framework which helps create stand-alone, production-grade Spring based applications with minimal effort.

PostgreSQL

PostgreSQL is a powerful, open source object-relational database system. It is a multi-user database management system. It runs on multiple platforms including Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris, Microsoft Windows, and Mac OS X. PostgreSQL is developed by the PostgreSQL Global Development Group.

PostgreSQL setup

We are going to show how to install PostgreSQL database on a Debian Linux system.

$ sudo apt-get install postgresql

This command installs PostgreSQL server and related packages.

$ /etc/init.d/postgresql status

We check the status of the database with postgresql status command.

$ sudo -u postgres psql postgres
psql (9.5.10)
Type "help" for help.

postgres=# \password postgres
Enter new password:
Enter it again:

After the installation, a postgres user with administration priviliges was created with empty default password. As the first step, we need to set a password for postgres.

$ sudo -u postgres createuser --interactive --password user12
Shall the new role be a superuser? (y/n) n
Shall the new role be allowed to create databases? (y/n) y
Shall the new role be allowed to create more new roles? (y/n) n
Password:

We create a new database user.

$ sudo -u postgres createdb testdb -O user12

We create a new testdb database with createdb command, which is going to be owned by user12.

$ sudo vi /etc/postgresql/9.5/main/pg_hba.conf

We edit the pg_hba.conf file.

# "local" is for Unix domain socket connections only
local   all             all                                     trust
# IPv4 local connections:
host    all             all             127.0.0.1/32            trust

In order to be able to run a Spring Boot application with a local PostgreSQL installation, we change the authentication method for the Unix domain socket and local connections to trust.

$ sudo service postgresql restart

We restart PostgreSQL to enable the changes.

$ psql -U user12 -d testdb -W
Password for user user12:
psql (9.5.10)
Type "help" for help.

testdb=>

Now we can use the psql tool to connect to the database.

Spring Boot PostgreSQL example

The following application is a simple Spring Boot web application, which uses PostgreSQL database. We have a home page with a link to display data from a database table. We use Thymeleaf templating system to join data with HTML.

build.gradle 
...
src
├── main
│  ├── java
│  │  └── com
│  │      └── zetcode
│  │          ├── Application.java
│  │          ├── controller
│  │          │  └── MyController.java
│  │          ├── model
│  │          │  └── City.java
│  │          ├── repository
│  │          │  └── CityRepository.java
│  │          └── service
│  │              ├── CityService.java
│  │              └── ICityService.java
│  └── resources
│      ├── application.properties
│      ├── data-postgres.sql
│      ├── schema-postgres.sql
│      ├── static
│      │  └── index.html
│      └── templates
│          └── showCities.html
└── test
    ├── java
    └── resources

This is the project structure.

plugins {
    id 'java'
    id 'org.springframework.boot' version '3.1.1'
    id 'io.spring.dependency-management' version '1.1.0'
}

group = 'com.zetcode'
version = '0.0.1-SNAPSHOT'

java {
    sourceCompatibility = '17'
}

repositories {
    mavenCentral()
}

dependencies {
    implementation 'org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-web'
    implementation 'org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-data-jpa'
    implementation 'org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-thymeleaf'
    implementation 'org.postgresql:postgresql:42.6.0'
}

Spring Boot starters are a set of convenient dependency descriptors which greatly simplify the configuration. The spring-boot-starter-web is a starter for building web, including RESTful, applications using Spring MVC. It uses Tomcat as the default embedded container.

The spring-boot-starter-thymeleaf is a starter for building MVC web applications using Thymeleaf views. The spring-boot-starter-data-jpa is a starter for using Spring Data JPA with Hibernate.

The postgresql dependency is for the PostgreSQL database driver.

spring.main.banner-mode=off
logging.level.org.springframework=ERROR

spring.jpa.hibernate.ddl-auto=none

spring.datasource.url=jdbc:postgresql://localhost:5432/testdb
spring.datasource.username=postgres
spring.datasource.password=s$cret

spring.jpa.properties.hibernate.jdbc.lob.non_contextual_creation=true

In the application.properties file we write various configuration settings of a Spring Boot application.

