Spring Search

Spring Search provides advanced search capabilities to a JPA entity
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Table of Contents

• About the Project
  • Built With
• Getting Started
  • Prerequisites
  • Installation
• Usage
• Roadmap
• Contributing
• License
• Contact
• Acknowledgements

About The Project

Spring Search provides a simple query language to perform advanced searches for your JPA entities.

Let's say you manage cars, and you want to allow API consumers to search for:

• Cars that are blue and that were created after year 2006 or whose model name contains "Vanquish"
• Cars whose brand is "Aston Martin" or whose price is more than 10000$

You could either create custom repository methods for both these operations, which works well if you know in advance which fields users might want to perform searches on. You could also use spring-search that allows searching on all fields, combining logical operators and much more.

Please note that providing such a feature on your API does not come without risks such as performance issues and less clear capabilities for your API. This article summarizes these risks well.

Built With

• Kotlin
• Spring Boot
• ANTLR

Getting Started

Requirements : JDK 8 or more.
To get a local copy up and running follow these simple steps.

Installation

Maven

Add the repo to your project inside your pom.xml file

<dependency>
    <groupId>com.sipios</groupId>
    <artifactId>spring-search</artifactId>
    <version>0.2.6</version>
</dependency>

Gradle

Add the repo to your project by adding implementation 'com.sipios:spring-search:0.2.0' in your build.gradle file.

Usage

Your repository should be annotated as a RepositoryRestResource and should extend JpaSpecificationExecutor

import org.springframework.data.jpa.repository.JpaRepository
import org.springframework.data.jpa.repository.JpaSpecificationExecutor
import org.springframework.data.rest.core.annotation.RepositoryRestResource

@RepositoryRestResource
interface YourRepository : JpaRepository<YourModel, Int>, JpaSpecificationExecutor<YourModel>

Import the library in your controller

import com.sipios.springsearch.anotation.SearchSpec

Use it in your controller

@GetMapping("searchUrl")
fun yourFunctionNameHere(@SearchSpec specs: Specification<YourModel>): ResponseEntity<List<YourResponse>> {
    return ResponseEntity(yourRepository.findAll(Specification.where(specs)), HttpStatus.OK)
}

1. Using the equal operator :
   Request : /cars?search=color:Red
   

2. Using the not equal operator !
   Request : /cars?search=color!Red

3. Using the greater than operator >
   Request : /cars?search=creationyear>2017

Note: You can use the >: operator as well.

4. Using the less than operator <
   Request : /cars?search=price<100000

Note: You can use the <: operator as well.

5. Using the starts with operator *
   For the ends with operator, simply place * at the beginning of the word.
   For the contains operator, simply place * at the beginning and the end of the word.
   Request : /cars?search=brand:Aston*
   

6. Using the OR operator
   Request : /cars?search=color:Red OR color:Blue
   

7. Using the AND operator
   Request : /cars?search=brand:Aston* AND price<300000
   

8. Checking if value is or not in a list
   Request : /cars?search=color IN ['Red', 'Blue']
   Request : /cars?search=color NOT IN ['Red', 'Blue']
   Note: Spaces inside the brackets are not necessary
   Note: You will need to encode the value (e.g. encodeURI) as brackets are not valid url parts

9. Using the IS EMPTY and IS NOT EMPTY operators for collection fields
   Request : /users?search=cars IS EMPTY

10. Using parenthesis
    Request : /cars?search=( brand:Nissan OR brand:Chevrolet ) AND color:Blue
    Note: Spaces inside the parenthesis are not necessary

11. Using space in nouns
    Request : /cars?search=model:'Spacetourer Business Lounge'
    

12. Using special characters
    Request: /cars?search=model:中华V7

13. Using deep fields
    Request : /cars?search=options.transmission:Auto

14. Complex example
    Request : /cars?search=creationyear:2018 AND price<300000 AND (color:Yellow OR color:Blue) AND options.transmission:Auto

15. Using the BETWEEN operator Request : /cars?search=creationyear BETWEEN 2017 AND 2019

Troubleshooting

If you get the following error ⬇️

No primary or default constructor found for interface org.springframework.data.jpa.domain.Specification

You are free to opt for either of the two following solutions :

1. Add a @Configuration class to add our argument resolver to your project

// Kotlin
@Configuration
class SpringSearchResolverConf : WebMvcConfigurer {
  override fun addArgumentResolvers(argumentResolvers: MutableList<HandlerMethodArgumentResolver>) {
    argumentResolvers.add(SearchSpecificationResolver())
  }
}

// Java
@Configuration
public class SpringSearchResolverConf implements WebMvcConfigurer {
    @Override
    public void addArgumentResolvers(List<HandlerMethodArgumentResolver> argumentResolvers) {
        argumentResolvers.add(new SearchSpecificationResolver());
    }
}

2. Add a @ComponentScan annotation to your project configuration class

@ComponentScan(basePackages = {"com.your-application", "com.sipios.springsearch"})

Roadmap

See the open issues for a list of proposed features (and known issues).

Please note that boolean parameter types are yet to be supported.

Contributing

Contributions are what make the open source community such an amazing place to be learn, inspire, and create. Any contributions you make are greatly appreciated.

1. Fork the Project
2. Create your Feature Branch (git checkout -b feature/AmazingFeature)
3. Commit your Changes (git commit -m 'Add some AmazingFeature')
4. Push to the Branch (git push origin feature/AmazingFeature)
5. Open a Pull Request

License

Distributed under the MIT License. See LICENSE for more information.

Contact

@sipios_fintech - [email protected]

Project Link: https://github.com/sipios/spring-search