Note	Copies of this document may be made for your own use and for distribution to others, provided that you do not charge any fee for such copies and further provided that each copy contains this Copyright Notice, whether distributed in print or electronically.

Preface

The Spring Data Aerospike project applies core Spring concepts and provides interface for using Aerospike key-value style data store. We provide a "repository" and a "template" as high-level abstractions for storing and querying data. You will notice similarities to the JDBC support in the Spring Framework.

This chapter provides some basic introduction to Spring and Aerospike, it explains Aerospike concepts and syntax. The rest of the documentation refers to Spring Data Aerospike features and assumes the user is familiar with Aerospike as well as Spring concepts.

Knowing Spring

Spring Data uses Spring framework’s core functionality, such as the IoC container, type conversion system, expression language, JMX integration, and portable DAO exception hierarchy. While it is not important to know the Spring APIs, understanding the concepts behind them is. At a minimum, the idea behind IoC should be familiar regardless of IoC container you choose to use.

The core functionality of the Aerospike support can be used directly, with no need to invoke the IoC services of the Spring Container. This is much like JdbcTemplate which can be used 'standalone' without any other services of the Spring container. To leverage all the features of the Spring Data document, such as the repository support, you will need to configure some parts of the library using Spring.

To learn more about Spring, you can refer to the comprehensive (and sometimes disarming) documentation that explains in detail the Spring Framework. There are a lot of articles, blog entries and books on the matter - take a look at the Spring framework documentation reference for more information.

Knowing NoSQL and Aerospike

NoSQL stores have taken the storage world by storm. It is a vast domain with a plethora of solutions, terms and patterns (to make things worthwhile even the term itself has multiple meanings). While some principles are common, it is crucial that the user is familiar to some degree with Aerospike key-value store operations that supply the mechanism for associating keys with a set of named values, similar to a row in standard RDBMS terminology. The data layer in Aerospike Database is optimized to store data in solid state drives, RAM, or traditional rotational media. The database indices are stored in RAM for quick availability, and data writes are optimized through large block writes to reduce latency. The software also employs two sub-programs that are codenamed Defragmenter and Evictor. Defragmenter removes data blocks that have been deleted, and Evictor frees RAM space by removing references to expired records.

The jumping off ground for learning about Aerospike is www.aerospike.com. Here is a list of other useful resources:

The technical documentation introduces Aerospike and contains links to getting started guides, reference documentation and tutorials.
The java client documentation provides a convenient way to interact with an Aerospike instance in combination with the online Getting started
Aerospike Community

Requirements

Spring Data Aerospike binaries require JDK level 17.0 and above.

In terms of server, it is required to use at least Aerospike server version 5.2 (recommended to use the latest version when possible).

Additional Help Resources

Learning a new framework is not always straightforward. In this section, we try to provide what we think is an easy-to-follow guide for starting with Spring Data Aerospike module. However, if you encounter issues, or you are just looking for advice, feel free to use one of the links below:

Support

There are a few support options available:

Questions & Answers

Developers post questions and answers on Stack Overflow. The two key tags to search for related answers to this project are:

Following Development

If you encounter a bug or want to suggest an improvement, please create an issue on GitHub.

Reference documentation

Functionality

Spring Data Aerospike project aims to provide a familiar and consistent Spring-based programming model providing integration with the Aerospike database.

Spring Data Aerospike supports a wide range of features summarized below:

Supporting Repository interfaces (out-of-the-box CRUD operations and query implementations, for more information see Aerospike Repositories)
AerospikeTemplate for lower-level access to common Aerospike operations and fine-tuning (for more information see AerospikeTemplate)
Feature Rich Object Mapping integrated with Spring’s Conversion Service
Translating exceptions into Spring’s Data Access Exception hierarchy
Annotation-based metadata mapping
Ability to directly utilize Aerospike Java client functionality

Installation & Usage

Getting Started

First, you need a running Aerospike server to connect to.

To use Spring Data Aerospike you can either set up Spring Boot or Spring application. Basic setup of Spring Boot application is described here: https://projects.spring.io/spring-boot.

In case you do not want to use Spring Boot, the best way to manage Spring dependencies is to declare spring-framework-bom of the needed version in the dependencyManagement section of your pom.xml:

<dependencyManagement>
    <dependencies>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-framework-bom</artifactId>
            <version>${spring-data-aerospike.version}</version>
            <type>pom</type>
            <scope>import</scope>
        </dependency>
    </dependencies>
</dependencyManagement>

Note	To create a Spring project in STS (Spring Tool Suite) go to File → New → Spring Template Project → Simple Spring Utility Project → press "Yes" when prompted. Then enter a project and a package name such as `org.spring.aerospike.example`.

Adding Dependency

The first step is to add Spring Data Aerospike to your build process. It is recommended to use the latest version which can be found on the GitHub Releases page.

Adding Spring Data Aerospike dependency in Maven:

<dependency>
    <groupId>com.aerospike</groupId>
    <artifactId>spring-data-aerospike</artifactId>
    <version>${spring-data-aerospike.version}</version>
</dependency>

Adding Spring Data Aerospike dependency in Gradle:

implementation group: 'com.aerospike', name: 'spring-data-aerospike', version: '${spring-data-aerospike.version}'

Connecting to Aerospike DB

There are two ways of configuring a basic connection to Aerospike DB.

Overriding getHosts() and nameSpace() methods of the AbstractAerospikeDataConfiguration class:

@Configuration
@EnableAerospikeRepositories(basePackageClasses = { PersonRepository.class})
public class AerospikeConfiguration extends AbstractAerospikeDataConfiguration {
    @Override
    protected Collection<Host> getHosts() {
        return Collections.singleton(new Host("localhost", 3000));
    }
    @Override
    protected String nameSpace() {
        return "test";
    }
}

Using application.properties:

Basic configuration in this case requires enabling repositories and then setting hosts and namespace in the application.properties file.

@Configuration
@EnableAerospikeRepositories(basePackageClasses = { PersonRepository.class})
public class AerospikeConfiguration extends AbstractAerospikeDataConfiguration {

}

In application.properties:

# application.properties
spring-data-aerospike.hosts=localhost:3000
spring-data-aerospike.namespace=test

Note	Return values of `getHosts()` and `nameSpace()` methods of the `AbstractAerospikeDataConfiguration` class have precedence over `hosts` and `namespace` parameters set via application.properties.

For more detailed information see Configuration.

Creating Functionality

The base functionality is provided by AerospikeRepository interface.

It typically takes 2 parameters:

The type managed by a class (it is typically entity class) to be stored in the database.
The type of ID.

Application code typically extends this interface for each of the types to be managed, and methods can be added to the interface to determine how the application can access the data. For example, consider a class Person with a simple structure:

@AllArgsConstructor
@NoArgsConstructor
@Data
@Document
public class Person {
    @Id
    private long id;
    private String firstName;
    private String lastName;
    @Field("dob")
    private Date dateOfBirth;
}

Note that this example uses the Project Lombok annotations to remove the need for explicit constructors and getters and setters. Normal POJOs which define these on their own can ignore the @AllArgsConstructor, @NoArgsConstructor and @Data annotations. The @Document annotation tells Spring Data Aerospike that this is a domain object to be persisted in the database, and @Id identifies the primary key of this class. The @Field annotation is used to create a shorter name for the bin in the Aerospike database (dateOfBirth will be stored in a bin called dob in this example).

For the Person object to be persisted to Aerospike, you must create an interface with the desired methods for retrieving data. For example:

public interface PersonRepository extends AerospikeRepository<Person, Long> {
    List<Person> findByLastName(String lastName);
}

This defines a repository that can write Person entities and also query them by last name. The AerospikeRepository extends both PagingAndSortingRepository and CrudRepository, so methods like count(), findById(), save() and delete() are there by default. Those who need reactive flow can use ReactiveAerospikeRepository instead.

Note

Repository is just an interface and not an actual class. In the background, when your context gets initialized, actual implementations for your repository descriptions get created, and you can access them through regular beans. This means you will omit lots of boilerplate code while still exposing full CRUD semantics to your service layer and application.

Example repository is ready for use. A sample Spring Controller which uses this repository could be the following:

@RestController
public class ApplicationController {
    @Autowired
    private PersonRepository personRepsitory;

    @GetMapping("/seed")
    public int seedData() {
        Person person = new Person(1, "Bob", "Jones", new GregorianCalendar(1971, 12, 19).getTime());
        personRepsitory.save(person);
        return 1;
    }

    @GetMapping("/findByLastName/{lastName}")
    public List<Person> findByLastName(@PathVariable(name = "lastName", required=true) String lastName) {
        return personRepsitory.findByLastName(lastName);
    }
}

Invoking the seed method above gives you a record in the Aerospike database which looks like:

aql> select * from test.Person where pk = "1"
+-----+-----------+----------+-------------+-------------------------------------+
| PK  | firstName | lastName | dob         | @_class                             |
+-----+-----------+----------+-------------+-------------------------------------+
| "1" | "Bob"     | "Jones"  | 64652400000 | "com.aerospike.sample.model.Person" |
+-----+-----------+----------+-------------+-------------------------------------+
1 row in set (0.001 secs)

Note	The fully qualified path of the class is listed in each record. This is needed to instantiate the class correctly, especially in cases when the compile-time type and runtime type of the object differ. For example, where a field is declared as a super class but the instantiated class is a subclass.

Note

By default, the type of the field annotated with @id is turned into a String to be stored in Aerospike database. If the original type cannot be persisted (see keepOriginalKeyTypes for details), it must be convertible to String and will be stored in the database as such, then converted back to the original type when the object is read. This is transparent to the application but needs to be considered if using external tools like AQL to view the data.

Working with Spring Data Repositories

The goal of the Spring Data repository abstraction is to significantly reduce the amount of boilerplate code required to implement data access layers for various persistence stores.

Important

This chapter explains the core concepts and interfaces of Spring Data repositories. The information in this chapter is pulled from the Spring Data Commons module. It uses the configuration and code samples for the Jakarta Persistence API (JPA) module. If you want to use XML configuration you should adapt the XML namespace declaration and the types to be extended to the equivalents of the particular module that you use. “Namespace reference” covers XML configuration, which is supported across all Spring Data modules that support the repository API. “Repository query keywords” covers the query method keywords supported by the repository abstraction in general. For detailed information on the specific features of your module, see the chapter on that module of this document.

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.

Note	"Entity" or "document" are the terms often used in Spring Data Aerospike interchangeably to describe a domain object - a Java object that identifies Aerospike DB record.

Example 1. CrudRepository Interface

public interface CrudRepository<T, ID> extends Repository<T, ID> {

  <S extends T> S save(S document);      (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.
}

Saves the given document of type T.
Returns the DB record identified by the given ID, the record is mapped to a document of type T.
Returns all DB records from the associated set mapped to documents of type T.
Returns the number of all DB records in the associated set.
Deletes a particular DB record using a document to identify it.
Indicates whether a DB record 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.

Note

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 is a PagingAndSortingRepository abstraction that adds additional methods to ease paginated access to entities:

Example 2. PagingAndSortingRepository interface

public interface PagingAndSortingRepository<T, ID>  {

  Iterable<T> findAll(Sort sort);

  Page<T> findAll(Pageable pageable);
}

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));

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:

Example 3. 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:

Example 4. Derived Delete Query

interface UserRepository extends CrudRepository<User, Long> {

  long deleteByLastname(String lastname);

  List<User> removeByLastname(String lastname);
}

Query Methods

Standard CRUD functionality repositories usually have queries on the underlying datastore. With Spring Data, declaring those queries becomes a four-step process:

Declare an interface extending Repository or one of its subinterfaces and type it to the domain class and ID type that it should handle, as shown in the following example:
interface PersonRepository extends Repository<Person, Long> { … }

Declare query methods on the interface.

interface PersonRepository extends Repository<Person, Long> {
  List<Person> findByLastname(String lastname);
}

Set up Spring to create proxy instances for those interfaces, either with JavaConfig or with XML configuration.

Java

import org.springframework.data.….repository.config.EnableJpaRepositories;

@EnableJpaRepositories
class Config { … }

XML

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
   xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
   xmlns:jpa="http://www.springframework.org/schema/data/jpa"
   xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans
     https://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans.xsd
     http://www.springframework.org/schema/data/jpa
     https://www.springframework.org/schema/data/jpa/spring-jpa.xsd">

   <repositories base-package="com.acme.repositories"/>

</beans>

The JPA namespace is used in this example. If you use the repository abstraction for any other store, you need to change this to the appropriate namespace declaration of your store module. In other words, you should exchange jpa in favor of, for example, mongodb.

Note that the JavaConfig variant does not configure a package explicitly, because the package of the annotated class is used by default. To customize the package to scan, use one of the basePackage… attributes of the data-store-specific repository’s @EnableJpaRepositories-annotation.

Inject the repository instance and use it, as shown in the following example:

class SomeClient {

  private final PersonRepository repository;

  SomeClient(PersonRepository repository) {
    this.repository = repository;
  }

  void doSomething() {
    List<Person> persons = repository.findByLastname("Matthews");
  }
}

The sections that follow explain each step in detail:

Defining Repository Interfaces
Defining Query Methods
Creating Repository Instances
Custom Implementations for Spring Data Repositories

Defining Repository Interfaces

To define a repository interface, you first need to define a domain class-specific repository interface. The interface must extend Repository and be typed to the domain class and an ID type. If you want to expose CRUD methods for that domain type, you may extend CrudRepository, or one of its variants instead of Repository.

Fine-tuning Repository Definition

There are a few variants how you can get started with your repository interface.

The typical approach is to extend CrudRepository, which gives you methods for CRUD functionality. CRUD stands for Create, Read, Update, Delete. With version 3.0 we also introduced ListCrudRepository which is very similar to the CrudRepository but for those methods that return multiple entities it returns a List instead of an Iterable which you might find easier to use.

If you are using a reactive store you might choose ReactiveCrudRepository, or RxJava3CrudRepository depending on which reactive framework you are using.

If you are using Kotlin you might pick CoroutineCrudRepository which utilizes Kotlin’s coroutines.

Additional you can extend PagingAndSortingRepository, ReactiveSortingRepository, RxJava3SortingRepository, or CoroutineSortingRepository if you need methods that allow to specify a Sort abstraction or in the first case a Pageable abstraction. Note that the various sorting repositories no longer extended their respective CRUD repository as they did in Spring Data Versions pre 3.0. Therefore, you need to extend both interfaces if you want functionality of both.

If you do not want to extend Spring Data interfaces, you can also annotate your repository interface with @RepositoryDefinition. Extending one of the CRUD repository interfaces exposes a complete set of methods to manipulate your entities. If you prefer to be selective about the methods being exposed, copy the methods you want to expose from the CRUD repository into your domain repository. When doing so, you may change the return type of methods. Spring Data will honor the return type if possible. For example, for methods returning multiple entities you may choose Iterable<T>, List<T>, Collection<T> or a VAVR list.

If many repositories in your application should have the same set of methods you can define your own base interface to inherit from. Such an interface must be annotated with @NoRepositoryBean. This prevents Spring Data to try to create an instance of it directly and failing because it can’t determine the entity for that repository, since it still contains a generic type variable.

The following example shows how to selectively expose CRUD methods (findById and save, in this case):

Example 5. Selectively exposing CRUD methods

@NoRepositoryBean
interface MyBaseRepository<T, ID> extends Repository<T, ID> {

  Optional<T> findById(ID id);

  <S extends T> S save(S entity);
}

interface UserRepository extends MyBaseRepository<User, Long> {
  User findByEmailAddress(EmailAddress emailAddress);
}

In the prior example, you defined a common base interface for all your domain repositories and exposed findById(…) as well as save(…).These methods are routed into the base repository implementation of the store of your choice provided by Spring Data (for example, if you use JPA, the implementation is SimpleJpaRepository), because they match the method signatures in CrudRepository. So the UserRepository can now save users, find individual users by ID, and trigger a query to find Users by email address.

Note	The intermediate repository interface is annotated with `@NoRepositoryBean`. Make sure you add that annotation to all repository interfaces for which Spring Data should not create instances at runtime.

Using Repositories with Multiple Spring Data Modules

Using a unique Spring Data module in your application makes things simple, because all repository interfaces in the defined scope are bound to the Spring Data module. Sometimes, applications require using more than one Spring Data module. In such cases, a repository definition must distinguish between persistence technologies. When it detects multiple repository factories on the class path, Spring Data enters strict repository configuration mode. Strict configuration uses details on the repository or the domain class to decide about Spring Data module binding for a repository definition:

If the repository definition extends the module-specific repository, it is a valid candidate for the particular Spring Data module.
If the domain class is annotated with the module-specific type annotation, it is a valid candidate for the particular Spring Data module. Spring Data modules accept either third-party annotations (such as JPA’s @Entity) or provide their own annotations (such as @Document for Spring Data MongoDB and Spring Data Elasticsearch).

The following example shows a repository that uses module-specific interfaces (JPA in this case):

Example 6. Repository definitions using module-specific interfaces

interface MyRepository extends JpaRepository<User, Long> { }

@NoRepositoryBean
interface MyBaseRepository<T, ID> extends JpaRepository<T, ID> { … }

interface UserRepository extends MyBaseRepository<User, Long> { … }

MyRepository and UserRepository extend JpaRepository in their type hierarchy. They are valid candidates for the Spring Data JPA module.

The following example shows a repository that uses generic interfaces:

Example 7. Repository definitions using generic interfaces

interface AmbiguousRepository extends Repository<User, Long> { … }

@NoRepositoryBean
interface MyBaseRepository<T, ID> extends CrudRepository<T, ID> { … }

interface AmbiguousUserRepository extends MyBaseRepository<User, Long> { … }

AmbiguousRepository and AmbiguousUserRepository extend only Repository and CrudRepository in their type hierarchy. While this is fine when using a unique Spring Data module, multiple modules cannot distinguish to which particular Spring Data these repositories should be bound.

The following example shows a repository that uses domain classes with annotations:

Example 8. Repository definitions using domain classes with annotations

interface PersonRepository extends Repository<Person, Long> { … }

@Entity
class Person { … }

interface UserRepository extends Repository<User, Long> { … }

@Document
class User { … }

PersonRepository references Person, which is annotated with the JPA @Entity annotation, so this repository clearly belongs to Spring Data JPA. UserRepository references User, which is annotated with Spring Data MongoDB’s @Document annotation.

The following bad example shows a repository that uses domain classes with mixed annotations:

Example 9. Repository definitions using domain classes with mixed annotations

interface JpaPersonRepository extends Repository<Person, Long> { … }

interface MongoDBPersonRepository extends Repository<Person, Long> { … }

@Entity
@Document
class Person { … }

This example shows a domain class using both JPA and Spring Data MongoDB annotations. It defines two repositories, JpaPersonRepository and MongoDBPersonRepository. One is intended for JPA and the other for MongoDB usage. Spring Data is no longer able to tell the repositories apart, which leads to undefined behavior.

Repository type details and distinguishing domain class annotations are used for strict repository configuration to identify repository candidates for a particular Spring Data module. Using multiple persistence technology-specific annotations on the same domain type is possible and enables reuse of domain types across multiple persistence technologies. However, Spring Data can then no longer determine a unique module with which to bind the repository.

The last way to distinguish repositories is by scoping repository base packages. Base packages define the starting points for scanning for repository interface definitions, which implies having repository definitions located in the appropriate packages. By default, annotation-driven configuration uses the package of the configuration class. The base package in XML-based configuration is mandatory.

The following example shows annotation-driven configuration of base packages:

Example 10. Annotation-driven configuration of base packages

@EnableJpaRepositories(basePackages = "com.acme.repositories.jpa")
@EnableMongoRepositories(basePackages = "com.acme.repositories.mongo")
class Configuration { … }

Defining Query Methods

The repository proxy has two ways to derive a store-specific query from the method name:

By deriving the query from the method name directly.
By using a manually defined query.

Available options depend on the actual store. However, there must be a strategy that decides what actual query is created. The next section describes the available options.

Query Lookup Strategies

The following strategies are available for the repository infrastructure to resolve the query. With XML configuration, you can configure the strategy at the namespace through the query-lookup-strategy attribute. For Java configuration, you can use the queryLookupStrategy attribute of the EnableJpaRepositories annotation. Some strategies may not be supported for particular datastores.

CREATE attempts to construct a store-specific query from the query method name. The general approach is to remove a given set of well known prefixes from the method name and parse the rest of the method. You can read more about query construction in “Query Creation”.
USE_DECLARED_QUERY tries to find a declared query and throws an exception if it cannot find one. The query can be defined by an annotation somewhere or declared by other means. See the documentation of the specific store to find available options for that store. If the repository infrastructure does not find a declared query for the method at bootstrap time, it fails.
CREATE_IF_NOT_FOUND (the default) combines CREATE and USE_DECLARED_QUERY. It looks up a declared query first, and, if no declared query is found, it creates a custom method name-based query. This is the default lookup strategy and, thus, is used if you do not configure anything explicitly. It allows quick query definition by method names but also custom-tuning of these queries by introducing declared queries as needed.

Query Creation

The query builder mechanism built into the Spring Data repository infrastructure is useful for building constraining queries over entities of the repository.

The following example shows how to create a number of queries:

Example 11. Query creation from method names

interface PersonRepository extends Repository<Person, Long> {

  List<Person> findByEmailAddressAndLastname(EmailAddress emailAddress, String lastname);

  // Enables the distinct flag for the query
  List<Person> findDistinctPeopleByLastnameOrFirstname(String lastname, String firstname);
  List<Person> findPeopleDistinctByLastnameOrFirstname(String lastname, String firstname);

  // Enabling ignoring case for an individual property
  List<Person> findByLastnameIgnoreCase(String lastname);
  // Enabling ignoring case for all suitable properties
  List<Person> findByLastnameAndFirstnameAllIgnoreCase(String lastname, String firstname);

  // Enabling static ORDER BY for a query
  List<Person> findByLastnameOrderByFirstnameAsc(String lastname);
  List<Person> findByLastnameOrderByFirstnameDesc(String lastname);
}

Parsing query method names is divided into subject and predicate. The first part (find…By, exists…By) defines the subject of the query, the second part forms the predicate. The introducing clause (subject) can contain further expressions. Any text between find (or other introducing keywords) and By is considered to be descriptive unless using one of the result-limiting keywords such as a Distinct to set a distinct flag on the query to be created or Top/First to limit query results.

The appendix contains the full list of query method subject keywords and query method predicate keywords including sorting and letter-casing modifiers. However, the first By acts as a delimiter to indicate the start of the actual criteria predicate. At a very basic level, you can define conditions on entity properties and concatenate them with And and Or.

The actual result of parsing the method depends on the persistence store for which you create the query. However, there are some general things to notice:

The expressions are usually property traversals combined with operators that can be concatenated. You can combine property expressions with AND and OR. You also get support for operators such as Between, LessThan, GreaterThan, and Like for the property expressions. The supported operators can vary by datastore, so consult the appropriate part of your reference documentation.
The method parser supports setting an IgnoreCase flag for individual properties (for example, findByLastnameIgnoreCase(…)) or for all properties of a type that supports ignoring case (usually String instances — for example, findByLastnameAndFirstnameAllIgnoreCase(…)). Whether ignoring cases is supported may vary by store, so consult the relevant sections in the reference documentation for the store-specific query method.
You can apply static ordering by appending an OrderBy clause to the query method that references a property and by providing a sorting direction (Asc or Desc). To create a query method that supports dynamic sorting, see “Paging, Iterating Large Results, Sorting”.