With the spring.main.banner-mode property we turn off the Spring banner. To avoid conflicts, we turn off automatic schema creation with spring.jpa.hibernate.ddl-auto=none.

In the spring datasource properties we set up the PostgreSQL datasource.

The spring.jpa.properties.hibernate.jdbc.lob.non_contextual_creation option is set avoid a recent issue. Without this option, we get the following error:

java.sql.SQLFeatureNotSupportedException: Method org.postgresql.jdbc.PgConnection.createClob()
is not yet implemented.

package com.zetcode.model;

import java.util.Objects;
import jakarta.persistence.Entity;
import jakarta.persistence.GeneratedValue;
import jakarta.persistence.GenerationType;
import jakarta.persistence.Id;
import jakarta.persistence.Table;

@Entity
@Table(name = "cities")
public class City {

    @Id
    @GeneratedValue(strategy = GenerationType.AUTO)
    private Long id;

    private String name;
    private int population;

    public City() {
    }

    public City(Long id, String name, int population) {

        this.id = id;
        this.name = name;
        this.population = population;
    }

    public Long getId() {
        return id;
    }

    public String getName() {
        return name;
    }

    public void setName(String name) {
        this.name = name;
    }

    public int getPopulation() {
        return population;
    }

    public void setPopulation(int population) {
        this.population = population;
    }

    @Override
    public int hashCode() {
        int hash = 7;
        hash = 79 * hash + Objects.hashCode(this.id);
        hash = 79 * hash + Objects.hashCode(this.name);
        hash = 79 * hash + this.population;
        return hash;
    }

    @Override
    public boolean equals(Object obj) {
        if (this == obj) {
            return true;
        }
        if (obj == null) {
            return false;
        }
        if (getClass() != obj.getClass()) {
            return false;
        }
        final City other = (City) obj;
        if (this.population != other.population) {
            return false;
        }
        if (!Objects.equals(this.name, other.name)) {
            return false;
        }
        return Objects.equals(this.id, other.id);
    }

    @Override
    public String toString() {
        final StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder("City{");
        sb.append("id=").append(id);
        sb.append(", name='").append(name).append('\'');
        sb.append(", population=").append(population);
        sb.append('}');
        return sb.toString();
    }
}

This is the City entity. Each entity must have at least two annotations defined: @Entity and @Id.

@Entity
@Table(name = "cities")
public class City {

The @Entity annotation specifies that the class is an entity and is mapped to a database table. The @Table annotation specifies the name of the database table to be used for mapping.

@Id
@GeneratedValue(strategy = GenerationType.AUTO)
private Long id;

The @Id annotation specifies the primary key of an entity and the @GeneratedValue provides for the specification of generation strategies for the values of primary keys.

DROP TABLE IF EXISTS cities;
CREATE TABLE cities(id serial PRIMARY KEY, name VARCHAR(255), population integer);

When the application is started, the schema-postgres.sql script is executed provided that the automatic schema creation is turned off. The script creates a new database table.

INSERT INTO cities(name, population) VALUES('Bratislava', 432000);
INSERT INTO cities(name, population) VALUES('Budapest', 1759000);
INSERT INTO cities(name, population) VALUES('Prague', 1280000);
INSERT INTO cities(name, population) VALUES('Warsaw', 1748000);
INSERT INTO cities(name, population) VALUES('Los Angeles', 3971000);
INSERT INTO cities(name, population) VALUES('New York', 8550000);
INSERT INTO cities(name, population) VALUES('Edinburgh', 464000);
INSERT INTO cities(name, population) VALUES('Berlin', 3671000);

Later, the data-postgres.sql file is executed to fill the table with data.

