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)
}

Operators

Operator	Description	Example
:	Equal	color:Red
!	Not equal	color!Red
>	Greater than	creationyear>2017
>:	Greater than eq	creationyear>2017
<	Less than	price<100000
<:	Less than eq	price<100000
*	Starts with	brand:*Martin
*	Ends with	brand:Aston*
*	Contains	brand:*Martin*
OR	Logical OR	color:Red OR color:Blue
AND	Logical AND	brand:Aston* AND price<300000
IN	Value is in list	color IN ['Red', 'Blue']
NOT IN	Value is not in list	color NOT IN ['Red', 'Blue']
IS EMPTY	Collection field is empty	cars IS EMPTY
IS NOT EMPTY	Collection field is not empty	cars IS NOT EMPTY
IS NULL	Field is null	brand IS NULL
IS NOT NULL	Field is not null	brand IS NOT NULL
()	Parenthesis	brand:Nissan OR (brand:Chevrolet AND color:Blue)
BETWEEN	Value is between two values	creationyear BETWEEN 2017 AND 2019
NOT BETWEEN	Value is not between two values	creationyear NOT BETWEEN 2017 AND 2019

Examples

1. Using parenthesis
   Request : /cars?search=( brand:Nissan OR brand:Chevrolet ) AND color:Blue
   Note: Spaces inside the parenthesis are not necessary
2. Using space in nouns
   Request : /cars?search=model:'Spacetourer Business Lounge'
   
3. Using special characters
   Request: /cars?search=model:中华V7
4. Using deep fields
   Request : /cars?search=options.transmission:Auto
5. Complex example
   Request : /cars?search=creationyear:2018 AND price<300000 AND (color:Yellow OR color:Blue) AND options.transmission:Auto
6. Using the BETWEEN operator Request : /cars?search=creationyear BETWEEN 2017 AND 2019

Blocking the search on a field

@GetMapping
public List<User> getUsers(@SearchSpec(blackListedFields = {"password"}) Specification<User> specs) {
  return userRepository.findAll(Specification.where(specs));
}

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