Property Expressions

Property expressions can refer only to a direct property of the managed entity, as shown in the preceding example. At query creation time, you already make sure that the parsed property is a property of the managed domain class. However, you can also define constraints by traversing nested properties. Consider the following method signature:

List<Person> findByAddressZipCode(ZipCode zipCode);

Assume a Person has an Address with a ZipCode. In that case, the method creates the x.address.zipCode property traversal. The resolution algorithm starts by interpreting the entire part (AddressZipCode) as the property and checks the domain class for a property with that name (uncapitalized). If the algorithm succeeds, it uses that property. If not, the algorithm splits up the source at the camel-case parts from the right side into a head and a tail and tries to find the corresponding property — in our example, AddressZip and Code. If the algorithm finds a property with that head, it takes the tail and continues building the tree down from there, splitting the tail up in the way just described. If the first split does not match, the algorithm moves the split point to the left (Address, ZipCode) and continues.

Although this should work for most cases, it is possible for the algorithm to select the wrong property. Suppose the Person class has an addressZip property as well. The algorithm would match in the first split round already, choose the wrong property, and fail (as the type of addressZip probably has no code property).

To resolve this ambiguity you can use _ inside your method name to manually define traversal points. So our method name would be as follows:

List<Person> findByAddress_ZipCode(ZipCode zipCode);

Because we treat the underscore character as a reserved character, we strongly advise following standard Java naming conventions (that is, not using underscores in property names but using camel case instead).

Paging, Iterating Large Results, Sorting

To handle parameters in your query, define method parameters as already seen in the preceding examples. Besides that, the infrastructure recognizes certain specific types like Pageable and Sort, to apply pagination and sorting to your queries dynamically. The following example demonstrates these features:

Example 12. Using Pageable, Slice, and Sort in query methods

Page<User> findByLastname(String lastname, Pageable pageable);

Slice<User> findByLastname(String lastname, Pageable pageable);

List<User> findByLastname(String lastname, Sort sort);

List<User> findByLastname(String lastname, Pageable pageable);

Important

APIs taking Sort and Pageable expect non-null values to be handed into methods. If you do not want to apply any sorting or pagination, use Sort.unsorted() and Pageable.unpaged().

The first method lets you pass an org.springframework.data.domain.Pageable instance to the query method to dynamically add paging to your statically defined query. A Page knows about the total number of elements and pages available. It does so by the infrastructure triggering a count query to calculate the overall number. As this might be expensive (depending on the store used), you can instead return a Slice. A Slice knows only about whether a next Slice is available, which might be sufficient when walking through a larger result set.

Sorting options are handled through the Pageable instance, too. If you need only sorting, add an org.springframework.data.domain.Sort parameter to your method. As you can see, returning a List is also possible. In this case, the additional metadata required to build the actual Page instance is not created (which, in turn, means that the additional count query that would have been necessary is not issued). Rather, it restricts the query to look up only the given range of entities.

Note	To find out how many pages you get for an entire query, you have to trigger an additional count query. By default, this query is derived from the query you actually trigger.

Which Method is Appropriate?

The value provided by the Spring Data abstractions is perhaps best shown by the possible query method return types outlined in the following table below. The table shows which types you can return from a query method

Table 1. Consuming Large Query Results
Method	Amount of Data Fetched	Query Structure	Constraints
`List<T>`	All results.	Single query.	Query results can exhaust all memory. Fetching all data can be time-intensive.
`Streamable<T>`	All results.	Single query.	Query results can exhaust all memory. Fetching all data can be time-intensive.
`Stream<T>`	Chunked (one-by-one or in batches) depending on `Stream` consumption.	Single query using typically cursors.	Streams must be closed after usage to avoid resource leaks.
`Flux<T>`	Chunked (one-by-one or in batches) depending on `Flux` consumption.	Single query using typically cursors.	Store module must provide reactive infrastructure.
`Slice<T>`	`Pageable.getPageSize() + 1` at `Pageable.getOffset()`	One to many queries fetching data starting at `Pageable.getOffset()` applying limiting.	A `Slice` can only navigate to the next `Slice`. `Slice` provides details whether there is more data to fetch. Offset-based queries becomes inefficient when the offset is too large because the database still has to materialize the full result. `Window` provides details whether there is more data to fetch. Offset-based queries becomes inefficient when the offset is too large because the database still has to materialize the full result.
`Page<T>`	`Pageable.getPageSize()` at `Pageable.getOffset()`	One to many queries starting at `Pageable.getOffset()` applying limiting. Additionally, `COUNT(…)` query to determine the total number of elements can be required.	Often times, `COUNT(…)` queries are required that are costly. Offset-based queries becomes inefficient when the offset is too large because the database still has to materialize the full result.

Paging and Sorting

You can define simple sorting expressions by using property names. You can concatenate expressions to collect multiple criteria into one expression.

Example 13. Defining sort expressions

Sort sort = Sort.by("firstname").ascending()
  .and(Sort.by("lastname").descending());

For a more type-safe way to define sort expressions, start with the type for which to define the sort expression and use method references to define the properties on which to sort.

Example 14. Defining sort expressions by using the type-safe API

TypedSort<Person> person = Sort.sort(Person.class);

Sort sort = person.by(Person::getFirstname).ascending()
  .and(person.by(Person::getLastname).descending());

Note	`TypedSort.by(…)` makes use of runtime proxies by (typically) using CGlib, which may interfere with native image compilation when using tools such as Graal VM Native.

If your store implementation supports Querydsl, you can also use the generated metamodel types to define sort expressions:

Example 15. Defining sort expressions by using the Querydsl API

QSort sort = QSort.by(QPerson.firstname.asc())
  .and(QSort.by(QPerson.lastname.desc()));

Limiting Query Results

You can limit the results of query methods by using the first or top keywords, which you can use interchangeably. You can append an optional numeric value to top or first to specify the maximum result size to be returned. If the number is left out, a result size of 1 is assumed. The following example shows how to limit the query size:

Example 16. Limiting the result size of a query with Top and First

User findFirstByOrderByLastnameAsc();

User findTopByOrderByAgeDesc();

Page<User> queryFirst10ByLastname(String lastname, Pageable pageable);

Slice<User> findTop3ByLastname(String lastname, Pageable pageable);

List<User> findFirst10ByLastname(String lastname, Sort sort);

List<User> findTop10ByLastname(String lastname, Pageable pageable);

The limiting expressions also support the Distinct keyword for datastores that support distinct queries. Also, for the queries that limit the result set to one instance, wrapping the result into with the Optional keyword is supported.

If pagination or slicing is applied to a limiting query pagination (and the calculation of the number of available pages), it is applied within the limited result.

Note	Limiting the results in combination with dynamic sorting by using a `Sort` parameter lets you express query methods for the 'K' smallest as well as for the 'K' biggest elements.

Repository Methods Returning Collections or Iterables

Query methods that return multiple results can use standard Java Iterable, List, and Set. Beyond that, we support returning Spring Data’s Streamable, a custom extension of Iterable, as well as collection types provided by Vavr. Refer to the appendix explaining all possible query method return types.

Using Streamable as Query Method Return Type

You can use Streamable as alternative to Iterable or any collection type. It provides convenience methods to access a non-parallel Stream (missing from Iterable) and the ability to directly ….filter(…) and ….map(…) over the elements and concatenate the Streamable to others:

Example 17. Using Streamable to combine query method results

interface PersonRepository extends Repository<Person, Long> {
  Streamable<Person> findByFirstnameContaining(String firstname);
  Streamable<Person> findByLastnameContaining(String lastname);
}

Streamable<Person> result = repository.findByFirstnameContaining("av")
  .and(repository.findByLastnameContaining("ea"));

Returning Custom Streamable Wrapper Types

Providing dedicated wrapper types for collections is a commonly used pattern to provide an API for a query result that returns multiple elements. Usually, these types are used by invoking a repository method returning a collection-like type and creating an instance of the wrapper type manually. You can avoid that additional step as Spring Data lets you use these wrapper types as query method return types if they meet the following criteria:

The type implements Streamable.
The type exposes either a constructor or a static factory method named of(…) or valueOf(…) that takes Streamable as an argument.

The following listing shows an example:

class Product {                                         (1)
  MonetaryAmount getPrice() { … }
}

@RequiredArgsConstructor(staticName = "of")
class Products implements Streamable<Product> {         (2)

  private final Streamable<Product> streamable;

  public MonetaryAmount getTotal() {                    (3)
    return streamable.stream()
      .map(Priced::getPrice)
      .reduce(Money.of(0), MonetaryAmount::add);
  }


  @Override
  public Iterator<Product> iterator() {                 (4)
    return streamable.iterator();
  }
}

interface ProductRepository implements Repository<Product, Long> {
  Products findAllByDescriptionContaining(String text); (5)
}

A Product entity that exposes API to access the product’s price.
A wrapper type for a Streamable<Product> that can be constructed by using Products.of(…) (factory method created with the Lombok annotation). A standard constructor taking the Streamable<Product> will do as well.
The wrapper type exposes an additional API, calculating new values on the Streamable<Product>.
Implement the Streamable interface and delegate to the actual result.
That wrapper type Products can be used directly as a query method return type. You do not need to return Streamable<Product> and manually wrap it after the query in the repository client.

Support for Vavr Collections

Vavr is a library that embraces functional programming concepts in Java. It ships with a custom set of collection types that you can use as query method return types, as the following table shows:

Vavr collection type Used Vavr implementation type Valid Java source types

Vavr collection type	Used Vavr implementation type	Valid Java source types
`io.vavr.collection.Seq`	`io.vavr.collection.List`	`java.util.Iterable`
`io.vavr.collection.Set`	`io.vavr.collection.LinkedHashSet`	`java.util.Iterable`
`io.vavr.collection.Map`	`io.vavr.collection.LinkedHashMap`	`java.util.Map`

io.vavr.collection.Seq

io.vavr.collection.List

java.util.Iterable

io.vavr.collection.Set

io.vavr.collection.LinkedHashSet

java.util.Iterable

io.vavr.collection.Map

io.vavr.collection.LinkedHashMap

java.util.Map

You can use the types in the first column (or subtypes thereof) as query method return types and get the types in the second column used as implementation type, depending on the Java type of the actual query result (third column). Alternatively, you can declare Traversable (the Vavr Iterable equivalent), and we then derive the implementation class from the actual return value. That is, a java.util.List is turned into a Vavr List or Seq, a java.util.Set becomes a Vavr LinkedHashSet Set, and so on.

Streaming Query Results

You can process the results of query methods incrementally by using a Java 8 Stream<T> as the return type. Instead of wrapping the query results in a Stream, data store-specific methods are used to perform the streaming, as shown in the following example:

Example 18. Stream the result of a query with Java 8 Stream<T>

@Query("select u from User u")
Stream<User> findAllByCustomQueryAndStream();

Stream<User> readAllByFirstnameNotNull();

@Query("select u from User u")
Stream<User> streamAllPaged(Pageable pageable);

Note	A `Stream` potentially wraps underlying data store-specific resources and must, therefore, be closed after usage. You can either manually close the `Stream` by using the `close()` method or by using a Java 7 `try-with-resources` block, as shown in the following example:

Example 19. Working with a Stream<T> result in a try-with-resources block

try (Stream<User> stream = repository.findAllByCustomQueryAndStream()) {
  stream.forEach(…);
}

Note	Not all Spring Data modules currently support `Stream<T>` as a return type.

Null Handling of Repository Methods

As of Spring Data 2.0, repository CRUD methods that return an individual aggregate instance use Java 8’s Optional to indicate the potential absence of a value. Besides that, Spring Data supports returning the following wrapper types on query methods:

com.google.common.base.Optional
scala.Option
io.vavr.control.Option

Alternatively, query methods can choose not to use a wrapper type at all. The absence of a query result is then indicated by returning null. Repository methods returning collections, collection alternatives, wrappers, and streams are guaranteed never to return null but rather the corresponding empty representation. See “Repository query return types” for details.

Nullability Annotations

You can express nullability constraints for repository methods by using Spring Framework’s nullability annotations. They provide a tooling-friendly approach and opt-in null checks during runtime, as follows:

@NonNullApi: Used on the package level to declare that the default behavior for parameters and return values is, respectively, neither to accept nor to produce null values.
@NonNull: Used on a parameter or return value that must not be null (not needed on a parameter and return value where @NonNullApi applies).
@Nullable: Used on a parameter or return value that can be null.

Spring annotations are meta-annotated with JSR 305 annotations (a dormant but widely used JSR). JSR 305 meta-annotations let tooling vendors (such as IDEA, Eclipse, and Kotlin) provide null-safety support in a generic way, without having to hard-code support for Spring annotations. To enable runtime checking of nullability constraints for query methods, you need to activate non-nullability on the package level by using Spring’s @NonNullApi in package-info.java, as shown in the following example:

Example 20. Declaring Non-nullability in package-info.java

@org.springframework.lang.NonNullApi
package com.acme;

Once non-null defaulting is in place, repository query method invocations get validated at runtime for nullability constraints. If a query result violates the defined constraint, an exception is thrown. This happens when the method would return null but is declared as non-nullable (the default with the annotation defined on the package in which the repository resides). If you want to opt-in to nullable results again, selectively use @Nullable on individual methods. Using the result wrapper types mentioned at the start of this section continues to work as expected: an empty result is translated into the value that represents absence.

The following example shows a number of the techniques just described:

Example 21. Using different nullability constraints

package com.acme;                                                       (1)

import org.springframework.lang.Nullable;

interface UserRepository extends Repository<User, Long> {

  User getByEmailAddress(EmailAddress emailAddress);                    (2)

  @Nullable
  User findByEmailAddress(@Nullable EmailAddress emailAdress);          (3)

  Optional<User> findOptionalByEmailAddress(EmailAddress emailAddress); (4)
}

The repository resides in a package (or sub-package) for which we have defined non-null behavior.
Throws an EmptyResultDataAccessException when the query does not produce a result. Throws an IllegalArgumentException when the emailAddress handed to the method is null.
Returns null when the query does not produce a result. Also accepts null as the value for emailAddress.
Returns Optional.empty() when the query does not produce a result. Throws an IllegalArgumentException when the emailAddress handed to the method is null.

Nullability in Kotlin-based Repositories

Kotlin has the definition of nullability constraints baked into the language. Kotlin code compiles to bytecode, which does not express nullability constraints through method signatures but rather through compiled-in metadata. Make sure to include the kotlin-reflect JAR in your project to enable introspection of Kotlin’s nullability constraints. Spring Data repositories use the language mechanism to define those constraints to apply the same runtime checks, as follows:

Example 22. Using nullability constraints on Kotlin repositories

interface UserRepository : Repository<User, String> {

  fun findByUsername(username: String): User     (1)

  fun findByFirstname(firstname: String?): User? (2)
}

The method defines both the parameter and the result as non-nullable (the Kotlin default). The Kotlin compiler rejects method invocations that pass null to the method. If the query yields an empty result, an EmptyResultDataAccessException is thrown.
This method accepts null for the firstname parameter and returns null if the query does not produce a result.

Asynchronous Query Results

You can run repository queries asynchronously by using Spring’s asynchronous method running capability. This means the method returns immediately upon invocation while the actual query occurs in a task that has been submitted to a Spring TaskExecutor. Asynchronous queries differ from reactive queries and should not be mixed. See the store-specific documentation for more details on reactive support. The following example shows a number of asynchronous queries:

@Async
Future<User> findByFirstname(String firstname);               (1)

@Async
CompletableFuture<User> findOneByFirstname(String firstname); (2)

Use java.util.concurrent.Future as the return type.
Use a Java 8 java.util.concurrent.CompletableFuture as the return type.

Creating Repository Instances

This section covers how to create instances and bean definitions for the defined repository interfaces.

Java Configuration

Use the store-specific @EnableJpaRepositories annotation on a Java configuration class to define a configuration for repository activation. For an introduction to Java-based configuration of the Spring container, see JavaConfig in the Spring reference documentation.

A sample configuration to enable Spring Data repositories resembles the following:

Example 23. Sample annotation-based repository configuration

@Configuration
@EnableJpaRepositories("com.acme.repositories")
class ApplicationConfiguration {

  @Bean
  EntityManagerFactory entityManagerFactory() {
    // …
  }
}

Note	The preceding example uses the JPA-specific annotation, which you would change according to the store module you actually use. The same applies to the definition of the `EntityManagerFactory` bean. See the sections covering the store-specific configuration.

XML Configuration

Each Spring Data module includes a repositories element that lets you define a base package that Spring scans for you, as shown in the following example:

Example 24. Enabling Spring Data repositories via XML

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<beans:beans xmlns:beans="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
  xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
  xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/data/jpa"
  xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans
    https://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans.xsd
    http://www.springframework.org/schema/data/jpa
    https://www.springframework.org/schema/data/jpa/spring-jpa.xsd">

  <jpa:repositories base-package="com.acme.repositories" />

</beans:beans>

In the preceding example, Spring is instructed to scan com.acme.repositories and all its sub-packages for interfaces extending Repository or one of its sub-interfaces. For each interface found, the infrastructure registers the persistence technology-specific FactoryBean to create the appropriate proxies that handle invocations of the query methods. Each bean is registered under a bean name that is derived from the interface name, so an interface of UserRepository would be registered under userRepository. Bean names for nested repository interfaces are prefixed with their enclosing type name. The base package attribute allows wildcards so that you can define a pattern of scanned packages.

Using Filters

By default, the infrastructure picks up every interface that extends the persistence technology-specific Repository sub-interface located under the configured base package and creates a bean instance for it. However, you might want more fine-grained control over which interfaces have bean instances created for them. To do so, use filter elements inside the repository declaration. The semantics are exactly equivalent to the elements in Spring’s component filters. For details, see the Spring reference documentation for these elements.

For example, to exclude certain interfaces from instantiation as repository beans, you could use the following configuration:

Example 25. Using filters

Java

@Configuration
@EnableJpaRepositories(basePackages = "com.acme.repositories",
    includeFilters = { @Filter(type = FilterType.REGEX, pattern = ".*SomeRepository") },
    excludeFilters = { @Filter(type = FilterType.REGEX, pattern = ".*SomeOtherRepository") })
class ApplicationConfiguration {

  @Bean
  EntityManagerFactory entityManagerFactory() {
    // …
  }
}

XML

<repositories base-package="com.acme.repositories">
  <context:exclude-filter type="regex" expression=".*SomeRepository" />
  <context:include-filter type="regex" expression=".*SomeOtherRepository" />
</repositories>

The preceding example excludes all interfaces ending in SomeRepository from being instantiated and includes those ending with SomeOtherRepository.

Standalone Usage

You can also use the repository infrastructure outside of a Spring container — for example, in CDI environments. You still need some Spring libraries in your classpath, but, generally, you can set up repositories programmatically as well. The Spring Data modules that provide repository support ship with a persistence technology-specific RepositoryFactory that you can use, as follows:

Example 26. Standalone usage of the repository factory

RepositoryFactorySupport factory = … // Instantiate factory here
UserRepository repository = factory.getRepository(UserRepository.class);

Custom Implementations for Spring Data Repositories

Spring Data provides various options to create query methods with little coding. But when those options don’t fit your needs you can also provide your own custom implementation for repository methods. This section describes how to do that.

Customizing Individual Repositories

To enrich a repository with custom functionality, you must first define a fragment interface and an implementation for the custom functionality, as follows:

Example 27. Interface for custom repository functionality

interface CustomizedUserRepository {
  void someCustomMethod(User user);
}

Example 28. Implementation of custom repository functionality

class CustomizedUserRepositoryImpl implements CustomizedUserRepository {

  public void someCustomMethod(User user) {
    // Your custom implementation
  }
}

Note	The most important part of the class name that corresponds to the fragment interface is the `Impl` postfix.

The implementation itself does not depend on Spring Data and can be a regular Spring bean. Consequently, you can use standard dependency injection behavior to inject references to other beans (such as a JdbcTemplate), take part in aspects, and so on.

Then you can let your repository interface extend the fragment interface, as follows:

Example 29. Changes to your repository interface

interface UserRepository extends CrudRepository<User, Long>, CustomizedUserRepository {

  // Declare query methods here
}

Extending the fragment interface with your repository interface combines the CRUD and custom functionality and makes it available to clients.

Spring Data repositories are implemented by using fragments that form a repository composition. Fragments are the base repository, functional aspects (such as QueryDsl), and custom interfaces along with their implementations. Each time you add an interface to your repository interface, you enhance the composition by adding a fragment. The base repository and repository aspect implementations are provided by each Spring Data module.

The following example shows custom interfaces and their implementations:

Example 30. Fragments with their implementations

interface HumanRepository {
  void someHumanMethod(User user);
}

class HumanRepositoryImpl implements HumanRepository {

  public void someHumanMethod(User user) {
    // Your custom implementation
  }
}

interface ContactRepository {

  void someContactMethod(User user);

  User anotherContactMethod(User user);
}

class ContactRepositoryImpl implements ContactRepository {

  public void someContactMethod(User user) {
    // Your custom implementation
  }

  public User anotherContactMethod(User user) {
    // Your custom implementation
  }
}

The following example shows the interface for a custom repository that extends CrudRepository:

Example 31. Changes to your repository interface

interface UserRepository extends CrudRepository<User, Long>, HumanRepository, ContactRepository {

  // Declare query methods here
}

Repositories may be composed of multiple custom implementations that are imported in the order of their declaration. Custom implementations have a higher priority than the base implementation and repository aspects. This ordering lets you override base repository and aspect methods and resolves ambiguity if two fragments contribute the same method signature. Repository fragments are not limited to use in a single repository interface. Multiple repositories may use a fragment interface, letting you reuse customizations across different repositories.

The following example shows a repository fragment and its implementation:

Example 32. Fragments overriding save(…)

interface CustomizedSave<T> {
  <S extends T> S save(S entity);
}

class CustomizedSaveImpl<T> implements CustomizedSave<T> {

  public <S extends T> S save(S entity) {
    // Your custom implementation
  }
}

The following example shows a repository that uses the preceding repository fragment:

Example 33. Customized repository interfaces

interface UserRepository extends CrudRepository<User, Long>, CustomizedSave<User> {
}

interface PersonRepository extends CrudRepository<Person, Long>, CustomizedSave<Person> {
}

Configuration

The repository infrastructure tries to autodetect custom implementation fragments by scanning for classes below the package in which it found a repository. These classes need to follow the naming convention of appending a postfix defaulting to Impl.

The following example shows a repository that uses the default postfix and a repository that sets a custom value for the postfix:

Example 34. Configuration example

Java

@EnableJpaRepositories(repositoryImplementationPostfix = "MyPostfix")
class Configuration { … }

XML

<repositories base-package="com.acme.repository" />

<repositories base-package="com.acme.repository" repository-impl-postfix="MyPostfix" />

The first configuration in the preceding example tries to look up a class called com.acme.repository.CustomizedUserRepositoryImpl to act as a custom repository implementation. The second example tries to look up com.acme.repository.CustomizedUserRepositoryMyPostfix.

