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Bamba Ndour

Posted on Jun 20, 2022 • Updated on Jul 8, 2022

Building a REST API using Spring Boot and MongoDB.

In this project we are going to learn how to build a simple crud backend rest api using Spring Boot and MongoDB.

Prerequisites :

In order to complete this tutorial, you should have knowledge of beginner or intermediate Java 8 programming skills, some familiarity with Spring Boot, and also you should have a general familiarity with the Windows command prompt.

Tools Used in this Project

Java 11
Spring Boot 2.6.6
Maven
Lombok
Intelli J
MongoDB 5.0
Postman

Install and Launch MongoDB

To start working with MongoDB, first, we have to install it on our local machines. Go to the MongoDB website and download the MongoDB installer from the downloads section.
Once the download is complete double click the file and follow the prompts to install Mongo. Mongo is most likely to be installed in the “C:\Program Files\MongoDB..” directory unless you specify a custom path.
Open a command prompt window and direct it to the bin folder inside the MongoDB folder path.

Let's start the server

Server Started:

Let's create a new Database and a new Collection

Spring Boot MongoDB APIs

We will have the following functionalities and Database interactions in our app.

Get all employees
Get a employee with ID
Save a employee
Update a employee
Delete a employee

Spring Boot Project Setup

We will make use of the Spring Initializr tool for quickly setting up the project. Don’t forget to add the dependencies Lombok, Spring Boot DevTools, Spring WEB & Spring Data MongoDB.

All Dependencies:

Spring Data MongoDB

<dependency>
  <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
  <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-data-mongodb</artifactId>
</dependency>

Spring Web

<dependency>
  <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
  <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-web</artifactId>
</dependency>

Lombok

<dependency>
  <groupId>org.projectlombok</groupId>
  <artifactId>lombok</artifactId>
  <optional>true</optional>
</dependency>

Spring Boot DevTools

<dependency>
  <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
  <artifactId>spring-boot-devtools</artifactId>
  <scope>runtime</scope>
  <optional>true</optional>
</dependency>

Spring Boot Validator

<dependency>
  <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
  <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-validation</artifactId>
</dependency>

Configure Spring Datasource, MongoDB, App properties
Open src/main/resources/application.properties

For application.properties:

# MongoDB
spring.data.mongodb.host=[host]
spring.data.mongodb.port=[port]
spring.data.mongodb.username=[username]
spring.data.mongodb.password=[password]
spring.data.mongodb.database=[database_name]
spring.application.name=[Your Application Name]
spring.banner.charset=[UTF-8]
# logging
logging.level.org.springframework.data=debug
logging.level.=error

For application.yml

spring:
  data:
     mongodb:
        authentication-database: admin
        port: 27017
        host: localhost
        database: EmployeeBackend
  application:
     name: employee-rest-api

  banner:
    charset: UTF-8

Now you can see the project

Download All Packages

mvn package

Running the Project and Testing with Postman
Now let’s test our API calls using postman. Right-click on the project and select Run as a Spring boot App.