Spring @Repository Annotation

In this quick article, we will discuss how to use @Repository annotation in Spring-based applications.

DAO or Repository classes usually represent the database access layer in an application and should be annotated with @Repository.

As of Spring 2.5, this annotation also serves as a specialization of @Component, allowing for implementation classes to be autodetected through classpath scanning.

@Repository annotation internally annotated with @Component annotation as shown in below diagram:

@Repository Annotation Example

Let's create a simple Spring boot application to bootstrap quickly. Add below dependencies to your pom.xml.

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

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

Complete Code

import javax.persistence.Entity;
import javax.persistence.GeneratedValue;
import javax.persistence.GenerationType;
import javax.persistence.Id;
import javax.persistence.Table;

import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Autowired;
import org.springframework.boot.SpringApplication;
import org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.SpringBootApplication;
import org.springframework.context.ConfigurableApplicationContext;
import org.springframework.data.jpa.repository.JpaRepository;
import org.springframework.stereotype.Repository;
import org.springframework.stereotype.Service;

@SpringBootApplication
public class DemoApplication {

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        ConfigurableApplicationContext applicationContext = SpringApplication.run(DemoApplication.class, args);
        UserService userService = (UserService) applicationContext.getBean("userServiceImpl");
        userService.saveUser(new User(10, "Ramesh"));
    }
}

@Entity
@Table
class User {

    @Id
    @GeneratedValue(strategy = GenerationType.AUTO)
    private int id;
    private String name;

    public User(int id, String name) {
        super();
        this.id = id;
        this.name = name;
    }

    public User() {}

    public int getId() {
        return id;
    }

    public void setId(int id) {
        this.id = id;
    }

    public String getName() {
        return name;
    }

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

@Repository
interface UserRepository extends JpaRepository < User, Integer > {

}

interface UserService {
    public void saveUser(User user);
}

@Service
class UserServiceImpl implements UserService {

    @Autowired
    private UserRepository userRepository;

    @Override
    public void saveUser(User user) {
        userRepository.save(user);
    }
}

Note that we have created ApplicationContext and retrieved bean using getBean() method:

ConfigurableApplicationContext  applicationContext =  SpringApplication.run(DemoApplication.class, args);
UserService userService = (UserService) applicationContext.getBean("userServiceImpl");
userService.saveUser(new User(10, "Ramesh"));

Usage of @Service annotation

@Repository
interface UserRepository extends JpaRepository < User, Integer > {

}

One advantage of using this annotation is that it has automatic persistence exception translation enabled. When using a persistence framework such as Hibernate, native exceptions thrown within classes annotated with @Repository will be automatically translated into subclasses of Spring’s DataAccessExeption.

To enable exception translation, we need to declare our own PersistenceExceptionTranslationPostProcessor bean:

@Bean
public PersistenceExceptionTranslationPostProcessor exceptionTranslation() {
    return new PersistenceExceptionTranslationPostProcessor();
}

Note, that in most cases, Spring does the step above automatically. Or, via XML configuration:

<bean class=
  "org.springframework.dao.annotation.PersistenceExceptionTranslationPostProcessor"/>

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