Resolution of Ambiguity

If multiple implementations with matching class names are found in different packages, Spring Data uses the bean names to identify which one to use.

Given the following two custom implementations for the CustomizedUserRepository shown earlier, the first implementation is used. Its bean name is customizedUserRepositoryImpl, which matches that of the fragment interface (CustomizedUserRepository) plus the postfix Impl.

Example 35. Resolution of ambiguous implementations

package com.acme.impl.one;

class CustomizedUserRepositoryImpl implements CustomizedUserRepository {

  // Your custom implementation
}

package com.acme.impl.two;

@Component("specialCustomImpl")
class CustomizedUserRepositoryImpl implements CustomizedUserRepository {

  // Your custom implementation
}

If you annotate the UserRepository interface with @Component("specialCustom"), the bean name plus Impl then matches the one defined for the repository implementation in com.acme.impl.two, and it is used instead of the first one.

Manual Wiring

If your custom implementation uses annotation-based configuration and autowiring only, the preceding approach shown works well, because it is treated as any other Spring bean. If your implementation fragment bean needs special wiring, you can declare the bean and name it according to the conventions described in the preceding section. The infrastructure then refers to the manually defined bean definition by name instead of creating one itself. The following example shows how to manually wire a custom implementation:

Example 36. Manual wiring of custom implementations

Java

class MyClass {
  MyClass(@Qualifier("userRepositoryImpl") UserRepository userRepository) {
    …
  }
}

XML

<repositories base-package="com.acme.repository" />

<beans:bean id="userRepositoryImpl" class="…">
  <!-- further configuration -->
</beans:bean>

Customize the Base Repository

The approach described in the preceding section requires customization of each repository interfaces when you want to customize the base repository behavior so that all repositories are affected. To instead change behavior for all repositories, you can create an implementation that extends the persistence technology-specific repository base class. This class then acts as a custom base class for the repository proxies, as shown in the following example:

Example 37. Custom repository base class

class MyRepositoryImpl<T, ID>
  extends SimpleJpaRepository<T, ID> {

  private final EntityManager entityManager;

  MyRepositoryImpl(JpaEntityInformation entityInformation,
                          EntityManager entityManager) {
    super(entityInformation, entityManager);

    // Keep the EntityManager around to used from the newly introduced methods.
    this.entityManager = entityManager;
  }

  @Transactional
  public <S extends T> S save(S entity) {
    // implementation goes here
  }
}

Caution

The class needs to have a constructor of the super class which the store-specific repository factory implementation uses. If the repository base class has multiple constructors, override the one taking an EntityInformation plus a store specific infrastructure object (such as an EntityManager or a template class).

The final step is to make the Spring Data infrastructure aware of the customized repository base class. In configuration, you can do so by using the repositoryBaseClass, as shown in the following example:

Example 38. Configuring a custom repository base class

Java

@Configuration
@EnableJpaRepositories(repositoryBaseClass = MyRepositoryImpl.class)
class ApplicationConfiguration { … }

XML

<repositories base-package="com.acme.repository"
     base-class="….MyRepositoryImpl" />

Publishing Events from Aggregate Roots

Entities managed by repositories are aggregate roots. In a Domain-Driven Design application, these aggregate roots usually publish domain events. Spring Data provides an annotation called @DomainEvents that you can use on a method of your aggregate root to make that publication as easy as possible, as shown in the following example:

Example 39. Exposing domain events from an aggregate root

class AnAggregateRoot {

    @DomainEvents (1)
    Collection<Object> domainEvents() {
        // … return events you want to get published here
    }

    @AfterDomainEventPublication (2)
    void callbackMethod() {
       // … potentially clean up domain events list
    }
}

The method that uses @DomainEvents can return either a single event instance or a collection of events. It must not take any arguments.
After all events have been published, we have a method annotated with @AfterDomainEventPublication. You can use it to potentially clean the list of events to be published (among other uses).

The methods are called every time one of the following a Spring Data repository methods are called:

save(…), saveAll(…)
delete(…), deleteAll(…), deleteAllInBatch(…), deleteInBatch(…)

Note, that these methods take the aggregate root instances as arguments. This is why deleteById(…) is notably absent, as the implementations might choose to issue a query deleting the instance, and thus we would never have access to the aggregate instance in the first place.

Spring Data Extensions

This section documents a set of Spring Data extensions that enable Spring Data usage in a variety of contexts. Currently, most of the integration is targeted towards Spring MVC.

Querydsl Extension

Querydsl is a framework that enables the construction of statically typed SQL-like queries through its fluent API.

Several Spring Data modules offer integration with Querydsl through QuerydslPredicateExecutor, as the following example shows:

Example 40. QuerydslPredicateExecutor interface

public interface QuerydslPredicateExecutor<T> {

  Optional<T> findById(Predicate predicate);  (1)

  Iterable<T> findAll(Predicate predicate);   (2)

  long count(Predicate predicate);            (3)

  boolean exists(Predicate predicate);        (4)

  // … more functionality omitted.
}

Finds and returns a single entity matching the Predicate.
Finds and returns all entities matching the Predicate.
Returns the number of entities matching the Predicate.
Returns whether an entity that matches the Predicate exists.

To use the Querydsl support, extend QuerydslPredicateExecutor on your repository interface, as the following example shows:

Example 41. Querydsl integration on repositories

interface UserRepository extends CrudRepository<User, Long>, QuerydslPredicateExecutor<User> {
}

The preceding example lets you write type-safe queries by using Querydsl Predicate instances, as the following example shows:

Predicate predicate = user.firstname.equalsIgnoreCase("dave")
	.and(user.lastname.startsWithIgnoreCase("mathews"));

userRepository.findAll(predicate);

Web support

Spring Data modules that support the repository programming model ship with a variety of web support. The web related components require Spring MVC JARs to be on the classpath. Some of them even provide integration with Spring HATEOAS. In general, the integration support is enabled by using the @EnableSpringDataWebSupport annotation in your JavaConfig configuration class, as the following example shows:

Example 42. Enabling Spring Data web support

Java

@Configuration
@EnableWebMvc
@EnableSpringDataWebSupport
class WebConfiguration {}

XML

<bean class="org.springframework.data.web.config.SpringDataWebConfiguration" />

<!-- If you use Spring HATEOAS, register this one *instead* of the former -->
<bean class="org.springframework.data.web.config.HateoasAwareSpringDataWebConfiguration" />

The @EnableSpringDataWebSupport annotation registers a few components. We discuss those later in this section. It also detects Spring HATEOAS on the classpath and registers integration components (if present) for it as well.

Basic Web Support

Enabling Spring Data web support in XML

The configuration shown in the previous section registers a few basic components:

A Using the DomainClassConverter Class to let Spring MVC resolve instances of repository-managed domain classes from request parameters or path variables.
HandlerMethodArgumentResolver implementations to let Spring MVC resolve Pageable and Sort instances from request parameters.
Jackson Modules to de-/serialize types like Point and Distance, or store specific ones, depending on the Spring Data Module used.

Using the `DomainClassConverter` Class

The DomainClassConverter class lets you use domain types in your Spring MVC controller method signatures directly so that you need not manually lookup the instances through the repository, as the following example shows:

Example 43. A Spring MVC controller using domain types in method signatures

@Controller
@RequestMapping("/users")
class UserController {

  @RequestMapping("/{id}")
  String showUserForm(@PathVariable("id") User user, Model model) {

    model.addAttribute("user", user);
    return "userForm";
  }
}

The method receives a User instance directly, and no further lookup is necessary. The instance can be resolved by letting Spring MVC convert the path variable into the id type of the domain class first and eventually access the instance through calling findById(…) on the repository instance registered for the domain type.

Note	Currently, the repository has to implement `CrudRepository` to be eligible to be discovered for conversion.

HandlerMethodArgumentResolvers for Pageable and Sort

The configuration snippet shown in the previous section also registers a PageableHandlerMethodArgumentResolver as well as an instance of SortHandlerMethodArgumentResolver. The registration enables Pageable and Sort as valid controller method arguments, as the following example shows:

Example 44. Using Pageable as a controller method argument

@Controller
@RequestMapping("/users")
class UserController {

  private final UserRepository repository;

  UserController(UserRepository repository) {
    this.repository = repository;
  }

  @RequestMapping
  String showUsers(Model model, Pageable pageable) {

    model.addAttribute("users", repository.findAll(pageable));
    return "users";
  }
}

The preceding method signature causes Spring MVC try to derive a Pageable instance from the request parameters by using the following default configuration:

Table 2. Request parameters evaluated for `Pageable` instances
`page`	Page you want to retrieve. 0-indexed and defaults to 0.
`size`	Size of the page you want to retrieve. Defaults to 20.
`sort`	Properties that should be sorted by in the format `property,property(,ASC\|DESC)(,IgnoreCase)`. The default sort direction is case-sensitive ascending. Use multiple `sort` parameters if you want to switch direction or case sensitivity — for example, `?sort=firstname&sort=lastname,asc&sort=city,ignorecase`.

To customize this behavior, register a bean that implements the PageableHandlerMethodArgumentResolverCustomizer interface or the SortHandlerMethodArgumentResolverCustomizer interface, respectively. Its customize() method gets called, letting you change settings, as the following example shows:

@Bean SortHandlerMethodArgumentResolverCustomizer sortCustomizer() {
    return s -> s.setPropertyDelimiter("<-->");
}

If setting the properties of an existing MethodArgumentResolver is not sufficient for your purpose, extend either SpringDataWebConfiguration or the HATEOAS-enabled equivalent, override the pageableResolver() or sortResolver() methods, and import your customized configuration file instead of using the @Enable annotation.

If you need multiple Pageable or Sort instances to be resolved from the request (for multiple tables, for example), you can use Spring’s @Qualifier annotation to distinguish one from another. The request parameters then have to be prefixed with ${qualifier}_. The following example shows the resulting method signature:

String showUsers(Model model,
      @Qualifier("thing1") Pageable first,
      @Qualifier("thing2") Pageable second) { … }

You have to populate thing1_page, thing2_page, and so on.

The default Pageable passed into the method is equivalent to a PageRequest.of(0, 20), but you can customize it by using the @PageableDefault annotation on the Pageable parameter.

Hypermedia Support for `Page` and `Slice`

Spring HATEOAS ships with a representation model class (PagedModel/SlicedModel) that allows enriching the content of a Page or Slice instance with the necessary Page/Slice metadata as well as links to let the clients easily navigate the pages. The conversion of a Page to a PagedModel is done by an implementation of the Spring HATEOAS RepresentationModelAssembler interface, called the PagedResourcesAssembler. Similarly Slice instances can be converted to a SlicedModel using a SlicedResourcesAssembler. The following example shows how to use a PagedResourcesAssembler as a controller method argument, as the SlicedResourcesAssembler works exactly the same:

Example 45. Using a PagedResourcesAssembler as controller method argument

@Controller
class PersonController {

  private final PersonRepository repository;

  // Constructor omitted

  @GetMapping("/people")
  HttpEntity<PagedModel<Person>> people(Pageable pageable,
    PagedResourcesAssembler assembler) {

    Page<Person> people = repository.findAll(pageable);
    return ResponseEntity.ok(assembler.toModel(people));
  }
}

Enabling the configuration, as shown in the preceding example, lets the PagedResourcesAssembler be used as a controller method argument. Calling toModel(…) on it has the following effects:

The content of the Page becomes the content of the PagedModel instance.
The PagedModel object gets a PageMetadata instance attached, and it is populated with information from the Page and the underlying Pageable.
The PagedModel may get prev and next links attached, depending on the page’s state. The links point to the URI to which the method maps. The pagination parameters added to the method match the setup of the PageableHandlerMethodArgumentResolver to make sure the links can be resolved later.

Assume we have 30 Person instances in the database. You can now trigger a request (GET http://localhost:8080/people) and see output similar to the following:

{ "links" : [
    { "rel" : "next", "href" : "http://localhost:8080/persons?page=1&size=20" }
  ],
  "content" : [
     … // 20 Person instances rendered here
  ],
  "pageMetadata" : {
    "size" : 20,
    "totalElements" : 30,
    "totalPages" : 2,
    "number" : 0
  }
}

Warning

The JSON envelope format shown here doesn’t follow any formally specified structure and it’s not guaranteed stable and we might change it at any time. It’s highly recommended to enable the rendering as a hypermedia-enabled, official media type, supported by Spring HATEOAS, like HAL. Those can be activated by using its @EnableHypermediaSupport annotation. Find more information in the Spring HATEOAS reference documentation.

The assembler produced the correct URI and also picked up the default configuration to resolve the parameters into a Pageable for an upcoming request. This means that, if you change that configuration, the links automatically adhere to the change. By default, the assembler points to the controller method it was invoked in, but you can customize that by passing a custom Link to be used as base to build the pagination links, which overloads the PagedResourcesAssembler.toModel(…) method.

Spring Data Jackson Modules

The core module, and some of the store specific ones, ship with a set of Jackson Modules for types, like org.springframework.data.geo.Distance and org.springframework.data.geo.Point, used by the Spring Data domain.
Those Modules are imported once web support is enabled and com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.ObjectMapper is available.

During initialization SpringDataJacksonModules, like the SpringDataJacksonConfiguration, get picked up by the infrastructure, so that the declared com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.Modules are made available to the Jackson ObjectMapper.

Data binding mixins for the following domain types are registered by the common infrastructure.

org.springframework.data.geo.Distance
org.springframework.data.geo.Point
org.springframework.data.geo.Box
org.springframework.data.geo.Circle
org.springframework.data.geo.Polygon

Note	The individual module may provide additional `SpringDataJacksonModules`. Please refer to the store specific section for more details.

Web Databinding Support

You can use Spring Data projections (described in Projections) to bind incoming request payloads by using either JSONPath expressions (requires Jayway JsonPath) or XPath expressions (requires XmlBeam), as the following example shows:

Example 46. HTTP payload binding using JSONPath or XPath expressions

@ProjectedPayload
public interface UserPayload {

  @XBRead("//firstname")
  @JsonPath("$..firstname")
  String getFirstname();

  @XBRead("/lastname")
  @JsonPath({ "$.lastname", "$.user.lastname" })
  String getLastname();
}

You can use the type shown in the preceding example as a Spring MVC handler method argument or by using ParameterizedTypeReference on one of methods of the RestTemplate. The preceding method declarations would try to find firstname anywhere in the given document. The lastname XML lookup is performed on the top-level of the incoming document. The JSON variant of that tries a top-level lastname first but also tries lastname nested in a user sub-document if the former does not return a value. That way, changes in the structure of the source document can be mitigated easily without having clients calling the exposed methods (usually a drawback of class-based payload binding).

Nested projections are supported as described in Projections. If the method returns a complex, non-interface type, a Jackson ObjectMapper is used to map the final value.

For Spring MVC, the necessary converters are registered automatically as soon as @EnableSpringDataWebSupport is active and the required dependencies are available on the classpath. For usage with RestTemplate, register a ProjectingJackson2HttpMessageConverter (JSON) or XmlBeamHttpMessageConverter manually.

For more information, see the web projection example in the canonical Spring Data Examples repository.

Querydsl Web Support

For those stores that have QueryDSL integration, you can derive queries from the attributes contained in a Request query string.

Consider the following query string:

?firstname=Dave&lastname=Matthews

Given the User object from the previous examples, you can resolve a query string to the following value by using the QuerydslPredicateArgumentResolver, as follows:

QUser.user.firstname.eq("Dave").and(QUser.user.lastname.eq("Matthews"))

Note	The feature is automatically enabled, along with `@EnableSpringDataWebSupport`, when Querydsl is found on the classpath.

Adding a @QuerydslPredicate to the method signature provides a ready-to-use Predicate, which you can run by using the QuerydslPredicateExecutor.

Tip	Type information is typically resolved from the method’s return type. Since that information does not necessarily match the domain type, it might be a good idea to use the `root` attribute of `QuerydslPredicate`.

The following example shows how to use @QuerydslPredicate in a method signature:

@Controller
class UserController {

  @Autowired UserRepository repository;

  @RequestMapping(value = "/", method = RequestMethod.GET)
  String index(Model model, @QuerydslPredicate(root = User.class) Predicate predicate,    (1)
          Pageable pageable, @RequestParam MultiValueMap<String, String> parameters) {

    model.addAttribute("users", repository.findAll(predicate, pageable));

    return "index";
  }
}

Resolve query string arguments to matching Predicate for User.

The default binding is as follows:

Object on simple properties as eq.
Object on collection like properties as contains.
Collection on simple properties as in.

You can customize those bindings through the bindings attribute of @QuerydslPredicate or by making use of Java 8 default methods and adding the QuerydslBinderCustomizer method to the repository interface, as follows:

interface UserRepository extends CrudRepository<User, String>,
                                 QuerydslPredicateExecutor<User>,                (1)
                                 QuerydslBinderCustomizer<QUser> {               (2)

  @Override
  default void customize(QuerydslBindings bindings, QUser user) {

    bindings.bind(user.username).first((path, value) -> path.contains(value))    (3)
    bindings.bind(String.class)
      .first((StringPath path, String value) -> path.containsIgnoreCase(value)); (4)
    bindings.excluding(user.password);                                           (5)
  }
}

QuerydslPredicateExecutor provides access to specific finder methods for Predicate.
QuerydslBinderCustomizer defined on the repository interface is automatically picked up and shortcuts @QuerydslPredicate(bindings=…).
Define the binding for the username property to be a simple contains binding.
Define the default binding for String properties to be a case-insensitive contains match.
Exclude the password property from Predicate resolution.

Tip	You can register a `QuerydslBinderCustomizerDefaults` bean holding default Querydsl bindings before applying specific bindings from the repository or `@QuerydslPredicate`.

Repository Populators

If you work with the Spring JDBC module, you are probably familiar with the support for populating a DataSource with SQL scripts. A similar abstraction is available on the repositories level, although it does not use SQL as the data definition language because it must be store-independent. Thus, the populators support XML (through Spring’s OXM abstraction) and JSON (through Jackson) to define data with which to populate the repositories.

Assume you have a file called data.json with the following content:

Example 47. Data defined in JSON

[ { "_class" : "com.acme.Person",
 "firstname" : "Dave",
  "lastname" : "Matthews" },
  { "_class" : "com.acme.Person",
 "firstname" : "Carter",
  "lastname" : "Beauford" } ]

You can populate your repositories by using the populator elements of the repository namespace provided in Spring Data Commons. To populate the preceding data to your PersonRepository, declare a populator similar to the following:

Example 48. Declaring a Jackson repository populator

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
  xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
  xmlns:repository="http://www.springframework.org/schema/data/repository"
  xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans
    https://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans.xsd
    http://www.springframework.org/schema/data/repository
    https://www.springframework.org/schema/data/repository/spring-repository.xsd">

  <repository:jackson2-populator locations="classpath:data.json" />

</beans>

The preceding declaration causes the data.json file to be read and deserialized by a Jackson ObjectMapper.

The type to which the JSON object is unmarshalled is determined by inspecting the _class attribute of the JSON document. The infrastructure eventually selects the appropriate repository to handle the object that was deserialized.

To instead use XML to define the data the repositories should be populated with, you can use the unmarshaller-populator element. You configure it to use one of the XML marshaller options available in Spring OXM. See the Spring reference documentation for details. The following example shows how to unmarshall a repository populator with JAXB:

Example 49. Declaring an unmarshalling repository populator (using JAXB)

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
  xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
  xmlns:repository="http://www.springframework.org/schema/data/repository"
  xmlns:oxm="http://www.springframework.org/schema/oxm"
  xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans
    https://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans.xsd
    http://www.springframework.org/schema/data/repository
    https://www.springframework.org/schema/data/repository/spring-repository.xsd
    http://www.springframework.org/schema/oxm
    https://www.springframework.org/schema/oxm/spring-oxm.xsd">

  <repository:unmarshaller-populator locations="classpath:data.json"
    unmarshaller-ref="unmarshaller" />

  <oxm:jaxb2-marshaller contextPath="com.acme" />

</beans>

Aerospike repositories

Introduction

One of the main goals of the Spring Data is to significantly reduce the amount of boilerplate code required to implement data access layers for various persistence stores.

One of the core interfaces of Spring Data is Repository. This interface acts primarily to capture the types to work with and to help user to discover interfaces that extend Repository.

In other words, it allows user to have basic and complicated queries without writing the implementation. This builds on the Core SpringData Repository Support, so make sure you’ve got a sound understanding of this concept.

Usage

To access entities stored in Aerospike you can leverage repository support that eases implementing those quite significantly. To do so, simply create an interface for your repository:

Example 50. Sample Person entity

public class Person {

	@Id
	private String id;
	private String name;
	private int age;
	public Person(String id, String name, int age) {
		this.id = id;
		this.name = name;
		this.age = age;
	}
  // … getters and setters omitted
}

We have a quite simple domain object here. The default serialization mechanism used in AerospikeTemplate (which is backing the repository support) regards properties named "id" as document id. Currently we support String and long as id-types.

Example 51. Basic repository interface to persist Person entities

public interface PersonRepository extends AerospikeRepository<Person, String> {

	List<Person> findByName(String name);

	List<Person> findByNameStartsWith(String prefix);

}

Right now this interface simply serves typing purposes, but we will add additional methods to it later. In your Spring configuration simply add

Example 52. General Aerospike repository Spring configuration

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
  xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
  xmlns:aerospike="http://www.springframework.org/schema/data/aerospike"
  xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans
    https://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-3.0.xsd
    http://www.springframework.org/schema/data/aerospike
    https://www.springframework.org/schema/data/aerospike/spring-aerospike-1.0.xsd">

  <aerospike:aerospike id="aerospike" />

  <bean id="aerospikeTemplate" class="rg.springframework.data.aerospike.core.AerospikeTemplate">
 </bean>

  <aerospike:repositories base-package="org.springframework.data.aerospike.example.data" />

</beans>

This namespace element will cause the base packages to be scanned for interfaces extending AerospikeRepository and create Spring beans for each of them found. By default, the repositories will get an AerospikeTemplate Spring bean wired that is called aerospikeTemplate.

If you’d rather like to go with JavaConfig use the @EnableAerospikeRepositories annotation. The annotation carries the very same attributes like the namespace element. If no base package is configured the infrastructure will scan the package of the annotated configuration class.