package com.zetcode.repository;

import com.zetcode.model.City;
import org.springframework.data.repository.CrudRepository;
import org.springframework.stereotype.Repository;

@Repository
public interface CityRepository extends CrudRepository<City, Long> {

}

By extending from the Spring CrudRepository, we will have some methods for our data repository implemented, including findAll. This way we save a lot of boilerplate code.

package com.zetcode.service;

import com.zetcode.model.City;

import java.util.List;

public interface ICityService {

    List<City> findAll();
}

ICityService provides a contract method to get all cities from the data source.

package com.zetcode.service;

import com.zetcode.model.City;
import com.zetcode.repository.CityRepository;
import java.util.List;
import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Autowired;
import org.springframework.stereotype.Service;

@Service
public class CityService implements ICityService {

    private final CityRepository repository;

    @Autowired
    public CityService(CityRepository repository) {
        this.repository = repository;
    }

    @Override
    public List<City> findAll() {

        return (List<City>) repository.findAll();
    }
}

CityService contains the implementation of the findAll method. We use the repository to retrieve data from the database.

@Autowired
public CityService(CityRepository repository) {
    this.repository = repository;
}

CityRepository is injected.

return (List<City>) repository.findAll();

The findAll method of the repository returns the list of cities.

package com.zetcode.controller;

import com.zetcode.model.City;
import com.zetcode.service.ICityService;
import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Autowired;
import org.springframework.stereotype.Controller;
import org.springframework.ui.Model;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.GetMapping;

import java.util.List;

@Controller
public class MyController {

    private final ICityService cityService;

    @Autowired
    public MyController(ICityService cityService) {
        this.cityService = cityService;
    }

    @GetMapping("/showCities")
    public String findCities(Model model) {

        var cities = (List<City>) cityService.findAll();

        model.addAttribute("cities", cities);

        return "showCities";
    }
}

MyController contains one mapping.

private final ICityService cityService;

@Autowired
public MyController(ICityService cityService) {
    this.cityService = cityService;
}

We inject a ICityService into the cityService field.

@GetMapping("/showCities")
public String findCities(Model model) {

    var cities = (List<City>) cityService.findAll();

    model.addAttribute("cities", cities);

    return "showCities";
}

We map a request with the showCities path to the controller's findCities method. The default request is a GET request. The model gains a list of cities and the processing is sent to the showCities.html Thymeleaf template file.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html xmlns:th="http://www.thymeleaf.org">
    <head>
        <title>Cities</title>
        <meta charset="UTF-8">
        <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">
    </head>

    <body>
        <h2>List of cities</h2>

        <table>
            <tr>
                <th>Id</th>
                <th>Name</th>
                <th>Population</th>
            </tr>

            <tr th:each="city : ${cities}">
                <td th:text="${city.id}">Id</td>
                <td th:text="${city.name}">Name</td>
                <td th:text="${city.population}">Population</td>
            </tr>
        </table>

    </body>
</html>

In the showCities.html template file, we display the data in an HTML table.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
    <head>
        <title>Home page</title>
        <meta charset="UTF-8">
        <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">
    </head>
    <body>
        <a href="showCities">Show cities</a>
    </body>
</html>

In the index.html there is a link to show all cities.

package com.zetcode;

import org.springframework.boot.SpringApplication;
import org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.SpringBootApplication;

@SpringBootApplication
public class Application {

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        SpringApplication.run(Application.class, args);
    }
}

The Application sets up the Spring Boot application. The @SpringBootApplication enables auto-configuration and component scanning.

$ ./gradlew bootRun

After the application is run, we can navigate to localhost:8080.

In this article we have showed how to use PostgreSQL database in a Spring Boot application.

Author

My name is Jan Bodnar, and I am a passionate programmer with extensive programming experience. I have been writing programming articles since 2007. To date, I have authored over 1,400 articles and 8 e-books. I possess more than ten years of experience in teaching programming.

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