Example 53. JavaConfig for repositories

@Configuration
@EnableAerospikeRepositories(basePackages = "org.springframework.data.aerospike.example")
public class TestRepositoryConfig {
	public @Bean(destroyMethod = "close") AerospikeClient aerospikeClient() {

		ClientPolicy policy = new ClientPolicy();
		policy.failIfNotConnected = true;

		return new AerospikeClient(policy, "52.23.205.208", 3000);
	}

	public @Bean AerospikeTemplate aerospikeTemplate() {
		return new AerospikeTemplate(aerospikeClient(), "test");
	}
}

As our domain repository extends PagingAndSortingRepository it provides you with CRUD operations as well as methods for paginated and sorted access to the entities. Working with the repository instance is just a matter of dependency injecting it into a client. So accessing the second page of `Person`s at a page size of 10 would simply look something like this:

Example 54. Paging access to Person entities

@RunWith(SpringJUnit4ClassRunner.class)
@ContextConfiguration
public class PersonRepositoryTests {

    @Autowired PersonRepository repository;

    @Test
    public void readsFirstPageCorrectly() {

      Page<Person> persons = repository.findAll(new PageRequest(0, 10));
      assertThat(persons.isFirstPage(), is(true));
    }
}

The sample creates an application context with Spring’s unit test support which will perform annotation-based dependency injection into test cases. Inside the test method, we simply use the repository to query the datastore. We hand the repository a PageRequest instance that requests the first page of persons at a page size of 10.

Query methods

Most of the data access operations you usually trigger on a repository result in a query being executed against the Aerospike databases. Defining such a query is just a matter of declaring a method on the repository interface

Example 55. PersonRepository with query methods

public interface PersonRepository extends PagingAndSortingRepository<Person, String> {

    List<Person> findByName(String name);                              (1)

    Page<Person> findByName(String name, Pageable pageable);           (2)

    List<Person> findByNameStartsWith(String prefix);                  (3)

 }

The method shows a query for all people with the given name. The query will be derived by parsing the method name for constraints that can be concatenated with And and Or.
Applies pagination to a query. Just equip your method signature with a Pageable parameter and let the method return a Page instance, and it will automatically page the query accordingly (i.e. return the required part of results).
Uses query-based partial name search.

Here’s a delete insert and query example

@ContextConfiguration(classes = TestRepositoryConfig.class)
public class RepositoryExample {

	@Autowired
	protected PersonRepository repository;
	@Autowired
	AerospikeOperations aerospikeOperations;
	@Autowired
	AerospikeClient client;

	public RepositoryExample(ApplicationContext ctx) {
		aerospikeOperations = ctx.getBean(AerospikeTemplate.class);
		repository = (PersonRepository) ctx.getBean("personRepository");
		client = ctx.getBean(AerospikeClient.class);
	}

	protected void setUp() {
		repository.deleteAll();
		Person dave = new Person("Dave-01", "Matthews", 42);
		Person donny = new Person("Dave-02", "Macintire", 39);
		Person oliver = new Person("Oliver-01", "Matthews", 4);
		Person carter = new Person("Carter-01", "Beauford", 49);
		Person boyd = new Person("Boyd-01", "Tinsley", 45);
		Person stefan = new Person("Stefan-01", "Lessard", 34);
		Person leroi = new Person("Leroi-01", "Moore", 41);
		Person leroi2 = new Person("Leroi-02", "Moore", 25);
		Person alicia = new Person("Alicia-01", "Keys", 30);
		repository.createIndex(Person.class, "person_name_index", "name",
				IndexType.STRING);
		List<Person> all = (List<Person>) repository.save(Arrays.asList(oliver,
				dave, donny, carter, boyd, stefan, leroi, leroi2, alicia));
	}

	protected void cleanUp() {
		repository.deleteAll();
	}

	protected void executeRepositoryCall() {
		List<Person> result = repository.findByName("Beauford");
		System.out.println("Results for exact match of 'Beauford'");
		for (Person person : result) {
			System.out.println(person.toString());
		}
		System.out.println("Results for name starting with letter 'M'");
		List<Person> resultPartial = repository.findByNameStartsWith("M");
		for (Person person : resultPartial) {
			System.out.println(person.toString());
		}
	}

	public static void main(String[] args) {
		ApplicationContext ctx = new AnnotationConfigApplicationContext(
				TestRepositoryConfig.class);
		RepositoryExample repositoryExample = new RepositoryExample(ctx);
		repositoryExample.setUp();
		repositoryExample.executeRepositoryCall();
		repositoryExample.cleanUp();
	}
}

Reactive Aerospike repositories

Introduction

This chapter will point out the specialties for reactive repository support for Aerospike. This builds on the core repository support explained in repositories. So make sure you’ve got a sound understanding of the basic concepts explained there.

Reactive Composition Libraries

The reactive space offers various reactive composition libraries. The most common library is Project Reactor.

Spring Data Aerospike is built on top of the Aerospike Reactor Java Client Library, to provide maximal interoperability by relying on the Reactive Streams initiative. Static APIs, such as ReactiveAerospikeOperations, are provided by using Project Reactor’s Flux and Mono types. Project Reactor offers various adapters to convert reactive wrapper types (Flux to Observable and vice versa).

Spring Data’s Repository abstraction is a dynamic API, mostly defined by you and your requirements as you declare query methods. Reactive Aerospike repositories can be implemented by using Project Reactor wrapper types by extending from the following library-specific repository interface:

ReactiveAerospikeRepository

Usage

To access domain entities stored in an Aerospike you can use our sophisticated repository support that eases implementing those quite significantly. To do so, create an interface similar to your repository. Before you can do that, though, you need an entity, such as the entity defined in the following example:

Example 56. Sample Person entity

public class Person {

  @Id
  private String id;
  private String firstname;
  private String lastname;
  private Address address;

  // … getters and setters omitted
}

We have a quite simple domain object here. The default serialization mechanism used in ReactiveAerospikeTemplate (which is backing the repository support) regards properties named id as document ID. Currently, we support String and long as id-types. The following example shows how to create an interface that defines queries against the Person object from the preceding example:

Example 57. Basic repository interface to persist Person entities

public interface ReactivePersonRepository extends ReactiveAerospikeRepository<Person, String> {

  Flux<Person> findByFirstname(String firstname);

}

Right now this interface simply serves typing purposes but we will add additional methods to it later.

For Java configuration, use the @EnableReactiveAerospikeRepositories annotation. The annotation carries the base packages attribute. These base packages are to be scanned for interfaces extending ReactiveAerospikeRepository and create Spring beans for each of them found. If no base package is configured, the infrastructure scans the package of the annotated configuration class.

The following listing shows how to use Java configuration for a repository:

Example 58. Java configuration for repositories

@Configuration
@EnableReactiveAerospikeRepositories(basePackages = "org.springframework.data.aerospike.example")
public class TestRepositoryConfig extends AbstractReactiveAerospikeDataConfiguration {
    @Override
    protected Collection<Host> getHosts() {
        return Collections.singleton(new Host("52.23.205.208", 3000));
    }

    @Override
    protected String nameSpace() {
        return "test";
    }

    @Override
    protected EventLoops eventLoops() {
        return new NioEventLoops();
    }
}

As our domain repository extends ReactiveAerospikeRepository it provides you with CRUD operations. Working with the repository instance is a matter of dependency injecting it into a client, as the following example shows:

Example 59. Access to Person entities

@RunWith(SpringJUnit4ClassRunner.class)
@ContextConfiguration
public class PersonRepositoryTests {
    @Autowired
    ReactivePersonRepository repository;

    @Test
    public void findByFirstnameCorrectly() {
      Flux<Person> persons = repository.findByFirstname("TestFirstName");
    }
}

Query methods

Example 60. PersonRepository with query methods

public interface ReactivePersonRepository extends ReactiveAerospikeRepository<Person, String> {

  Flux<Person> findByFirstname(String firstname);                                   (1)

  Flux<Person> findByFirstname(Publisher<String> firstname);                        (2)

  Mono<Person> findByFirstnameAndLastname(String firstname, String lastname);       (3)

  Mono<Person> findFirstByLastname(String lastname);                                (4)

  Flux<Person> findByFirstnameStartsWith(String prefix);                            (5)

}

The method shows a query for all people with the given firstname. The query is derived by parsing the method name for constraints that can be concatenated with And and Or. Thus, the method name results in a query expression of {"firstname" : firstname}.
The method shows a query for all people with the given firstname once the firstname is emitted by the given Publisher.
Find a single entity for the given criteria. It completes with IncorrectResultSizeDataAccessException on non-unique results.
Unless <3>, the first entity is always emitted even if the query yields more result documents.
The method shows a query for all people with the firstname starts from prefix

Examples

Here’s a delete, insert and query example

@ContextConfiguration(classes = TestRepositoryConfig.class)
public class ReactiveRepositoryExample {

    @Autowired
    protected ReactivePersonRepository repository;
    @Autowired
    ReactiveAerospikeOperations aerospikeOperations;
    @Autowired
    IAerospikeReactorClient client;

    public RepositoryExample(ApplicationContext ctx) {
        aerospikeOperations = ctx.getBean(ReactiveAerospikeTemplate.class);
        repository = (ReactivePersonRepository) ctx.getBean("reactivePersonRepository");
        client = ctx.getBean(IAerospikeReactorClient.class);
    }

    protected void setUp() {
        // Insert new Person items into repository
        Person dave = new Person("Dave-01", "Matthews", 42);
        Person donny = new Person("Dave-02", "Macintire", 39);
        Person oliver = new Person("Oliver-01", "Matthews", 4);
        Person carter = new Person("Carter-01", "Beauford", 49);
        List<Person> all = saveAll(Arrays.asList(dave, donny, oliver, carter))
            .collectList().block();
    }

    protected void cleanUp() {
        // Delete all Person items from repository
        repository.findAll().flatMap(a -> repository.delete(a)).blockLast();
    }

    protected void executeRepositoryCall() {
        System.out.println("Results for first name exact match of 'Dave-02'");
        repository.findByFirstname("Dave-02")
            .doOnNext(person -> System.out.println(person.toString())).blockLast();

        System.out.println("Results for first name starting with letter 'D'");
        repository.findByFirstnameStartsWith("D")
            .doOnNext(person -> System.out.println(person.toString())).blockLast();
    }

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        ApplicationContext ctx =
            new AnnotationConfigApplicationContext(TestRepositoryConfig.class);
        ReactiveRepositoryExample repositoryExample = new ReactiveRepositoryExample(ctx);
        repositoryExample.setUp();
        repositoryExample.executeRepositoryCall();
        repositoryExample.cleanUp();
    }
}

Restrictions

ReactiveAerospikeRepository currently does not support the next operations:

all operations with indexes (create, delete, exists)
count()
deleteAll()

This limitation is due to the lack of corresponding asynchronous methods in the Aerospike client. :projection-collection: Collection

Projections

Spring Data query methods usually return one or multiple instances of the aggregate root managed by the repository. However, it might sometimes be desirable to create projections based on certain attributes of those types. Spring Data allows modeling dedicated return types, to more selectively retrieve partial views of the managed aggregates.

Imagine a repository and aggregate root type such as the following example:

Example 61. A sample aggregate and repository

class Person {

  @Id UUID id;
  String firstname, lastname;
  Address address;

  static class Address {
    String zipCode, city, street;
  }
}

interface PersonRepository extends Repository<Person, UUID> {

  Collection<Person> findByLastname(String lastname);
}

Now imagine that we want to retrieve the person’s name attributes only. What means does Spring Data offer to achieve this? The rest of this chapter answers that question.

Interface-based Projections

The easiest way to limit the result of the queries to only the name attributes is by declaring an interface that exposes accessor methods for the properties to be read, as shown in the following example:

Example 62. A projection interface to retrieve a subset of attributes

interface NamesOnly {

  String getFirstname();
  String getLastname();
}

The important bit here is that the properties defined here exactly match properties in the aggregate root. Doing so lets a query method be added as follows:

Example 63. A repository using an interface based projection with a query method

interface PersonRepository extends Repository<Person, UUID> {

  Collection<NamesOnly> findByLastname(String lastname);
}

The query execution engine creates proxy instances of that interface at runtime for each element returned and forwards calls to the exposed methods to the target object.

Note

Declaring a method in your Repository that overrides a base method (e.g. declared in CrudRepository, a store-specific repository interface, or the Simple…Repository) results in a call to the base method regardless of the declared return type. Make sure to use a compatible return type as base methods cannot be used for projections. Some store modules support @Query annotations to turn an overridden base method into a query method that then can be used to return projections.

Projections can be used recursively. If you want to include some of the Address information as well, create a projection interface for that and return that interface from the declaration of getAddress(), as shown in the following example:

Example 64. A projection interface to retrieve a subset of attributes

interface PersonSummary {

  String getFirstname();
  String getLastname();
  AddressSummary getAddress();

  interface AddressSummary {
    String getCity();
  }
}

On method invocation, the address property of the target instance is obtained and wrapped into a projecting proxy in turn.

Closed Projections

A projection interface whose accessor methods all match properties of the target aggregate is considered to be a closed projection. The following example (which we used earlier in this chapter, too) is a closed projection:

Example 65. A closed projection

interface NamesOnly {

  String getFirstname();
  String getLastname();
}

If you use a closed projection, Spring Data can optimize the query execution, because we know about all the attributes that are needed to back the projection proxy. For more details on that, see the module-specific part of the reference documentation.

Open Projections

Accessor methods in projection interfaces can also be used to compute new values by using the @Value annotation, as shown in the following example:

Example 66. An Open Projection

interface NamesOnly {

  @Value("#{target.firstname + ' ' + target.lastname}")
  String getFullName();
  …
}

The aggregate root backing the projection is available in the target variable. A projection interface using @Value is an open projection. Spring Data cannot apply query execution optimizations in this case, because the SpEL expression could use any attribute of the aggregate root.

The expressions used in @Value should not be too complex — you want to avoid programming in String variables. For very simple expressions, one option might be to resort to default methods (introduced in Java 8), as shown in the following example:

Example 67. A projection interface using a default method for custom logic

interface NamesOnly {

  String getFirstname();
  String getLastname();

  default String getFullName() {
    return getFirstname().concat(" ").concat(getLastname());
  }
}

This approach requires you to be able to implement logic purely based on the other accessor methods exposed on the projection interface. A second, more flexible, option is to implement the custom logic in a Spring bean and then invoke that from the SpEL expression, as shown in the following example:

Example 68. Sample Person object

@Component
class MyBean {

  String getFullName(Person person) {
    …
  }
}

interface NamesOnly {

  @Value("#{@myBean.getFullName(target)}")
  String getFullName();
  …
}

Notice how the SpEL expression refers to myBean and invokes the getFullName(…) method and forwards the projection target as a method parameter. Methods backed by SpEL expression evaluation can also use method parameters, which can then be referred to from the expression. The method parameters are available through an Object array named args. The following example shows how to get a method parameter from the args array:

Example 69. Sample Person object

interface NamesOnly {

  @Value("#{args[0] + ' ' + target.firstname + '!'}")
  String getSalutation(String prefix);
}

Again, for more complex expressions, you should use a Spring bean and let the expression invoke a method, as described earlier.

Nullable Wrappers

Getters in projection interfaces can make use of nullable wrappers for improved null-safety. Currently supported wrapper types are:

java.util.Optional
com.google.common.base.Optional
scala.Option
io.vavr.control.Option

Example 70. A projection interface using nullable wrappers

interface NamesOnly {

  Optional<String> getFirstname();
}

If the underlying projection value is not null, then values are returned using the present-representation of the wrapper type. In case the backing value is null, then the getter method returns the empty representation of the used wrapper type.

Class-based Projections (DTOs)

Another way of defining projections is by using value type DTOs (Data Transfer Objects) that hold properties for the fields that are supposed to be retrieved. These DTO types can be used in exactly the same way projection interfaces are used, except that no proxying happens and no nested projections can be applied.

If the store optimizes the query execution by limiting the fields to be loaded, the fields to be loaded are determined from the parameter names of the constructor that is exposed.

The following example shows a projecting DTO:

Example 71. A projecting DTO

record NamesOnly(String firstname, String lastname) {
}

Java Records are ideal to define DTO types since they adhere to value semantics: All fields are private final and equals(…)/hashCode()/toString() methods are created automatically. Alternatively, you can use any class that defines the properties you want to project.

Dynamic Projections

So far, we have used the projection type as the return type or element type of a collection. However, you might want to select the type to be used at invocation time (which makes it dynamic). To apply dynamic projections, use a query method such as the one shown in the following example:

Example 72. A repository using a dynamic projection parameter

interface PersonRepository extends Repository<Person, UUID> {

  <T> Collection<T> findByLastname(String lastname, Class<T> type);
}

This way, the method can be used to obtain the aggregates as is or with a projection applied, as shown in the following example:

Example 73. Using a repository with dynamic projections

void someMethod(PersonRepository people) {

  Collection<Person> aggregates =
    people.findByLastname("Matthews", Person.class);

  Collection<NamesOnly> aggregates =
    people.findByLastname("Matthews", NamesOnly.class);
}

Note

Query parameters of type Class are inspected whether they qualify as dynamic projection parameter. If the actual return type of the query equals the generic parameter type of the Class parameter, then the matching Class parameter is not available for usage within the query or SpEL expressions. If you want to use a Class parameter as query argument then make sure to use a different generic parameter, for example Class<?>.

Projections with Aerospike

Spring Data Aerospike supports Projections, a mechanism that allows you to fetch only relevant fields from Aerospike for a particular use case. This results in better performance, less network traffic, and a better understanding of what is required for the rest of the flow.

For more details refer to SpringData documentation: Projections.

For example, consider a Person class:

@AllArgsConstructor
@NoArgsConstructor
@Data
@Document
public class Person {
    public enum Gender {
        MALE, FEMALE;
    }
    @Id
    private long id;
    private String firstName;
    @Indexed(name = "lastName_idx", type = IndexType.STRING)
    private String lastName;
    @Field("dob")
    private Date dateOfBirth;
    private long heightInCm;
    private boolean enabled;
    private Gender gender;
    private String hairColor;
    private String eyeColor;
    private String passportNo;
    private String passptCnty;
}

This is a moderately complex object, and a production object is likely to be more complex. The use case might call for a search box that shows the firstName, lastName and dateOfBirth fields, allowing the user to select a Person based on the criteria upon which the full object will be shown.

A simple projection of this object might be:

@Data
@Builder
public class SearchPerson {
    private String firstName;
    private String lastName;
    @Field("dob")
    private Date dateOfBirth;
}

To tell Spring Data how to create a SearchPerson it is necessary to create a method on the Person class:

public SearchPerson toSearchPerson() {
    return SearchPerson.builder()
            .firstName(this.getFirstName())
            .lastName(this.getLastName())
            .dateOfBirth(this.getDateOfBirth())
            .build();
}

Now the repository interface can be extended to return this projection:

public interface PersonRepository extends AerospikeRepository<Person, Long> {
    public List<Person> findByLastName(String lastName);
    public List<SearchPerson> findSearchPersonByLastName(String lastName);
}

Notice that the method name now dictates the return type of SearchPerson as well as changing the return value. When this method is executed, Aerospike loads the full Person objects out of storage, invokes the toSearchPerson on each person and returns the resulting SearchPerson instances. This reduces the required network bandwidth to present these objects to the front end and simplifies logic.

A blog post with more details on projections can be found here.

Query by Example

Introduction

This chapter provides an introduction to Query by Example and explains how to use it.

Query by Example (QBE) is a user-friendly querying technique with a simple interface. It allows dynamic query creation and does not require you to write queries that contain field names. In fact, Query by Example does not require you to write queries by using store-specific query languages at all.

Usage

The Query by Example API consists of four parts:

Probe: The actual example of a domain object with populated fields.
ExampleMatcher: The ExampleMatcher carries details on how to match particular fields. It can be reused across multiple Examples.
Example: An Example consists of the probe and the ExampleMatcher. It is used to create the query.
FetchableFluentQuery: A FetchableFluentQuery offers a fluent API, that allows further customization of a query derived from an Example. Using the fluent API lets you to specify ordering projection and result processing for your query.

Query by Example is well suited for several use cases:

Querying your data store with a set of static or dynamic constraints.
Frequent refactoring of the domain objects without worrying about breaking existing queries.
Working independently from the underlying data store API.

Query by Example also has several limitations:

No support for nested or grouped property constraints, such as firstname = ?0 or (firstname = ?1 and lastname = ?2).
Only supports starts/contains/ends/regex matching for strings and exact matching for other property types.

Before getting started with Query by Example, you need to have a domain object. To get started, create an interface for your repository, as shown in the following example:

Example 74. Sample Person object

public class Person {

  @Id
  private String id;
  private String firstname;
  private String lastname;
  private Address address;

  // … getters and setters omitted
}

The preceding example shows a simple domain object. You can use it to create an Example. By default, fields having null values are ignored, and strings are matched by using the store specific defaults.

Note	Inclusion of properties into a Query by Example criteria is based on nullability. Properties using primitive types (`int`, `double`, …) are always included unless the `ExampleMatcher` ignores the property path.

Examples can be built by either using the of factory method or by using ExampleMatcher. Example is immutable. The following listing shows a simple Example:

Example 75. Simple Example

Person person = new Person();                         (1)
person.setFirstname("Dave");                          (2)

Example<Person> example = Example.of(person);         (3)

Create a new instance of the domain object.
Set the properties to query.
Create the Example.

You can run the example queries by using repositories. To do so, let your repository interface extend QueryByExampleExecutor<T>. The following listing shows an excerpt from the QueryByExampleExecutor interface:

Example 76. The QueryByExampleExecutor

public interface QueryByExampleExecutor<T> {

  <S extends T> S findOne(Example<S> example);

  <S extends T> Iterable<S> findAll(Example<S> example);

  // … more functionality omitted.
}

Example Matchers

Examples are not limited to default settings. You can specify your own defaults for string matching, null handling, and property-specific settings by using the ExampleMatcher, as shown in the following example:

Example 77. Example matcher with customized matching

Person person = new Person();                          (1)
person.setFirstname("Dave");                           (2)

ExampleMatcher matcher = ExampleMatcher.matching()     (3)
  .withIgnorePaths("lastname")                         (4)
  .withIncludeNullValues()                             (5)
  .withStringMatcher(StringMatcher.ENDING);            (6)

Example<Person> example = Example.of(person, matcher); (7)

Create a new instance of the domain object.
Set properties.
Create an ExampleMatcher to expect all values to match. It is usable at this stage even without further configuration.
Construct a new ExampleMatcher to ignore the lastname property path.
Construct a new ExampleMatcher to ignore the lastname property path and to include null values.
Construct a new ExampleMatcher to ignore the lastname property path, to include null values, and to perform suffix string matching.
Create a new Example based on the domain object and the configured ExampleMatcher.

By default, the ExampleMatcher expects all values set on the probe to match. If you want to get results matching any of the predicates defined implicitly, use ExampleMatcher.matchingAny().

You can specify behavior for individual properties (such as "firstname" and "lastname" or, for nested properties, "address.city"). You can tune it with matching options and case sensitivity, as shown in the following example:

Example 78. Configuring matcher options

ExampleMatcher matcher = ExampleMatcher.matching()
  .withMatcher("firstname", endsWith())
  .withMatcher("lastname", startsWith().ignoreCase());
}

Another way to configure matcher options is to use lambdas (introduced in Java 8). This approach creates a callback that asks the implementor to modify the matcher. You need not return the matcher, because configuration options are held within the matcher instance. The following example shows a matcher that uses lambdas:

Example 79. Configuring matcher options with lambdas

ExampleMatcher matcher = ExampleMatcher.matching()
  .withMatcher("firstname", match -> match.endsWith())
  .withMatcher("firstname", match -> match.startsWith());
}

Queries created by Example use a merged view of the configuration. Default matching settings can be set at the ExampleMatcher level, while individual settings can be applied to particular property paths. Settings that are set on ExampleMatcher are inherited by property path settings unless they are defined explicitly. Settings on a property patch have higher precedence than default settings. The following table describes the scope of the various ExampleMatcher settings:

Table 3. Scope of `ExampleMatcher` settings
Setting	Scope
Null-handling	`ExampleMatcher`
String matching	`ExampleMatcher` and property path
Ignoring properties	Property path
Case sensitivity	`ExampleMatcher` and property path
Value transformation	Property path

Fluent API

QueryByExampleExecutor offers one more method, which we did not mention so far: <S extends T, R> R findBy(Example<S> example, Function<FluentQuery.FetchableFluentQuery<S>, R> queryFunction). As with other methods, it executes a query derived from an Example. However, with the second argument, you can control aspects of that execution that you cannot dynamically control otherwise. You do so by invoking the various methods of the FetchableFluentQuery in the second argument. sortBy lets you specify an ordering for your result. as lets you specify the type to which you want the result to be transformed. project limits the queried attributes. first, firstValue, one, oneValue, all, page, stream, count, and exists define what kind of result you get and how the query behaves when more than the expected number of results are available.

Example 80. Use the fluent API to get the last of potentially many results, ordered by lastname.

Optional<Person> match = repository.findBy(example,
    q -> q
        .sortBy(Sort.by("lastname").descending())
        .first()
);

Query Methods

Spring Data Aerospike supports defining queries by method name in the Repository interface so that the implementation is generated. The format of method names is fairly flexible, comprising a verb and criteria.

Some of the verbs include find, query, read, get, count and delete. For example, findByFirstName, countByLastName etc.

For more details refer to basic SpringData documentation: Query By Example.

Repository Query Keywords

Here are the references to the examples of repository queries:

Repository Interface Example

Below is an example of an interface with several query methods:

public interface PersonRepository extends AerospikeRepository<Person, Long> {
    List<Person> findByLastName(String lastName);
    List<Person> findByLastNameContaining(String lastName);
    List<Person> findByLastNameStartingWith(String lastName);
    List<Person> findByLastNameAndFirstNameContaining(String lastName, String firstName);
    List<Person> findByAgeBetween(long startAge, long endAge);
    Optional<Person> findById(Long id);
}

Simple Property Repository Queries

Keyword Repository query sample Snippet Notes

Keyword	Repository query sample	Snippet	Notes
Is, Equals or no keyword	`findByLastName(String lastName)`	…where x.lastName = ?
Not, IsNot	`findByLastNameNot(String lastName)`	…where x.lastName <> ?
True, isTrue	`findByEnabledTrue()`	…where x.enabled = true
False, isFalse	`findByEnabledFalse()`	…where x.enabled = false
In, IsIn	`findByLastNameIn(Collection<String>)`	…where x.lastName in ?
NotIn, IsNotIn	`findByLastNameNotIn(Collection<String>)`	…where x.lastName not in ?
Null, IsNull	`findByEmailAddressIsNull()`	…where x.emailAddress = null or x.emailAddress does not exist	The same as "does not exist", objects and fields exist in AerospikeDB when their value is not equal to null.
Exists NotNull, IsNotNull	`findByEmailAddressExists()` `findByEmailAddressNotNull()`	…where x.emailAddress != null	"Exists" and "IsNotNull" represent the same functionality and can be used interchangeably, objects and fields exist in AerospikeDB when their value is not equal to null.
LessThan, IsLessThan	`findByAgeLessThan(int age) findByFirstNameLessThan(String string)`	…where x.age < ? …where x.firstName < ?	Strings are compared by order of each byte, assuming they have UTF-8 encoding. See information about ordering.
LessThanEqual, IsLessThanEqual	`findByAgeLessThanEqual(int age) findByFirstNameLessThanEqual(String string)`	…where x.age < = ? …where x.firstName < = ?	Strings are compared by order of each byte, assuming they have UTF-8 encoding. See information about ordering.
GreaterThan, IsGreaterThan	`findByAgeGreaterThan(int age) findByFirstNameGreaterThan(String string)`	…where x.age > ? …where x.firstName > ?	Strings are compared by order of each byte, assuming they have UTF-8 encoding. See information about ordering.
GreaterThanEqual, IsGreaterThanEqual	`findByAgeGreaterThanEqual(int age findByFirstNameGreaterThanEqual(String string)`	…where x.age >= ? …where x.firstName >= ?	Strings are compared by order of each byte, assuming they have UTF-8 encoding. See information about ordering.
Between, IsBetween	`findByAgeBetween(int lowerLimit, int upperLimit) findByFirstNameBetween(String lowerLimit, String upperLimit)`	…where x.age between ? and ? …where x.firstName between ? and ?	Strings are compared by order of each byte, assuming they have UTF-8 encoding. See information about ordering.
Before, IsBefore	`findByDateOfBirthBefore(Date date)`	…where x.dateOfBirth < ?
After, IsAfter	`findByDateOfBirthAfter(Date date)`	…where x.dateOfBirth > ?
StartingWith, IsStartingWith, StartsWith	`findByLastNameStartingWith(String string)`	…where x.lastName like 'abc%'
EndingWith, IsEndingWith, EndsWith	`findByLastNameEndingWith(String string)`	…where x.lastName like '%abc'
Like, IsLike, MatchesRegex	`findByLastNameLike(String lastNameRegex)`	…where x.lastName like ?
Containing, IsContaining, Contains	`findByLastNameContaining(String substring)`	…where x.lastName like '%abc%'
NotContaining, IsNotContaining, NotContains	`findByLastNameNotContaining(String substring)`	…where x.lastName not like '%abc%'
And	`findByLastNameAndFirstName(String lastName, String firstName)`	…where x.lastName = ? and x.firstName = ?
Or	`findByLastNameOrFirstName(String lastName, String firstName)`	…where x.lastName = ? or x.firstName = ?

Is, Equals

or no keyword

findByLastName(String lastName)

…where x.lastName = ?

Not, IsNot

findByLastNameNot(String lastName)

…where x.lastName <> ?

True, isTrue

findByEnabledTrue()

…where x.enabled = true

False, isFalse

findByEnabledFalse()

…where x.enabled = false

In, IsIn

findByLastNameIn(Collection<String>)

…where x.lastName in ?

NotIn, IsNotIn

findByLastNameNotIn(Collection<String>)

…where x.lastName not in ?

Null, IsNull

findByEmailAddressIsNull()

…where x.emailAddress = null or x.emailAddress does not exist

The same as "does not exist", objects and fields exist in AerospikeDB when their value is not equal to null.

Exists

NotNull, IsNotNull

findByEmailAddressExists()

findByEmailAddressNotNull()

…where x.emailAddress != null

"Exists" and "IsNotNull" represent the same functionality and can be used interchangeably, objects and fields exist in AerospikeDB when their value is not equal to null.

LessThan, IsLessThan

findByAgeLessThan(int age)

findByFirstNameLessThan(String string)

…where x.age < ?

…where x.firstName < ?

Strings are compared by order of each byte, assuming they have UTF-8 encoding. See information about ordering.

LessThanEqual, IsLessThanEqual

findByAgeLessThanEqual(int age)

findByFirstNameLessThanEqual(String string)

…where x.age < = ?

…where x.firstName < = ?

Strings are compared by order of each byte, assuming they have UTF-8 encoding. See information about ordering.

GreaterThan, IsGreaterThan

findByAgeGreaterThan(int age)

findByFirstNameGreaterThan(String string)

…where x.age > ?

…where x.firstName > ?

Strings are compared by order of each byte, assuming they have UTF-8 encoding. See information about ordering.

GreaterThanEqual, IsGreaterThanEqual

findByAgeGreaterThanEqual(int age

findByFirstNameGreaterThanEqual(String string)

…where x.age >= ?

…where x.firstName >= ?

Strings are compared by order of each byte, assuming they have UTF-8 encoding. See information about ordering.

Between, IsBetween

findByAgeBetween(int lowerLimit, int upperLimit)

findByFirstNameBetween(String lowerLimit, String upperLimit)

…where x.age between ? and ?

…where x.firstName between ? and ?

Strings are compared by order of each byte, assuming they have UTF-8 encoding. See information about ordering.

Before, IsBefore

findByDateOfBirthBefore(Date date)

…where x.dateOfBirth < ?

After, IsAfter

findByDateOfBirthAfter(Date date)

…where x.dateOfBirth > ?

StartingWith, IsStartingWith, StartsWith

findByLastNameStartingWith(String string)

…where x.lastName like 'abc%'

EndingWith, IsEndingWith, EndsWith

findByLastNameEndingWith(String string)

…where x.lastName like '%abc'

Like, IsLike, MatchesRegex

findByLastNameLike(String lastNameRegex)

…where x.lastName like ?

Containing, IsContaining, Contains

findByLastNameContaining(String substring)

…where x.lastName like '%abc%'

NotContaining, IsNotContaining, NotContains

findByLastNameNotContaining(String substring)

…where x.lastName not like '%abc%'

And

findByLastNameAndFirstName(String lastName, String firstName)

…where x.lastName = ? and x.firstName = ?

findByLastNameOrFirstName(String lastName, String firstName)

…where x.lastName = ? or x.firstName = ?

Collection Repository Queries

Keyword Repository query sample Snippet Notes

Keyword	Repository query sample	Snippet	Notes
Is, Equals or no keyword	`findByStringList(Collection<String> stringList)`	…where x.stringList = ?
Not, IsNot	`findByStringListNot(Collection<String> stringList)`	…where x.stringList <> ?
In	`findByStringListIn(Collection<Collection<String>>)`	…where x.stringList in ?	Find records where `stringList` bin value equals one of the collections in the given argument.
Not In	`findByStringListNotIn(Collection<Collection<String>>)`	…where x.stringList not in ?	Find records where `stringList` bin value is not equal to any of the collections in the given argument.
Null, IsNull	`findByStringListIsNull()`	…where x.stringList = null or x.stringList does not exist	The same as "does not exist", objects and fields exist in AerospikeDB when their value is not equal to null.
Exists NotNull, IsNotNull	`findByStringListExists()` `findByStringListNotNull()`	…where x.stringList != null	("Exists" and "IsNotNull" represent the same functionality and can be used interchangeably, objects and fields exist in AerospikeDB when their value is not equal to null).
LessThan, IsLessThan	`findByStringListLessThan(Collection<String> stringList)`	…where x.stringList < ?	Find records where `stringList` bin value has fewer elements or has a corresponding element lower in ordering than in the given argument. See information about ordering.
LessThanEqual, IsLessThanEqual	`findByStringListLessThanEqual(Collection<String> stringList)`	…where x.stringList < = ?	Find records where `stringList` bin value has smaller or the same amount of elements or has each corresponding element lower in ordering or the same as in the given argument. See information about ordering.
GreaterThan, IsGreaterThan	`findByStringListGreaterThan(Collection<String> stringList)`	…where x.stringList > ?	Find records where `stringList` bin value has more elements or has a corresponding element higher in ordering than in the given argument. See information about ordering.
GreaterThanEqual, IsGreaterThanEqual	`findByStringListGreaterThanEqual(Collection<String> stringList)`	…where x.stringList >= ?	Find records where `stringList` bin value has larger or the same amount of elements or has each corresponding element higher in ordering or the same as in the given argument. See information about ordering.
Between, IsBetween	`findByStringListBetween(Collection<String> lowerLimit, Collection<String> upperLimit)`	…where x.stringList between ? and ?	Find records where `stringList` bin value is in the range between the given arguments. See information about ordering.
Containing, IsContaining, Contains	`findByStringListContaining(String string)`	…where x.stringList contains ?
NotContaining, IsNotContaining, NotContains	`findByStringListNotContaining(String string)`	…where x.stringList not contains ?
And	`findByStringListAndIntList(Collection<String> stringList, Collection<Integer> intList)`	…where x.stringList = ? and x.intList = ?
Or	`findByStringListOrIntList(Collection<String> stringList, Collection<Integer> intList)`	…where x.stringList = ? or x.intList = ?

Is, Equals

or no keyword

findByStringList(Collection<String> stringList)

…where x.stringList = ?

Not, IsNot

findByStringListNot(Collection<String> stringList)

…where x.stringList <> ?

findByStringListIn(Collection<Collection<String>>)

…where x.stringList in ?

Find records where stringList bin value equals one of the collections in the given argument.

Not In

findByStringListNotIn(Collection<Collection<String>>)

…where x.stringList not in ?

Find records where stringList bin value is not equal to any of the collections in the given argument.

Null, IsNull

findByStringListIsNull()

…where x.stringList = null or x.stringList does not exist

The same as "does not exist", objects and fields exist in AerospikeDB when their value is not equal to null.

Exists

NotNull, IsNotNull

findByStringListExists()

findByStringListNotNull()

…where x.stringList != null

("Exists" and "IsNotNull" represent the same functionality and can be used interchangeably, objects and fields exist in AerospikeDB when their value is not equal to null).

LessThan, IsLessThan

findByStringListLessThan(Collection<String> stringList)

…where x.stringList < ?

Find records where stringList bin value has fewer elements or has a corresponding element lower in ordering than in the given argument. See information about ordering.

LessThanEqual, IsLessThanEqual

findByStringListLessThanEqual(Collection<String> stringList)

…where x.stringList < = ?

Find records where stringList bin value has smaller or the same amount of elements or has each corresponding element lower in ordering or the same as in the given argument. See information about ordering.

GreaterThan, IsGreaterThan

findByStringListGreaterThan(Collection<String> stringList)

…where x.stringList > ?

Find records where stringList bin value has more elements or has a corresponding element higher in ordering than in the given argument. See information about ordering.

GreaterThanEqual, IsGreaterThanEqual

findByStringListGreaterThanEqual(Collection<String> stringList)

…where x.stringList >= ?

Find records where stringList bin value has larger or the same amount of elements or has each corresponding element higher in ordering or the same as in the given argument. See information about ordering.

Between, IsBetween

findByStringListBetween(Collection<String> lowerLimit, Collection<String> upperLimit)

…where x.stringList between ? and ?

Find records where stringList bin value is in the range between the given arguments. See information about ordering.

Containing, IsContaining, Contains

findByStringListContaining(String string)

…where x.stringList contains ?

NotContaining, IsNotContaining, NotContains

findByStringListNotContaining(String string)

…where x.stringList not contains ?

And

findByStringListAndIntList(Collection<String> stringList, Collection<Integer> intList)

…where x.stringList = ? and x.intList = ?

findByStringListOrIntList(Collection<String> stringList, Collection<Integer> intList)

…where x.stringList = ? or x.intList = ?

Map Repository Queries

Keyword Repository query sample Snippet Notes

Keyword	Repository query sample	Snippet	Notes
Is, Equals or no keyword	`findByStringMap(Map<String, String> stringMap)`	…where x.stringMap = ?
Not, IsNot	`findByStringMapNot(Map<String, String> stringMap)`	…where x.stringMap <> ?
In	`findByStringMapIn(Collection<Map<String, String>>)`	…where x.stringMap in ?	Find records where `stringMap` bin value equals one of the maps in the given argument.
Not In	`findByStringMapNotIn(Collection<Map<String, String>>)`	…where x.stringMap not in ?	Find records where `stringMap` bin value is not equal to any of the maps in the given argument.
Null, IsNull	`findByStringMapIsNull()`	…where x.stringMap = null or x.stringMap does not exist	The same as "does not exist", objects and fields exist in AerospikeDB when their value is not equal to null.
Exists NotNull, IsNotNull	`findByStringMapExists()` `findByStringMapNotNull()`	…where x.stringMap != null	"Exists" and "IsNotNull" represent the same functionality and can be used interchangeably, objects and fields exist when their value is not equal to null.
LessThan, IsLessThan	`findByStringMapLessThan(Map<String, String> stringMap)`	…where x.stringMap < ?	Find records where `stringMap` bin value has fewer elements or has a corresponding element lower in ordering than in the given argument. See information about ordering.
LessThanEqual, IsLessThanEqual	`findByStringMapLessThanEqual(Map<String, String> stringMap)`	…where x.stringMap < = ?	Find records where `stringMap` bin value has smaller or the same amount of elements or has each corresponding element lower in ordering or the same as in the given argument. See information about ordering.
GreaterThan, IsGreaterThan	`findByStringMapGreaterThan(Map<String, String> stringMap)`	…where x.stringMap > ?	Find records where `stringMap` bin value has more elements or has a corresponding element higher in ordering than in the given argument. See information about ordering.
GreaterThanEqual, IsGreaterThanEqual	`findByStringMapGreaterThanEqual(Map<String, String> stringMap)`	…where x.stringMap >= ?	Find records where `stringMap` bin value has larger or the same amount of elements or has each corresponding element higher in ordering or the same as in the given argument. See information about ordering.
Between, IsBetween	`findByStringMapBetween(Map<String, String> lowerLimit, Map<String, String> upperLimit)`	…where x.stringMap between ? and ?	Find records where `stringMap` bin value is in the range between the given arguments. See information about ordering.
Containing, IsContaining, Contains	`findByStringMapContaining(AerospikeQueryCriterion criterion, String string) findByStringMapContaining(AerospikeQueryCriterion criterionPair, String string, String value)`	…where x.stringMap contains ?	Find records where `stringMap` bin value (which is a Map) contains key "key1": `findByStringMapContaining(KEY, "key1")` Find records where `stringMap` bin value (which is a Map) contains value "value1": `findByStringMapContaining(VALUE, "value1")` Find records where `stringMap` bin value (which is a Map) contains key "key1" with the value "value1": `findByStringMapContaining(KEY_VALUE_PAIR, "key1", "value1")`
NotContaining, IsNotContaining, NotContains	`findByStringNameNotContaining(AerospikeQueryCriterion criterion, String string)`	…where x.stringMap not contains ?	`findByStringMapNotContaining(KEY, "key1")` `findByStringMapNotContaining(VALUE, "value1")` `findByStringMapNotContaining(KEY_VALUE_PAIR, "key1", "value1")`
And	`findByStringMapAndIntMap(Map<String, String> stringMap, Map<Integer, Integer> intMap)`	…where x.stringMap = ? and x.intMap = ?
Or	`findByStringMapOrIntMap(Map<String, String> stringMap, Map<Integer, Integer> intList)`	…where x.stringMap = ? or x.intMap = ?

Is, Equals

or no keyword

findByStringMap(Map<String, String> stringMap)

…where x.stringMap = ?

Not, IsNot

findByStringMapNot(Map<String, String> stringMap)

…where x.stringMap <> ?

findByStringMapIn(Collection<Map<String, String>>)

…where x.stringMap in ?

Find records where stringMap bin value equals one of the maps in the given argument.

Not In

findByStringMapNotIn(Collection<Map<String, String>>)

…where x.stringMap not in ?

Find records where stringMap bin value is not equal to any of the maps in the given argument.

Null, IsNull

findByStringMapIsNull()

…where x.stringMap = null or x.stringMap does not exist

The same as "does not exist", objects and fields exist in AerospikeDB when their value is not equal to null.

Exists

NotNull, IsNotNull

findByStringMapExists()

findByStringMapNotNull()

…where x.stringMap != null

"Exists" and "IsNotNull" represent the same functionality and can be used interchangeably, objects and fields exist when their value is not equal to null.

LessThan, IsLessThan

findByStringMapLessThan(Map<String, String> stringMap)

…where x.stringMap < ?

Find records where stringMap bin value has fewer elements or has a corresponding element lower in ordering than in the given argument. See information about ordering.

LessThanEqual, IsLessThanEqual

findByStringMapLessThanEqual(Map<String, String> stringMap)

…where x.stringMap < = ?

Find records where stringMap bin value has smaller or the same amount of elements or has each corresponding element lower in ordering or the same as in the given argument. See information about ordering.

GreaterThan, IsGreaterThan

findByStringMapGreaterThan(Map<String, String> stringMap)

…where x.stringMap > ?

Find records where stringMap bin value has more elements or has a corresponding element higher in ordering than in the given argument. See information about ordering.

GreaterThanEqual, IsGreaterThanEqual

findByStringMapGreaterThanEqual(Map<String, String> stringMap)

…where x.stringMap >= ?

Find records where stringMap bin value has larger or the same amount of elements or has each corresponding element higher in ordering or the same as in the given argument. See information about ordering.

Between, IsBetween

findByStringMapBetween(Map<String, String> lowerLimit, Map<String, String> upperLimit)

…where x.stringMap between ? and ?

Find records where stringMap bin value is in the range between the given arguments. See information about ordering.

Containing, IsContaining, Contains

findByStringMapContaining(AerospikeQueryCriterion criterion, String string)

findByStringMapContaining(AerospikeQueryCriterion criterionPair, String string, String value)

…where x.stringMap contains ?

Find records where stringMap bin value (which is a Map) contains key "key1":

findByStringMapContaining(KEY, "key1")

Find records where stringMap bin value (which is a Map) contains value "value1":

findByStringMapContaining(VALUE, "value1")

Find records where stringMap bin value (which is a Map) contains key "key1" with the value "value1":

findByStringMapContaining(KEY_VALUE_PAIR, "key1", "value1")

NotContaining, IsNotContaining, NotContains

findByStringNameNotContaining(AerospikeQueryCriterion criterion, String string)

…where x.stringMap not contains ?

findByStringMapNotContaining(KEY, "key1")

findByStringMapNotContaining(VALUE, "value1")

findByStringMapNotContaining(KEY_VALUE_PAIR, "key1", "value1")

And

findByStringMapAndIntMap(Map<String, String> stringMap, Map<Integer, Integer> intMap)

…where x.stringMap = ? and x.intMap = ?

findByStringMapOrIntMap(Map<String, String> stringMap, Map<Integer, Integer> intList)

…where x.stringMap = ? or x.intMap = ?

POJO Repository Queries

Keyword Repository query sample Snippet Notes

Keyword	Repository query sample	Snippet	Notes
Is, Equals or no keyword	`findByAddress(Address address)`	…where x.address = ?
Not, IsNot	`findByAddressNot(Address address)`	…where x.address <> ?
In	`findByAddressIn(Collection<Address>)`	…where x.address in ?	Find records where `address` bin value equals one of the Address objects in the given argument.
Not In	`findByAddressNotIn(Collection<Address>)`	…where x.address not in ?	Find records where `address` bin value is not equal to any of the Address objects in the given argument.
Null, IsNull	`findByAddressIsNull()`	…where x.address = null or x.address does not exist	The same as "does not exist", objects and fields exist in AerospikeDB when their value is not equal to null.
Exists NotNull, IsNotNull	`findByAddressExists()` `findByAddressNotNull()`	…where x.address != null	"Exists" and "IsNotNull" represent the same functionality and can be used interchangeably, objects and fields exist when their value is not equal to null.
LessThan, IsLessThan	`findByAddressLessThan(Address address)`	…where x.address < ?	Find records where `address` bin value (POJOs are stored in AerospikeDB as maps) has fewer elements or has a corresponding element lower in ordering than in the given argument. See information about ordering.
LessThanEqual, IsLessThanEqual	`findByAddressLessThanEqual(Address address)`	…where x.address < = ?	Find records where `address` bin value (POJOs are stored in AerospikeDB as maps) has smaller or the same amount of elements or has each corresponding element lower in ordering or the same as in the given argument. See information about ordering.
GreaterThan, IsGreaterThan	`findByAddressGreaterThan(Address address)`	…where x.address > ?	Find records where `address` bin value (POJOs are stored in AerospikeDB as maps) has more elements or has a corresponding element higher in ordering than in the given argument. See information about ordering.
GreaterThanEqual, IsGreaterThanEqual	`findByAddressGreaterThanEqual(Address address)`	…where x.address >= ?	Find records where `address` bin value (POJOs are stored in AerospikeDB as maps) has larger or the same amount of elements or has each corresponding element higher in ordering or the same as in the given argument. See information about ordering.
Between, IsBetween	`findByAddressBetween(Address lowerLimit, Address upperLimit)`	…where x.address between ? and ?	Find records where `address` bin value (POJOs are stored in AerospikeDB as maps) is in the range between the given arguments. See information about ordering.
And	`findByAddressAndFriend(Address address, Person friend)`	…where x.address = ? and x.friend = ?
Or	`findByAddressOrFriend(Address address, Person friend)`	…where x.address = ? or x.friend = ?

Is, Equals

or no keyword

findByAddress(Address address)

…where x.address = ?

Not, IsNot

findByAddressNot(Address address)

…where x.address <> ?

findByAddressIn(Collection<Address>)

…where x.address in ?

Find records where address bin value equals one of the Address objects in the given argument.

Not In

findByAddressNotIn(Collection<Address>)

…where x.address not in ?

Find records where address bin value is not equal to any of the Address objects in the given argument.

Null, IsNull

findByAddressIsNull()

…where x.address = null or x.address does not exist

The same as "does not exist", objects and fields exist in AerospikeDB when their value is not equal to null.

Exists

NotNull, IsNotNull

findByAddressExists()

findByAddressNotNull()

…where x.address != null

"Exists" and "IsNotNull" represent the same functionality and can be used interchangeably, objects and fields exist when their value is not equal to null.

LessThan, IsLessThan

findByAddressLessThan(Address address)

…where x.address < ?

Find records where address bin value (POJOs are stored in AerospikeDB as maps) has fewer elements or has a corresponding element lower in ordering than in the given argument. See information about ordering.

LessThanEqual, IsLessThanEqual

findByAddressLessThanEqual(Address address)

…where x.address < = ?

Find records where address bin value (POJOs are stored in AerospikeDB as maps) has smaller or the same amount of elements or has each corresponding element lower in ordering or the same as in the given argument. See information about ordering.

GreaterThan, IsGreaterThan

findByAddressGreaterThan(Address address)

…where x.address > ?

Find records where address bin value (POJOs are stored in AerospikeDB as maps) has more elements or has a corresponding element higher in ordering than in the given argument. See information about ordering.

GreaterThanEqual, IsGreaterThanEqual

findByAddressGreaterThanEqual(Address address)

…where x.address >= ?

Find records where address bin value (POJOs are stored in AerospikeDB as maps) has larger or the same amount of elements or has each corresponding element higher in ordering or the same as in the given argument. See information about ordering.

Between, IsBetween

findByAddressBetween(Address lowerLimit, Address upperLimit)

…where x.address between ? and ?

Find records where address bin value (POJOs are stored in AerospikeDB as maps) is in the range between the given arguments. See information about ordering.

And

findByAddressAndFriend(Address address, Person friend)

…where x.address = ? and x.friend = ?

findByAddressOrFriend(Address address, Person friend)

…where x.address = ? or x.friend = ?

Id Repository Queries

Keyword Repository query sample Snippet Notes

Keyword	Repository query sample	Snippet	Notes
no keyword	`findById(String id)`	…where x.PK = ?
And	`findByIdAndFirstName(String id, String firstName)`	…where x.PK = ? and x.firstName = ?

no keyword

findById(String id)

…where x.PK = ?

And

findByIdAndFirstName(String id, String firstName)

…where x.PK = ? and x.firstName = ?

Query Modification

Query Modifiers

Keyword	Sample	Snippet
IgnoreCase	findByLastNameIgnoreCase	…where UPPER(x.lastName) = UPPER(?)
OrderBy	findByLastNameOrderByFirstNameDesc	…where x.lastName = ? order by x.firstName desc

Keyword

Sample

Snippet

IgnoreCase

findByLastNameIgnoreCase

…where UPPER(x.lastName) = UPPER(?)

OrderBy

findByLastNameOrderByFirstNameDesc

…where x.lastName = ? order by x.firstName desc

Limiting Query Results

Keyword	Sample	Snippet
First	findFirstByAge	select top 1 where x.age = ?
First N	findFirst3ByAge	select top 3 where x.age = ?
Top	findTopByLastNameStartingWith	select top 1 where x.lastName like 'abc%' = ?
Top N	findTop4ByLastNameStartingWith	select top 4 where x.lastName like 'abc%'
Distinct	findDistinctByFirstNameContaining	select distinct … where x.firstName like 'abc%'

Keyword

Sample

Snippet

First

findFirstByAge

select top 1 where x.age = ?

First N

findFirst3ByAge

select top 3 where x.age = ?

Top

findTopByLastNameStartingWith

select top 1 where x.lastName like 'abc%' = ?

Top N

findTop4ByLastNameStartingWith

select top 4 where x.lastName like 'abc%'

Distinct

findDistinctByFirstNameContaining

select distinct … where x.firstName like 'abc%'

Find Using Query

User can perform a custom Query for finding matching entities in the Aerospike database. A Query can be created using a Qualifier which represents an expression. It may contain other qualifiers and combine them using either AND or OR.

Qualifier can be created for regular bins, metadata and ids (primary keys). Below is an example of different variations:

    // creating an expression "firsName is equal to John"
    Qualifier firstNameEqJohn = Qualifier.builder()
        .setField("firstName")
        .setFilterOperation(FilterOperation.EQ)
        .setValue1(Value.get("John"))
        .build();
    result = repository.findUsingQuery(new Query(firstNameEqJohn));
    assertThat(result).containsOnly(john);

    // creating an expression "primary key is equal to person's id"
    Qualifier keyEqJohnsId = Qualifier.idEquals(john.getId());
    result = repository.findUsingQuery(new Query(keyEqJohnsId));
    assertThat(result).containsOnly(john);

    // creating an expression "since_update_time metadata value is less than 50 seconds"
    Qualifier sinceUpdateTimeLt50Seconds = Qualifier.metadataBuilder()
        .setMetadataField(SINCE_UPDATE_TIME)
        .setFilterOperation(FilterOperation.LT)
        .setValue1AsObj(50000L)
        .build();
    result = repository.findUsingQuery(new Query(sinceUpdateTimeLt50Seconds));
    assertThat(result).contains(john);

    // expressions are combined using AND
    result = repository.findUsingQuery(new Query(Qualifier.and(firstNameEqJohn, keyEqJohnsId, sinceUpdateTimeLt50Seconds)));
    assertThat(result).containsOnly(john);

Object Mapping Fundamentals

This section covers the fundamentals of Spring Data object mapping, object creation, field and property access, mutability and immutability. Note, that this section only applies to Spring Data modules that do not use the object mapping of the underlying data store (like JPA). Also be sure to consult the store-specific sections for store-specific object mapping, like indexes, customizing column or field names or the like.

Core responsibility of the Spring Data object mapping is to create instances of domain objects and map the store-native data structures onto those. This means we need two fundamental steps:

Instance creation by using one of the constructors exposed.
Instance population to materialize all exposed properties.

Object creation

Spring Data automatically tries to detect a persistent entity’s constructor to be used to materialize objects of that type. The resolution algorithm works as follows:

If there is a single static factory method annotated with @PersistenceCreator then it is used.
If there is a single constructor, it is used.
If there are multiple constructors and exactly one is annotated with @PersistenceCreator, it is used.
If the type is a Java Record the canonical constructor is used.
If there’s a no-argument constructor, it is used. Other constructors will be ignored.

The value resolution assumes constructor/factory method argument names to match the property names of the entity, i.e. the resolution will be performed as if the property was to be populated, including all customizations in mapping (different datastore column or field name etc.). This also requires either parameter names information available in the class file or an @ConstructorProperties annotation being present on the constructor.

The value resolution can be customized by using Spring Framework’s @Value value annotation using a store-specific SpEL expression. Please consult the section on store specific mappings for further details.

Object creation internals

To avoid the overhead of reflection, Spring Data object creation uses a factory class generated at runtime by default, which will call the domain classes constructor directly. I.e. for this example type:

class Person {
  Person(String firstname, String lastname) { … }
}

we will create a factory class semantically equivalent to this one at runtime:

class PersonObjectInstantiator implements ObjectInstantiator {

  Object newInstance(Object... args) {
    return new Person((String) args[0], (String) args[1]);
  }
}

This gives us a roundabout 10% performance boost over reflection. For the domain class to be eligible for such optimization, it needs to adhere to a set of constraints:

it must not be a private class
it must not be a non-static inner class
it must not be a CGLib proxy class
the constructor to be used by Spring Data must not be private

If any of these criteria match, Spring Data will fall back to entity instantiation via reflection.

Property population

Once an instance of the entity has been created, Spring Data populates all remaining persistent properties of that class. Unless already populated by the entity’s constructor (i.e. consumed through its constructor argument list), the identifier property will be populated first to allow the resolution of cyclic object references. After that, all non-transient properties that have not already been populated by the constructor are set on the entity instance. For that we use the following algorithm:

If the property is immutable but exposes a with… method (see below), we use the with… method to create a new entity instance with the new property value.
If property access (i.e. access through getters and setters) is defined, we’re invoking the setter method.
If the property is mutable we set the field directly.
If the property is immutable we’re using the constructor to be used by persistence operations (see Object creation) to create a copy of the instance.
By default, we set the field value directly.

Property population internals

Similarly to our optimizations in object construction we also use Spring Data runtime generated accessor classes to interact with the entity instance.

class Person {

  private final Long id;
  private String firstname;
  private @AccessType(Type.PROPERTY) String lastname;

  Person() {
    this.id = null;
  }

  Person(Long id, String firstname, String lastname) {
    // Field assignments
  }

  Person withId(Long id) {
    return new Person(id, this.firstname, this.lastame);
  }

  void setLastname(String lastname) {
    this.lastname = lastname;
  }
}

Example 81. A generated Property Accessor

class PersonPropertyAccessor implements PersistentPropertyAccessor {

  private static final MethodHandle firstname;              (2)

  private Person person;                                    (1)

  public void setProperty(PersistentProperty property, Object value) {

    String name = property.getName();

    if ("firstname".equals(name)) {
      firstname.invoke(person, (String) value);             (2)
    } else if ("id".equals(name)) {
      this.person = person.withId((Long) value);            (3)
    } else if ("lastname".equals(name)) {
      this.person.setLastname((String) value);              (4)
    }
  }
}

PropertyAccessor’s hold a mutable instance of the underlying object. This is, to enable mutations of otherwise immutable properties.
By default, Spring Data uses field-access to read and write property values. As per visibility rules of private fields, MethodHandles are used to interact with fields.
The class exposes a withId(…) method that’s used to set the identifier, e.g. when an instance is inserted into the datastore and an identifier has been generated. Calling withId(…) creates a new Person object. All subsequent mutations will take place in the new instance leaving the previous untouched.
Using property-access allows direct method invocations without using MethodHandles.

This gives us a roundabout 25% performance boost over reflection. For the domain class to be eligible for such optimization, it needs to adhere to a set of constraints:

Types must not reside in the default or under the java package.
Types and their constructors must be public
Types that are inner classes must be static.
The used Java Runtime must allow for declaring classes in the originating ClassLoader. Java 9 and newer impose certain limitations.

By default, Spring Data attempts to use generated property accessors and falls back to reflection-based ones if a limitation is detected.

Let’s have a look at the following entity:

Example 82. A sample entity

class Person {

  private final @Id Long id;                                                (1)
  private final String firstname, lastname;                                 (2)
  private final LocalDate birthday;
  private final int age;                                                    (3)

  private String comment;                                                   (4)
  private @AccessType(Type.PROPERTY) String remarks;                        (5)

  static Person of(String firstname, String lastname, LocalDate birthday) { (6)

    return new Person(null, firstname, lastname, birthday,
      Period.between(birthday, LocalDate.now()).getYears());
  }

  Person(Long id, String firstname, String lastname, LocalDate birthday, int age) { (6)

    this.id = id;
    this.firstname = firstname;
    this.lastname = lastname;
    this.birthday = birthday;
    this.age = age;
  }

  Person withId(Long id) {                                                  (1)
    return new Person(id, this.firstname, this.lastname, this.birthday, this.age);
  }

  void setRemarks(String remarks) {                                         (5)
    this.remarks = remarks;
  }
}

The identifier property is final but set to null in the constructor. The class exposes a withId(…) method that’s used to set the identifier, e.g. when an instance is inserted into the datastore and an identifier has been generated. The original Person instance stays unchanged as a new one is created. The same pattern is usually applied for other properties that are store managed but might have to be changed for persistence operations. The wither method is optional as the persistence constructor (see 6) is effectively a copy constructor and setting the property will be translated into creating a fresh instance with the new identifier value applied.
The firstname and lastname properties are ordinary immutable properties potentially exposed through getters.
The age property is an immutable but derived one from the birthday property. With the design shown, the database value will trump the defaulting as Spring Data uses the only declared constructor. Even if the intent is that the calculation should be preferred, it’s important that this constructor also takes age as parameter (to potentially ignore it) as otherwise the property population step will attempt to set the age field and fail due to it being immutable and no with… method being present.
The comment property is mutable and is populated by setting its field directly.
The remarks property is mutable and is populated by invoking the setter method.
The class exposes a factory method and a constructor for object creation. The core idea here is to use factory methods instead of additional constructors to avoid the need for constructor disambiguation through @PersistenceCreator. Instead, defaulting of properties is handled within the factory method. If you want Spring Data to use the factory method for object instantiation, annotate it with @PersistenceCreator.

General recommendations

Try to stick to immutable objects — Immutable objects are straightforward to create as materializing an object is then a matter of calling its constructor only. Also, this avoids your domain objects to be littered with setter methods that allow client code to manipulate the objects state. If you need those, prefer to make them package protected so that they can only be invoked by a limited amount of co-located types. Constructor-only materialization is up to 30% faster than properties population.
Provide an all-args constructor — Even if you cannot or don’t want to model your entities as immutable values, there’s still value in providing a constructor that takes all properties of the entity as arguments, including the mutable ones, as this allows the object mapping to skip the property population for optimal performance.
Use factory methods instead of overloaded constructors to avoid @PersistenceCreator — With an all-argument constructor needed for optimal performance, we usually want to expose more application use case specific constructors that omit things like auto-generated identifiers etc. It’s an established pattern to rather use static factory methods to expose these variants of the all-args constructor.
Make sure you adhere to the constraints that allow the generated instantiator and property accessor classes to be used —
For identifiers to be generated, still use a final field in combination with an all-arguments persistence constructor (preferred) or a with… method —
Use Lombok to avoid boilerplate code — As persistence operations usually require a constructor taking all arguments, their declaration becomes a tedious repetition of boilerplate parameter to field assignments that can best be avoided by using Lombok’s @AllArgsConstructor.

Overriding Properties

Java’s allows a flexible design of domain classes where a subclass could define a property that is already declared with the same name in its superclass. Consider the following example:

public class SuperType {

   private CharSequence field;

   public SuperType(CharSequence field) {
      this.field = field;
   }

   public CharSequence getField() {
      return this.field;
   }

   public void setField(CharSequence field) {
      this.field = field;
   }
}

public class SubType extends SuperType {

   private String field;

   public SubType(String field) {
      super(field);
      this.field = field;
   }

   @Override
   public String getField() {
      return this.field;
   }

   public void setField(String field) {
      this.field = field;

      // optional
      super.setField(field);
   }
}

Both classes define a field using assignable types. SubType however shadows SuperType.field. Depending on the class design, using the constructor could be the only default approach to set SuperType.field. Alternatively, calling super.setField(…) in the setter could set the field in SuperType. All these mechanisms create conflicts to some degree because the properties share the same name yet might represent two distinct values. Spring Data skips super-type properties if types are not assignable. That is, the type of the overridden property must be assignable to its super-type property type to be registered as override, otherwise the super-type property is considered transient. We generally recommend using distinct property names.

Spring Data modules generally support overridden properties holding different values. From a programming model perspective there are a few things to consider:

Which property should be persisted (default to all declared properties)? You can exclude properties by annotating these with @Transient.
How to represent properties in your data store? Using the same field/column name for different values typically leads to corrupt data so you should annotate least one of the properties using an explicit field/column name.
Using @AccessType(PROPERTY) cannot be used as the super-property cannot be generally set without making any further assumptions of the setter implementation.

Kotlin support

Spring Data adapts specifics of Kotlin to allow object creation and mutation.

Kotlin object creation

Kotlin classes are supported to be instantiated, all classes are immutable by default and require explicit property declarations to define mutable properties.

Spring Data automatically tries to detect a persistent entity’s constructor to be used to materialize objects of that type. The resolution algorithm works as follows:

If there is a constructor that is annotated with @PersistenceCreator, it is used.
If the type is a Kotlin data cass the primary constructor is used.
If there is a single static factory method annotated with @PersistenceCreator then it is used.
If there is a single constructor, it is used.
If there are multiple constructors and exactly one is annotated with @PersistenceCreator, it is used.
If the type is a Java Record the canonical constructor is used.
If there’s a no-argument constructor, it is used. Other constructors will be ignored.

Consider the following data class Person:

data class Person(val id: String, val name: String)

The class above compiles to a typical class with an explicit constructor.We can customize this class by adding another constructor and annotate it with @PersistenceCreator to indicate a constructor preference:

data class Person(var id: String, val name: String) {

    @PersistenceCreator
    constructor(id: String) : this(id, "unknown")
}

Kotlin supports parameter optionality by allowing default values to be used if a parameter is not provided. When Spring Data detects a constructor with parameter defaulting, then it leaves these parameters absent if the data store does not provide a value (or simply returns null) so Kotlin can apply parameter defaulting.Consider the following class that applies parameter defaulting for name

data class Person(var id: String, val name: String = "unknown")

Every time the name parameter is either not part of the result or its value is null, then the name defaults to unknown.

Property population of Kotlin data classes

In Kotlin, all classes are immutable by default and require explicit property declarations to define mutable properties. Consider the following data class Person:

data class Person(val id: String, val name: String)

This class is effectively immutable. It allows creating new instances as Kotlin generates a copy(…) method that creates new object instances copying all property values from the existing object and applying property values provided as arguments to the method.

Kotlin Overriding Properties

Kotlin allows declaring property overrides to alter properties in subclasses.

open class SuperType(open var field: Int)

class SubType(override var field: Int = 1) :
	SuperType(field) {
}

Such an arrangement renders two properties with the name field. Kotlin generates property accessors (getters and setters) for each property in each class. Effectively, the code looks like as follows:

public class SuperType {

   private int field;

   public SuperType(int field) {
      this.field = field;
   }

   public int getField() {
      return this.field;
   }

   public void setField(int field) {
      this.field = field;
   }
}

public final class SubType extends SuperType {

   private int field;

   public SubType(int field) {
      super(field);
      this.field = field;
   }

   public int getField() {
      return this.field;
   }

   public void setField(int field) {
      this.field = field;
   }
}

Getters and setters on SubType set only SubType.field and not SuperType.field. In such an arrangement, using the constructor is the only default approach to set SuperType.field. Adding a method to SubType to set SuperType.field via this.SuperType.field = … is possible but falls outside supported conventions. Property overrides create conflicts to some degree because the properties share the same name yet might represent two distinct values. We generally recommend using distinct property names.

Spring Data modules generally support overridden properties holding different values. From a programming model perspective there are a few things to consider:

Which property should be persisted (default to all declared properties)? You can exclude properties by annotating these with @Transient.
How to represent properties in your data store? Using the same field/column name for different values typically leads to corrupt data so you should annotate least one of the properties using an explicit field/column name.
Using @AccessType(PROPERTY) cannot be used as the super-property cannot be set.

Aerospike Object Mapping

Rich mapping support is provided by the AerospikeMappingConverter. AerospikeMappingConverter has a rich metadata model that provides a full feature set of functionality to map domain objects to Aerospike clusters and objects.The mapping metadata model is populated using annotations on your domain objects. However, the infrastructure is not limited to using annotations as the only source of metadata information. The AerospikeMappingConverter also allows you to map objects without providing any additional metadata, by following a set of conventions.

In this section, we will describe the features of the AerospikeMappingConverter, how to use conventions for mapping objects to documents and how to override those conventions with annotation-based mapping metadata.

For more details refer to SpringData documentation: Object Mapping.

Convention Based Mapping

AerospikeMappingConverter has a few conventions for mapping objects to documents when no additional mapping metadata is provided. The conventions are:

How the 'id' Field Is Handled in the Mapping Layer

Aerospike DB requires that you have an id field for all objects. The id field can be of any primitive type as well as String or byte[].

The following table outlines the requirements for the id field:

Table 4. Examples for the translation of '_id'-field definitions
Field definition	Description
`String` id	A field named 'id' without an annotation
`@Field` `String` id	A field annotated with `@Id` (`org.springframework.data.annotation.Id`)

The following description outlines what type of conversion, if any, will be done on the property mapped to the id document field:

By default, the type of the field annotated with @id is turned into a String to be stored in Aerospike database. If the original type cannot be persisted (see keepOriginalKeyTypes for details), it must be convertible to String and will be stored in the database as such, then converted back to the original type when the object is read. This is transparent to the application but needs to be considered if using external tools like AQL to view the data.
If no field named "id" is present in the Java class then an implicit '_id' file will be generated by the driver but not mapped to a property or field of the Java class.

When querying and updating AerospikeTemplate will use the converter to handle conversions of the Query and Update objects that correspond to the above rules for saving documents so field names and types used in your queries will be able to match what is in your domain classes.

Mapping Configuration

Unless explicitly configured, an instance of AerospikeMappingConverter is created by default when creating a AerospikeTemplate. You can create your own instance of the MappingAerospikeConverter so as to tell it where to scan the classpath at the startup of your domain classes in order to extract metadata and construct indexes. Also, to have more control over the conversion process (if needed), you can register converters to use for mapping specific classes to and from the database.

Note	AbstractAerospikeConfiguration will create an AerospikeTemplate instance and register with the container under the name 'AerospikeTemplate'.

Mapping Annotation Overview

The MappingAerospikeConverter can use metadata to drive the mapping of objects to documents. An overview of the annotations is provided below

@Id - applied at the field level to mark the field used for identity purposes.
@Field - applied at the field level, describes the name of the field as it will be represented in the AerospikeDB BSON document thus allowing the name to be different from the field name of the class.

The mapping metadata infrastructure is defined in a separate spring-data-commons project that is technology-agnostic. Specific subclasses are used in the AerospikeDB support to support annotation-based metadata. Other strategies are also possible to put in place if there is demand.

Here is an example of a more complex mapping.

public class Person<T extends Address> {

  @Id
  private String id;

  private Integer ssn;

  @Field("fName")
  private String firstName;

  private String lastName;

  private Integer age;

  private Integer accountTotal;

  private List<Account> accounts;

  private T address;


  public Person(Integer ssn) {
    this.ssn = ssn;
  }

  public Person(Integer ssn, String firstName, String lastName, Integer age, T address) {
    this.ssn = ssn;
    this.firstName = firstName;
    this.lastName = lastName;
    this.age = age;
    this.address = address;
  }

  public String getId() {
    return id;
  }

  // no setter for Id.  (getter is only exposed for some unit testing)

  public Integer getSsn() {
    return ssn;
  }

// other getters/setters omitted
}

Aerospike Template

Aerospike Template provides a set of features for interacting with the database. It allows lower-level access than a Repository and also serves as the foundation for repositories.

Template is the central support class for Aerospike database operations. It provides the following functionality:

Methods to interact with the database
Mapping between Java objects and Aerospike Bins (see Object Mapping)
Providing connection callback
Translating exceptions into Spring’s technology-agnostic DAO exceptions hierarchy

Instantiating AerospikeTemplate

If you are subclassing AbstractAerospikeDataConfiguration then the aerospikeTemplate bean is already present in your context, and you can use it.

@Autowired
protected AerospikeTemplate template;

An alternative is to instantiate it yourself, you can see the bean in AbstractAerospikeDataConfiguration.

In case if you need to use custom WritePolicy, the persist operation can be used

For CAS updates save operation must be used.

Methods for interacting with database

AerospikeOperations interface provides operations for interacting with the database (exists, find, insert, update etc.) as well as basic operations with indexes: createIndex, deleteIndex, indexExists.

The names of operations are typically self-descriptive. To read from Aerospike you can use findById, findByIds and find methods, to delete - delete methods, and so on.

template.findById(id, Person.class)

For indexed documents use find with provided Query object.

Stream<Person> result = template.find(query, Person.class);
assertThat(result).hasSize(6);

Example

The simple case of using the save operation is to save a POJO.

Note	For more information about Id property when inserting or saving see Mapping Conventions: Id Field for more information.

public class Person {

    @Id
    private String id;
    private String firstName;
    private String lastName;
    private int age;
}

template.insert(new Person(id, "John", 50));

long count = template.count
            (new Query
                (new QualifierBuilder()
                    .setFilterOperation(FilterOperation.EQ)
                    .setField("firstName")
                    .setValue1(Value.get("John"))
                    .build()
                ),
            Person.class
            );

        assertThat(count).isEqualTo(3);

Secondary indexes

A secondary index (SI) is a data structure that locates all the records in a namespace, or a set within it, based on a bin value in the record. When a value is updated in the indexed record, the secondary index automatically updates.

You can read more about secondary index implementation and usage in Aerospike on the official documentation page.

Why Secondary Index

Let’s consider a simple query for finding by equality:

public List<Person> personRepsitory.findByLastName(lastName);

Notice that findByLastName is not a simple lookup by key, but rather finding all records in a set. Aerospike has 2 ways of achieving this:

Scanning all the records in the set and extracting the appropriate records.
Defining a secondary index on the field lastName and using this secondary index to satisfy the query.

The second approach is far more efficient. Aerospike stores the secondary indexes in a memory structure, allowing exceptionally fast identification of the records that match.

It relies on a secondary index having been created.

Ways to Create Secondary Indexes

In SpringData Aerospike secondary indexes can either be created by systems administrators using the asadm tool, or by developers telling SpringData that such an index is necessary.

There are two ways to accomplish this task with the help of SpringData Aerospike:

Using AerospikeTemplate createIndex method.
Using @Indexed annotation on the necessary field of an entity.

Creating Secondary Index via AerospikeTemplate

For more information about AerospikeTemplate see the documentation page.

Setting a secondary index via AerospikeTemplate can be helpful, for example, in cases when an index creation does not change a lot.

Here is an example of a numeric secondary index for the rating field in the MovieDocument entity:

@Slf4j
@Configuration
public class AerospikeIndexConfiguration {

    private static final String INDEX_NAME = "movie-rating-index";

    @Bean
    @ConditionalOnProperty(
            value = "aerospike." + INDEX_NAME + ".create-on-startup",
            havingValue = "true",
            matchIfMissing = true)
    public boolean createAerospikeIndex(AerospikeTemplate aerospikeTemplate) {
        try {
            aerospikeTemplate.createIndex(MovieDocument.class, INDEX_NAME, "rating", IndexType.NUMERIC);
            log.info("Index {} was successfully created", INDEX_NAME);
        } catch (Exception e) {
            log.info("Index {} creation failed: {}", INDEX_NAME, e.getMessage());
        }
        return true;
    }
}

Creating Secondary Index using @Indexed annotation

You can use @Indexed annotation on the field where the index is required. Here is an example of the Person object getting indexed by lastName:

@AllArgsConstructor
@NoArgsConstructor
@Data
@Document
public class Person {
    @Id
    private long id;
    private String firstName;
    @Indexed(name = "lastName_idx", type = IndexType.STRING)
    private String lastName;
    private Date dateOfBirth;
}

The annotation allows to specify also bin name, collectionType and ctx (context) if needed. For the details on using @Indexed annotation see Indexed Annotation.

Matching the Secondary Index

Note	In Aerospike, secondary indexes are case-sensitive, they match the exact queries.

Following the query from the example above, assume there was a new requirement to be able to find by lastName containing a String (rather than having an equality match):

public List<Person> findByLastNameContaining(String lastName);

In this case findByLastNameContaining query is not satisfied by the created secondary index. Aerospike would need to scan the data which can be an expensive operation as all records in the set must be read by the Aerospike server, and then the condition is applied to see if they match.

Due to the cost of performing this operation, scans from Spring Data Aerospike are disabled by default.

For the details on how to enable scans see Scan Operation.

Following the query from the example above, assume there was a new requirement to be able to find by firstName with an exact match:

public List<Person> findByLastName(String lastName);
public List<Person> findByFirstName(String firstName);

In this case firstName is not marked as @Indexed, so SpringData Aerospike is not instructed to create an index on it. Hence, it will scan the repository (a costly operation that could be avoided by using an index).

Note	There are relevant configuration parameters: create indexes on startup and indexes cache refresh frequency.

Indexed Annotation

The @Indexed annotation allows to create secondary index based on a specific field of a Java object. For the details on secondary indexes in Aerospike see Secondary Indexes.

The annotation allows to specify the following parameters:

parameter	index type	mandatory	example
name	index name	yes	"friend_address_keys_idx"
type	index type	yes	IndexType.STRING
bin	indexed bin type	no	"friend"
collectionType	index type	no	IndexCollectionType.MAPKEYS
ctx	context (path to the indexed elements)	no	"address"

parameter

index type

mandatory

example

name

index name

yes

"friend_address_keys_idx"

type

index type

yes

IndexType.STRING

bin

indexed bin type

"friend"

collectionType

index type

IndexCollectionType.MAPKEYS

ctx

context (path to the indexed elements)

"address"

Here is an example of creating a complex secondary index for fields of a person’s friend address.

@Data
@AllArgsConstructor
public class Address {

    private String street;
    private Integer apartment;
    private String zipCode;
    private String city;
}

@Data
@NoArgsConstructor
@Setter
public class Friend {

    String name;
    Address address;
}

@Data
@Document
@AllArgsConstructor
@NoArgsConstructor
@Setter
public class Person {

    @Id
    String id;
    @Indexed(type = IndexType.STRING, name = "friend_address_keys_idx",
    collectionType = IndexCollectionType.MAPKEYS, ctx = "address")
    Friend friend;
}

@Test
void test() {
    Friend carter = new Friend();
    carter.setAddress(new Address("Street", 14, "1234567890", "City"));

    Person dave = new Person();
    dave.setFriend(carter);
    repository.save(dave);
}

A Person object in this example has a field called "friend" (Friend object). A Friend object has a field called "address" (Address object). So when "friend" field is set to a Friend with existing Address, we have a person (dave in the example above) with a friend (carter) who has a particular address.

Address object on its own has certain fields: street, apartment, zipCode, city.

Note	In Aerospike DB a POJO (such as `Address`) is represented by a Map, so the fields of POJO become map keys.

Thus, if we want to index by Address object fields, we set collectionType to IndexCollectionType.MAPKEYS.

Ctx parameter represents context, or path to the necessary element in the specified bin ("friend") - which is "address", because we want to index by fields of friend’s address.

Secondary Index Context DSL

Secondary index context (ctx parameter in @Indexed annotation) represents path to a necessary element in hierarchy. It uses infix notation.

The document path is described as dot-separated context elements (e.g., "a.b.[2].c") written as a string. A path is made of singular path elements and ends with one (a leaf element) or more elements (leaves) - for example, "a.b.[2].c.[0:3]".

Path Element Matches Notes

Path Element	Matches	Notes
`"a"`	Map key “a”	Single element by key
`"1"` or `'1'`	Map key (numeric string) “1”
`1`	Map key (integer) 1
`{1}`	Map index 1
`{=1}`	Map value (integer) 1
`{=bb}`	Map value “bb”	Also {="bb"}
`{="1"}` or `{='1'}`	Map value (string) “1”
`{#1}`	Map rank 1
`[1]`	List index 1
`[=1]`	List value 1
`[#1]`	List rank 1

"a"

Map key “a”

Single element by key

"1" or '1'

Map key (numeric string) “1”

1

Map key (integer) 1

{1}

Map index 1

{=1}

Map value (integer) 1

{=bb}

Map value “bb”

Also {="bb"}

{="1"} or {='1'}

Map value (string) “1”

{#1}

Map rank 1

[1]

List index 1

[=1]

List value 1

[#1]

List rank 1

Example

Let’s consider a Map bin example:

{
  1: a,
  2: b,
  4: d,
  "5": e,
  a: {
    55: ee,
    "66": ff,
    aa: {
      aaa: 111,
      bbb: 222,
      ccc: 333,
    },
    bb: {
      bba: 221,
      bbc: 223
    },
    cc: [ 22, 33, 44, 55, 43, 32, 44 ],
    dd: [ {e: 5, f:6}, {z:26, y:25}, {8: h, "9": j} ]
  }
}

So the following will be true:

Path	CTX	Matched Value
a.aa.aaa	[mapKey("a"), mapKey("aa"), mapKey("aaa")]	111
a.55	[mapKey("a"), mapKey(55)]	ee
a."66"	[mapKey("a"), mapKey("66")]	ff
a.aa.{2}	[mapKey("a"), mapKey("aa"),mapIndex(2)]	333
a.aa.{=222}	[mapKey("a"), mapKey("aa"),mapValue(222)]	222
a.bb.{#-1}	[mapKey("a"), mapKey("bb"),mapRank(-1)]	223
a.cc.[0]	[mapKey("a"), mapKey("cc"),listIndex(0)]	22
a.cc.[#1]	[mapKey("a"), mapKey("cc"),listRank(1)]	32
a.cc.[=44]	[mapKey("a"), mapKey("cc"),listValue(44)]	[44, 44]
a.dd.[0].e	[mapKey("a"), mapKey("dd"),listIndex(0), mapKey("e")]	5
a.dd.[2].8	[mapKey("a"), mapKey("dd"),listIndex(2), mapKey(8)]	h
a.dd.[-1]."9"	[mapKey("a"), mapKey("dd"),listIndex(-1), mapKey("9")]	j
a.dd.[1].{#0}	[mapKey("a"), mapKey("dd"),listIndex(1), mapRank(0)]	y

Path

CTX

Matched Value

a.aa.aaa

[mapKey("a"), mapKey("aa"), mapKey("aaa")]

111

a.55

[mapKey("a"), mapKey(55)]

a."66"

[mapKey("a"), mapKey("66")]

a.aa.{2}

[mapKey("a"), mapKey("aa"),mapIndex(2)]

333

a.aa.{=222}

[mapKey("a"), mapKey("aa"),mapValue(222)]

222

a.bb.{#-1}

[mapKey("a"), mapKey("bb"),mapRank(-1)]

223

a.cc.[0]

[mapKey("a"), mapKey("cc"),listIndex(0)]

a.cc.[#1]

[mapKey("a"), mapKey("cc"),listRank(1)]

a.cc.[=44]

[mapKey("a"), mapKey("cc"),listValue(44)]

[44, 44]

a.dd.[0].e

[mapKey("a"), mapKey("dd"),listIndex(0), mapKey("e")]

a.dd.[2].8

[mapKey("a"), mapKey("dd"),listIndex(2), mapKey(8)]

a.dd.[-1]."9"

[mapKey("a"), mapKey("dd"),listIndex(-1), mapKey("9")]

a.dd.[1].{#0}

[mapKey("a"), mapKey("dd"),listIndex(1), mapRank(0)]

Note	There are relevant configuration parameters: create indexes on startup and indexes cache refresh frequency.

Caching

Caching is the process of storing data in a cache or temporary storage location, usually to improve application performance and make data access faster.

The caching process also provides an efficient way to reuse previously retrieved or computed data. The cache is used to reduce the need for accessing the underlying storage layer which is slower.

Spring Cache with Aerospike database allows you to use annotations such as @Cacheable, @CachePut and @CacheEvict that provide a fully managed cache store using Aerospike database.

Introduction

In this example, we are going to use the annotations on UserRepository class methods to create/read/update and delete user’s data from the cache.

If a User is stored in the cache, calling a method with @Cacheable annotation will fetch the user from the cache instead of executing the method’s body responsible for the actual user fetch from the database.

If the User does not exist in the cache, the user’s data will be fetched from the database and put in the cache for later usage (a “cache miss”).

With Spring Cache and Aerospike database, we can achieve that with only a few lines of code.

Motivation

Let’s say that we are using another database as our main data store. We don’t want to fetch the results from it every time we request the data, instead, we want to get the data from a cache layer.

There is a number of benefits of using a cache layer, here are some of them:

Performance: Aerospike can work purely in RAM but reading a record from Aerospike in Hybrid Memory (primary index in memory, data stored on Flash drives) is extremely fast as well (~1ms).
Reduce database load: Moving a significant part of the read load from the main database to Aerospike can help balance the resources on heavy loads.
Scalability: Aerospike scales horizontally by adding more nodes to the cluster, scaling a relational database might be tricky and expensive, so if you are facing a read heavy load you can easily scale up the cache layer.

Example

We will not use an actual database as our main data store for this example, instead, we will simulate database access by printing a simulation message and replace a database read by just returning a specific User.

Configuration

AerospikeConfigurationProperties

@Data
@Component
@ConfigurationProperties(prefix = "aerospike")
public class AerospikeConfigurationProperties {
    private String host;
    private int port;
}

AerospikeConfiguration

@Configuration
@EnableConfigurationProperties(AerospikeConfigurationProperties.class)
@Import(value = {MappingAerospikeConverter.class, AerospikeMappingContext.class,
        AerospikeTypeAliasAccessor.class,
        AerospikeCustomConversions.class, SimpleTypeHolder.class})
public class AerospikeConfiguration {

    @Autowired
    private MappingAerospikeConverter mappingAerospikeConverter;
    @Autowired
    private AerospikeConfigurationProperties aerospikeConfigurationProperties;

    @Bean(destroyMethod = "close")
    public AerospikeClient aerospikeClient() {
        ClientPolicy clientPolicy = new ClientPolicy();
        clientPolicy.failIfNotConnected = true;
        return new AerospikeClient(clientPolicy, aerospikeConfigurationProperties.getHost(), aerospikeConfigurationProperties.getPort());
    }

    @Bean
    public AerospikeCacheManager cacheManager(AerospikeClient aerospikeClient) {
        AerospikeCacheConfiguration defaultConfiguration = new AerospikeCacheConfiguration("test");
        return new AerospikeCacheManager(aerospikeClient, mappingAerospikeConverter, defaultConfiguration);
    }
}

In the AerospikeConfiguration we will create two types of Beans:

AerospikeClient

Responsible for accessing an Aerospike database and performing database operations.

AerospikeCacheManager

The heart of the cache layer, to define an AerospikeCacheManager you need:

aerospikeClient (AerospikeClient).
aerospikeConverter (MappingAerospikeConverter).
defaultCacheConfiguration (AerospikeCacheConfiguration), a default cache configuration that applies when creating new caches. Cache configuration contains a namespace, a set (null by default meaning write directly to the namespace w/o specifying a set) and an expirationInSeconds (AKA TTL, default is 0 meaning use Aerospike server’s default).
Optional: initalPerCacheConfiguration (Map<String, AerospikeCacheConfiguration>), You can also specify a map of cache names and matching configuration, it will create the caches with the given matching configuration at the application startup.

Note	A cache name is only a link to the cache configuration.

Objects

User

@Data
@Document
@AllArgsConstructor
public class User {
    @Id
    private int id;
    private String name;
    private String email;
    private int age;
}

Repositories

UserRepository

@Repository
public class UserRepository {

    @Cacheable(value = "test", key = "#id")
    public Optional<User> getUserById(int id) {
        System.out.println("Simulating a read from the main data store.");
        // In case the id doesn't exist in the cache it will "fetch" jimmy page with the requested id and add it to the cache (cache miss).
        return Optional.of(new User(id, "jimmy page", "jimmy@gmail.com", 77));
    }

    @CachePut(value = "test", key = "#user.id")
    public User addUser(User user) {
        System.out.println("Simulating addition of " + user + " to the main data store.");
        return user;
    }

    @CacheEvict(value = "test", key = "#id")
    public void removeUserById(int id) {
        System.out.println("Simulating removal of " + id + " from the main data store.");
    }
}

The cache annotations require a “value” field, which is the cache name, if the cache name doesn’t exist — by passing initialPerCacheConfiguration param when creating a Bean of AerospikeCacheManager in a configuration class, it will configure the cache with the properties of the given defaultCacheConfiguration (Configuration > AerospikeCacheManager).

Services

UserService

@Service
@AllArgsConstructor
public class UserService {

    UserRepository userRepository;

    public Optional<User> readUserById(int id) {
        return userRepository.getUserById(id);
    }

    public User addUser(User user) {
        return userRepository.addUser(user);
    }

    public void removeUserById(int id) {
        userRepository.removeUserById(id);
    }
}

Controllers

UserController

@RestController
@AllArgsConstructor
public class UserController {

    UserService userService;

    @GetMapping("/users/{id}")
    public Optional<User> readUserById(@PathVariable("id") Integer id) {
        return userService.readUserById(id);
    }

    @PostMapping("/users")
    public User addUser(@RequestBody User user) {
        return userService.addUser(user);
    }

    @DeleteMapping("/users/{id}")
    public void deleteUserById(@PathVariable("id") Integer id) {
        userService.removeUserById(id);
    }
}

Add @EnableCaching

SimpleSpringBootAerospikeCacheApplication

Add @EnableCaching to the class that contains the main method.

@EnableCaching
@SpringBootApplication
public class SimpleSpringBootAerospikeCacheApplication {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        SpringApplication.run(SimpleSpringBootAerospikeCacheApplication.class, args);
    }
}

Test

We will use Postman to simulate client requests.

Add User (@CachePut)

Create a new POST request with the following url: http://localhost:8080/users
Add a new key-value header in the Headers section:
```
Key: Content-Type
```
```
Value: application/json
```

Add a Body in a valid JSON format:

{
   "id":1,
   "name":"guthrie",
   "email":"guthriegovan@gmail.com",
   "age":35
}

Press Send.

aql> select * from test
+-----+-----------+----------+-------------+-------------------------------------+
| @user_key  | name | @_class | email         | age                             |
+-----+-----------+----------+-------------+-------------------------------------+
| "1" | "guthrie" | "com.aerospike.cache.simpleSpringBootAerospikeCache.objects.User"  | "guthriegovan@gmail.com" | 35 |
+-----+-----------+----------+-------------+-------------------------------------+

We can now see that this user was added to the cache.

Read User (@Cacheable)

Create a new GET request with the following url: http://localhost:8080/users/1
Add a new key-value header in the Headers section:
```
Key: Content-Type
```
```
Value: application/json
```
Press Send.

Remove User (@CacheEvict)

Create a new DELETE request with the following url: http://localhost:8080/users/1
Add a new key-value header in the Headers section:
```
Key: Content-Type
```
```
Value: application/json
```
Press Send.

We can now see that this user was deleted from the cache (thanks to the @CacheEvict annotation in the UserRepository).

aql> select * from test
+-----+-----------+----------+-------------+-------------------------------------+
0 rows in set
+-----+-----------+----------+-------------+-------------------------------------+

Cache miss (@Cacheable)

For reading User that is not in the cache we can use the GET request configured before with an id that we know for sure is not there.

If we try calling the GET request with the id 5, we get the following user data:

{
    "id": 5,
    "name": "jimmy page",
    "email": "jimmy@gmail.com",
    "age": 77
}

We wrote it hard-coded in UserRepository to simulate an actual database fetch of a user id that doesn’t exist in the cache.

We can now also see that the user was added to the cache.

aql> select * from test
+-----+-----------+----------+-------------+-------------------------------------+
| @user_key  | name | @_class | email         | age                             |
+-----+-----------+----------+-------------+-------------------------------------+
| "1" | "jimmy page" | "com.aerospike.cache.simpleSpringBootAerospikeCache.objects.User"  | "jimmy@gmail.com" | 77 |
+-----+-----------+----------+-------------+-------------------------------------+

Configuration

Configuration parameters can be set in a standard application.properties file using spring-data-aerospike.* prefix or by overriding configuration from AbstractAerospikeDataConfiguration class.

Application.properties

Here is an example:

# application.properties
spring-data-aerospike.connection.hosts=localhost:3000
spring-data-aerospike.connection.namespace=test
spring-data-aerospike.data.scans-enabled=false
spring-data-aerospike.data.send-key=true
spring-data-aerospike.data.create-indexes-on-startup=true
spring-data-aerospike.data.index-cache-refresh-seconds=3600
spring-data-aerospike.data.server-version-refresh-seconds=3600
spring-data-aerospike.data.query-max-records=10000
spring-data-aerospike.data.batch-write-size=100
spring-data-aerospike.data.keep-original-key-types=false

Configuration class:

@Configuration
@EnableAerospikeRepositories(basePackageClasses = {TestRepository.class})
public class AerospikeConfiguration extends AbstractAerospikeDataConfiguration {

}

In this case extending AbstractAerospikeDataConfiguration class is required to enable repositories.

Overriding configuration

Configuration can also be set by overriding getHosts(), nameSpace() and configureDataSettings() methods of the AbstractAerospikeDataConfiguration class.

Here is an example:

@EnableAerospikeRepositories(basePackageClasses = TestRepository.class)
class ApplicationConfig extends AbstractAerospikeDataConfiguration {

    @Override
    protected Collection<Host> getHosts() {
        return Collections.singleton(new Host("localhost", 3000));
    }

    @Override
    protected String nameSpace() {
        return "test";
    }

    @Override
    public void configureDataSettings(AerospikeDataSettings aerospikeDataSettings) {
        aerospikeDataSettings.setScansEnabled(false);
        aerospikeDataSettings.setCreateIndexesOnStartup(true);
        aerospikeDataSettings.setIndexCacheRefreshSeconds(3600);
        aerospikeDataSettings.setServerVersionRefreshSeconds(3600);
        aerospikeDataSettings.setQueryMaxRecords(10000L);
        aerospikeDataSettings.setBatchWriteSize(100);
        aerospikeDataSettings.setKeepOriginalKeyTypes(false);
    }
}

Note	Return values of `getHosts()`, `nameSpace()` and `configureDataSettings()` methods of the `AbstractAerospikeDataConfiguration` class have precedence over the parameters set via application.properties.

Configuration Parameters

hosts

# application.properties
spring-data-aerospike.connection.hosts=hostname1:3001, hostname2:tlsName2:3002

A String of hosts separated by , in form of hostname1[:tlsName1][:port1],…

IP addresses must be given in one of the following formats:

IPv4: xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
IPv6: [xxxx:xxxx:xxxx:xxxx:xxxx:xxxx:xxxx:xxxx]
IPv6: [xxxx::xxxx]

IPv6 addresses must be enclosed by brackets. tlsName is optional.

Note	Another way of defining hosts is overriding the `getHosts()` method. It has precedence over `hosts` parameter from application.properties. Here is an example:

// overriding method
@EnableAerospikeRepositories(basePackageClasses = TestRepository.class)
class ApplicationConfig extends AbstractAerospikeDataConfiguration {

    @Override
    protected Collection<Host> getHosts() {
        return Collections.singleton(new Host("hostname1", 3001));
    }
}

Default: null.

namespace

# application.properties
spring-data-aerospike.connection.namespace=test

Aerospike DB namespace.

Note	Another way of defining hosts is overriding the `nameSpace()` method. It has precedence over `namespace` parameter from application.properties. Here is an example:

// overriding method
@EnableAerospikeRepositories(basePackageClasses = TestRepository.class)
class ApplicationConfig extends AbstractAerospikeDataConfiguration {

    @Override
    protected String nameSpace() {
        return "test";
    }
}

Note	To use multiple namespaces it is required to override `nameSpace()` and `AerospikeTemplate` for each configuration class per namespace. See multiple namespaces example for implementation details.

Default: null.

scansEnabled

# application.properties
spring-data-aerospike.data.scans-enabled=false

A scan can be an expensive operation as all records in the set must be read by the Aerospike server, and then the condition is applied to see if they match.

Due to the cost of performing this operation, scans from Spring Data Aerospike are disabled by default.

Note	Another way of defining the parameter is overriding the `configureDataSettings()` method. It has precedence over reading from application.properties. Here is an example:

// overriding method
@EnableAerospikeRepositories(basePackageClasses = TestRepository.class)
class ApplicationConfig extends AbstractAerospikeDataConfiguration {


    @Override
    public void configureDataSettings(AerospikeDataSettings aerospikeDataSettings) {
        aerospikeDataSettings.setScansEnabled(false);
    }
}

Note	Once this flag is enabled, scans run whenever needed with no warnings. This may or may not be optimal in a particular use case.

Default: false.

createIndexesOnStartup

# application.properties
spring-data-aerospike.data.create-indexes-on-startup=true

Create secondary indexes specified using @Indexed annotation on startup.

Note	Another way of defining the parameter is overriding the `configureDataSettings()` method. It has precedence over reading from application.properties. Here is an example:

// overriding method
@EnableAerospikeRepositories(basePackageClasses = TestRepository.class)
class ApplicationConfig extends AbstractAerospikeDataConfiguration {


    @Override
    public void configureDataSettings(AerospikeDataSettings aerospikeDataSettings) {
        aerospikeDataSettings.setCreateIndexesOnStartup(true);
    }
}

Default: true.

indexCacheRefreshSeconds

# application.properties
spring-data-aerospike.data.index-cache-refresh-seconds=3600

Automatically refresh indexes cache every <N> seconds.

Note	Another way of defining the parameter is overriding the `configureDataSettings()` method. It has precedence over reading from application.properties. Here is an example:

// overriding method
@EnableAerospikeRepositories(basePackageClasses = TestRepository.class)
class ApplicationConfig extends AbstractAerospikeDataConfiguration {


    @Override
    public void configureDataSettings(AerospikeDataSettings aerospikeDataSettings) {
        aerospikeDataSettings.setIndexCacheRefreshSeconds(3600);
    }
}

Default: 3600.

serverVersionRefreshSeconds

# application.properties
spring-data-aerospike.data.server-version-refresh-seconds=3600

Automatically refresh cached server version every <N> seconds.

Note	Another way of defining the parameter is overriding the `configureDataSettings()` method. It has precedence over reading from application.properties. Here is an example:

// overriding method
@EnableAerospikeRepositories(basePackageClasses = TestRepository.class)
class ApplicationConfig extends AbstractAerospikeDataConfiguration {


    @Override
    public void configureDataSettings(AerospikeDataSettings aerospikeDataSettings) {
        aerospikeDataSettings.setServerVersionRefreshSeconds(3600);
    }
}

Default: 3600.

queryMaxRecords

# application.properties
spring-data-aerospike.data.query-max-records=10000

Limit amount of results returned by server. Non-positive value means no limit.

Note	Another way of defining the parameter is overriding the `configureDataSettings()` method. It has precedence over reading from application.properties. Here is an example:

// overriding method
@EnableAerospikeRepositories(basePackageClasses = TestRepository.class)
class ApplicationConfig extends AbstractAerospikeDataConfiguration {


    @Override
    public void configureDataSettings(AerospikeDataSettings aerospikeDataSettings) {
        aerospikeDataSettings.setQueryMaxRecords(10000L);
    }
}

Default: 10 000.

batchWriteSize

# application.properties
spring-data-aerospike.data.batch-write-size=100

Maximum batch size for batch write operations. Non-positive value means no limit.

Note	Another way of defining the parameter is overriding the `configureDataSettings()` method. It has precedence over reading from application.properties. Here is an example:

// overriding method
@EnableAerospikeRepositories(basePackageClasses = TestRepository.class)
class ApplicationConfig extends AbstractAerospikeDataConfiguration {


    @Override
    public void configureDataSettings(AerospikeDataSettings aerospikeDataSettings) {
        aerospikeDataSettings.setBatchWriteSize(100);
    }
}

Default: 100.

keepOriginalKeyTypes

# application.properties
spring-data-aerospike.data.keep-original-key-types=false

Define how @Id fields (primary keys) and Map keys are stored in the Aerospike database: false - always as String, true - preserve original type if supported.

@Id field type keepOriginalKeyTypes = false keepOriginalKeyTypes = true

long

String

long

int

String

long

String

byte[]

String

byte[]

other types

String

Note

If @Id field’s type cannot be persisted as is, it must be convertible to String and will be stored in the database as such, then converted back to the original type when the object is read. This is transparent to the application but needs to be considered if using external tools like AQL to view the data.

Map key type keepOriginalKeyTypes = false keepOriginalKeyTypes = true

long

String

long

int

String

long

double

String

double

String

byte[]

String

byte[]

other types

String

Note	Another way of defining the parameter is overriding the `configureDataSettings()` method. It has precedence over reading from application.properties. Here is an example:

// overriding method
@EnableAerospikeRepositories(basePackageClasses = TestRepository.class)
class ApplicationConfig extends AbstractAerospikeDataConfiguration {


    @Override
    public void configureDataSettings(AerospikeDataSettings aerospikeDataSettings) {
        aerospikeDataSettings.setKeepOriginalKeyTypes(false);
    }
}

Default: false (store keys only as String).

Dependencies

Due to the different inception dates of individual Spring Data modules, most of them carry different major and minor version numbers. The easiest way to find compatible ones is to rely on the Spring Data Release Train BOM that we ship with the compatible versions defined. In a Maven project, you would declare this dependency in the <dependencyManagement /> section of your POM as follows:

Example 83. Using the Spring Data release train BOM

<dependencyManagement>
  <dependencies>
    <dependency>
      <groupId>org.springframework.data</groupId>
      <artifactId>spring-data-bom</artifactId>
      <version>2023.0.2</version>
      <scope>import</scope>
      <type>pom</type>
    </dependency>
  </dependencies>
</dependencyManagement>

The train version uses calver with the pattern YYYY.MINOR.MICRO. The version name follows ${calver} for GA releases and service releases and the following pattern for all other versions: ${calver}-${modifier}, where modifier can be one of the following:

SNAPSHOT: Current snapshots
M1, M2, and so on: Milestones
RC1, RC2, and so on: Release candidates

You can find a working example of using the BOMs in Spring Data examples repository. With that in place, you can declare the Spring Data modules you would like to use without a version in the <dependencies /> block, as follows:

Example 84. Declaring a dependency to a Spring Data module

<dependencies>
  <dependency>
    <groupId>org.springframework.data</groupId>
    <artifactId>spring-data-jpa</artifactId>
  </dependency>
<dependencies>

Dependency Management with Spring Boot

Spring Boot selects a recent version of the Spring Data modules for you. If you still want to upgrade to a newer version, set the spring-data-bom.version property to the train version and iteration you would like to use.

See Spring Boot’s documentation (search for "Spring Data Bom") for more details.

Spring Framework

Using the most recent version of SpringData is highly recommended.

Auditing

Basics

Spring Data provides sophisticated support to transparently keep track of who created or changed an entity and when the change happened.To benefit from that functionality, you have to equip your entity classes with auditing metadata that can be defined either using annotations or by implementing an interface. Additionally, auditing has to be enabled either through Annotation configuration or XML configuration to register the required infrastructure components. Please refer to the store-specific section for configuration samples.

Note	Applications that only track creation and modification dates are not required do make their entities implement `AuditorAware`.

Annotation-based Auditing Metadata

We provide @CreatedBy and @LastModifiedBy to capture the user who created or modified the entity as well as @CreatedDate and @LastModifiedDate to capture when the change happened.

Example 85. An audited entity

class Customer {

  @CreatedBy
  private User user;

  @CreatedDate
  private Instant createdDate;

  // … further properties omitted
}

As you can see, the annotations can be applied selectively, depending on which information you want to capture. The annotations, indicating to capture when changes are made, can be used on properties of type JDK8 date and time types, long, Long, and legacy Java Date and Calendar.

Auditing metadata does not necessarily need to live in the root level entity but can be added to an embedded one (depending on the actual store in use), as shown in the snippet below.

Example 86. Audit metadata in embedded entity

class Customer {

  private AuditMetadata auditingMetadata;

  // … further properties omitted
}

class AuditMetadata {

  @CreatedBy
  private User user;

  @CreatedDate
  private Instant createdDate;

}

Interface-based Auditing Metadata

In case you do not want to use annotations to define auditing metadata, you can let your domain class implement the Auditable interface. It exposes setter methods for all of the auditing properties.

`AuditorAware`

In case you use either @CreatedBy or @LastModifiedBy, the auditing infrastructure somehow needs to become aware of the current principal. To do so, we provide an AuditorAware<T> SPI interface that you have to implement to tell the infrastructure who the current user or system interacting with the application is. The generic type T defines what type the properties annotated with @CreatedBy or @LastModifiedBy have to be.

The following example shows an implementation of the interface that uses Spring Security’s Authentication object:

Example 87. Implementation of AuditorAware based on Spring Security

class SpringSecurityAuditorAware implements AuditorAware<User> {

  @Override
  public Optional<User> getCurrentAuditor() {

    return Optional.ofNullable(SecurityContextHolder.getContext())
            .map(SecurityContext::getAuthentication)
            .filter(Authentication::isAuthenticated)
            .map(Authentication::getPrincipal)
            .map(User.class::cast);
  }
}

The implementation accesses the Authentication object provided by Spring Security and looks up the custom UserDetails instance that you have created in your UserDetailsService implementation. We assume here that you are exposing the domain user through the UserDetails implementation but that, based on the Authentication found, you could also look it up from anywhere.

`ReactiveAuditorAware`

When using reactive infrastructure you might want to make use of contextual information to provide @CreatedBy or @LastModifiedBy information. We provide an ReactiveAuditorAware<T> SPI interface that you have to implement to tell the infrastructure who the current user or system interacting with the application is. The generic type T defines what type the properties annotated with @CreatedBy or @LastModifiedBy have to be.

The following example shows an implementation of the interface that uses reactive Spring Security’s Authentication object:

Example 88. Implementation of ReactiveAuditorAware based on Spring Security

class SpringSecurityAuditorAware implements ReactiveAuditorAware<User> {

  @Override
  public Mono<User> getCurrentAuditor() {

    return ReactiveSecurityContextHolder.getContext()
                .map(SecurityContext::getAuthentication)
                .filter(Authentication::isAuthenticated)
                .map(Authentication::getPrincipal)
                .map(User.class::cast);
  }
}

Appendix

Appendix A: Namespace reference

The <repositories /> Element

The <repositories /> element triggers the setup of the Spring Data repository infrastructure. The most important attribute is base-package, which defines the package to scan for Spring Data repository interfaces. See “XML Configuration”. The following table describes the attributes of the <repositories /> element:

Table 5. Attributes
Name	Description
`base-package`	Defines the package to be scanned for repository interfaces that extend `*Repository` (the actual interface is determined by the specific Spring Data module) in auto-detection mode. All packages below the configured package are scanned, too. Wildcards are allowed.
`repository-impl-postfix`	Defines the postfix to autodetect custom repository implementations. Classes whose names end with the configured postfix are considered as candidates. Defaults to `Impl`.
`query-lookup-strategy`	Determines the strategy to be used to create finder queries. See “Query Lookup Strategies” for details. Defaults to `create-if-not-found`.
`named-queries-location`	Defines the location to search for a Properties file containing externally defined queries.
`consider-nested-repositories`	Whether nested repository interface definitions should be considered. Defaults to `false`.

Appendix B: Populators namespace reference

The <populator /> Element

The <populator /> element allows to populate a data store via the Spring Data repository infrastructure.^[1]

Table 6. Attributes
Name	Description
`locations`	Where to find the files to read the objects from the repository shall be populated with.

Appendix C: Repository query keywords

Supported query method subject keywords

The following table lists the subject keywords generally supported by the Spring Data repository query derivation mechanism to express the predicate. Consult the store-specific documentation for the exact list of supported keywords, because some keywords listed here might not be supported in a particular store.

Table 7. Query subject keywords
Keyword	Description
`find…By`, `read…By`, `get…By`, `query…By`, `search…By`, `stream…By`	General query method returning typically the repository type, a `Collection` or `Streamable` subtype or a result wrapper such as `Page`, `GeoResults` or any other store-specific result wrapper. Can be used as `findBy…`, `findMyDomainTypeBy…` or in combination with additional keywords.
`exists…By`	Exists projection, returning typically a `boolean` result.
`count…By`	Count projection returning a numeric result.
`delete…By`, `remove…By`	Delete query method returning either no result (`void`) or the delete count.
`…First<number>…`, `…Top<number>…`	Limit the query results to the first `<number>` of results. This keyword can occur in any place of the subject between `find` (and the other keywords) and `by`.
`…Distinct…`	Use a distinct query to return only unique results. Consult the store-specific documentation whether that feature is supported. This keyword can occur in any place of the subject between `find` (and the other keywords) and `by`.

Supported query method predicate keywords and modifiers

The following table lists the predicate keywords generally supported by the Spring Data repository query derivation mechanism. However, consult the store-specific documentation for the exact list of supported keywords, because some keywords listed here might not be supported in a particular store.

Table 8. Query predicate keywords
Logical keyword	Keyword expressions
`AND`	`And`
`OR`	`Or`
`AFTER`	`After`, `IsAfter`
`BEFORE`	`Before`, `IsBefore`
`CONTAINING`	`Containing`, `IsContaining`, `Contains`
`BETWEEN`	`Between`, `IsBetween`
`ENDING_WITH`	`EndingWith`, `IsEndingWith`, `EndsWith`
`EXISTS`	`Exists`
`FALSE`	`False`, `IsFalse`
`GREATER_THAN`	`GreaterThan`, `IsGreaterThan`
`GREATER_THAN_EQUALS`	`GreaterThanEqual`, `IsGreaterThanEqual`
`IN`	`In`, `IsIn`
`IS`	`Is`, `Equals`, (or no keyword)
`IS_EMPTY`	`IsEmpty`, `Empty`
`IS_NOT_EMPTY`	`IsNotEmpty`, `NotEmpty`
`IS_NOT_NULL`	`NotNull`, `IsNotNull`
`IS_NULL`	`Null`, `IsNull`
`LESS_THAN`	`LessThan`, `IsLessThan`
`LESS_THAN_EQUAL`	`LessThanEqual`, `IsLessThanEqual`
`LIKE`	`Like`, `IsLike`
`NEAR`	`Near`, `IsNear`
`NOT`	`Not`, `IsNot`
`NOT_IN`	`NotIn`, `IsNotIn`
`NOT_LIKE`	`NotLike`, `IsNotLike`
`REGEX`	`Regex`, `MatchesRegex`, `Matches`
`STARTING_WITH`	`StartingWith`, `IsStartingWith`, `StartsWith`
`TRUE`	`True`, `IsTrue`
`WITHIN`	`Within`, `IsWithin`

In addition to filter predicates, the following list of modifiers is supported:

Table 9. Query predicate modifier keywords
Keyword	Description
`IgnoreCase`, `IgnoringCase`	Used with a predicate keyword for case-insensitive comparison.
`AllIgnoreCase`, `AllIgnoringCase`	Ignore case for all suitable properties. Used somewhere in the query method predicate.
`OrderBy…`	Specify a static sorting order followed by the property path and direction (e. g. `OrderByFirstnameAscLastnameDesc`).

Appendix D: Repository query return types

Supported Query Return Types

The following table lists the return types generally supported by Spring Data repositories. However, consult the store-specific documentation for the exact list of supported return types, because some types listed here might not be supported in a particular store.

Note	Geospatial types (such as `GeoResult`, `GeoResults`, and `GeoPage`) are available only for data stores that support geospatial queries. Some store modules may define their own result wrapper types.

Table 10. Query return types
Return type	Description
`void`	Denotes no return value.
Primitives	Java primitives.
Wrapper types	Java wrapper types.
`T`	A unique entity. Expects the query method to return one result at most. If no result is found, `null` is returned. More than one result triggers an `IncorrectResultSizeDataAccessException`.
`Iterator<T>`	An `Iterator`.
`Collection<T>`	A `Collection`.
`List<T>`	A `List`.
`Optional<T>`	A Java 8 or Guava `Optional`. Expects the query method to return one result at most. If no result is found, `Optional.empty()` or `Optional.absent()` is returned. More than one result triggers an `IncorrectResultSizeDataAccessException`.
`Option<T>`	Either a Scala or Vavr `Option` type. Semantically the same behavior as Java 8’s `Optional`, described earlier.
`Stream<T>`	A Java 8 `Stream`.
`Streamable<T>`	A convenience extension of `Iterable` that directy exposes methods to stream, map and filter results, concatenate them etc.
Types that implement `Streamable` and take a `Streamable` constructor or factory method argument	Types that expose a constructor or `….of(…)`/`….valueOf(…)` factory method taking a `Streamable` as argument. See Returning Custom Streamable Wrapper Types for details.
Vavr `Seq`, `List`, `Map`, `Set`	Vavr collection types. See Support for Vavr Collections for details.
`Future<T>`	A `Future`. Expects a method to be annotated with `@Async` and requires Spring’s asynchronous method execution capability to be enabled.
`CompletableFuture<T>`	A Java 8 `CompletableFuture`. Expects a method to be annotated with `@Async` and requires Spring’s asynchronous method execution capability to be enabled.
`Slice<T>`	A sized chunk of data with an indication of whether there is more data available. Requires a `Pageable` method parameter.
`Page<T>`	A `Slice` with additional information, such as the total number of results. Requires a `Pageable` method parameter.
`GeoResult<T>`	A result entry with additional information, such as the distance to a reference location.
`GeoResults<T>`	A list of `GeoResult<T>` with additional information, such as the average distance to a reference location.
`GeoPage<T>`	A `Page` with `GeoResult<T>`, such as the average distance to a reference location.
`Mono<T>`	A Project Reactor `Mono` emitting zero or one element using reactive repositories. Expects the query method to return one result at most. If no result is found, `Mono.empty()` is returned. More than one result triggers an `IncorrectResultSizeDataAccessException`.
`Flux<T>`	A Project Reactor `Flux` emitting zero, one, or many elements using reactive repositories. Queries returning `Flux` can emit also an infinite number of elements.
`Single<T>`	A RxJava `Single` emitting a single element using reactive repositories. Expects the query method to return one result at most. If no result is found, `Mono.empty()` is returned. More than one result triggers an `IncorrectResultSizeDataAccessException`.
`Maybe<T>`	A RxJava `Maybe` emitting zero or one element using reactive repositories. Expects the query method to return one result at most. If no result is found, `Mono.empty()` is returned. More than one result triggers an `IncorrectResultSizeDataAccessException`.
`Flowable<T>`	A RxJava `Flowable` emitting zero, one, or many elements using reactive repositories. Queries returning `Flowable` can emit also an infinite number of elements.

Spring Data Aerospike - Documentation

Preface

Knowing Spring

Knowing NoSQL and Aerospike

Requirements

Additional Help Resources

Support

Questions & Answers

Following Development

Reference documentation

Functionality

Installation & Usage

Getting Started

Adding Dependency

Connecting to Aerospike DB

Creating Functionality

Working with Spring Data Repositories

Core concepts

Query Methods

Defining Repository Interfaces

Fine-tuning Repository Definition

Using Repositories with Multiple Spring Data Modules

Defining Query Methods

Query Lookup Strategies

Query Creation

Property Expressions

Paging, Iterating Large Results, Sorting

Which Method is Appropriate?

Paging and Sorting

Limiting Query Results

Repository Methods Returning Collections or Iterables

Using Streamable as Query Method Return Type

Returning Custom Streamable Wrapper Types

Support for Vavr Collections

Streaming Query Results

Null Handling of Repository Methods

Nullability Annotations

Nullability in Kotlin-based Repositories

Asynchronous Query Results

Creating Repository Instances

Java Configuration

XML Configuration

Using Filters

Standalone Usage

Custom Implementations for Spring Data Repositories

Customizing Individual Repositories

Configuration

Resolution of Ambiguity

Manual Wiring

Customize the Base Repository

Publishing Events from Aggregate Roots

Spring Data Extensions

Querydsl Extension

Web support

Basic Web Support

Using the DomainClassConverter Class

HandlerMethodArgumentResolvers for Pageable and Sort

Hypermedia Support for Page and Slice

Spring Data Jackson Modules

Web Databinding Support

Querydsl Web Support

Repository Populators

Aerospike repositories

Introduction

Usage

Query methods

Reactive Aerospike repositories

Introduction

Reactive Composition Libraries

Usage

Query methods

Examples

Restrictions

Projections

Interface-based Projections

Closed Projections

Open Projections

Nullable Wrappers

Class-based Projections (DTOs)

Dynamic Projections

Using the `DomainClassConverter` Class

Hypermedia Support for `Page` and `Slice`