Spring Boot Kotlin Thymeleaf Example Tutorial

← Back to Spring Boot Tutorial

In this tutorial, you will learn how to develop a simple Spring Boot web application using kotlin, Spring Data JPA, and Thymeleaf.

Kotlin (https://kotlinlang.org/) is a JVM-based statically typed programming language created by JetBrains. One of the key goals of Kotlin is to be interoperable with Java so that you can use Java and Kotlin together in the same project.

1. Create Spring Boot Project

Spring Boot officially supports the Kotlin programming language and you can create Spring Boot applications using Kotlin from Spring Initializer at http://start.spring.io or from your IDE. Kotlin support is introduced in the new Spring Framework 5 release.

There are many ways to create a Spring Boot application. You can refer below articles to create a Spring Boot application.

>> Create Spring Boot Project With Spring Initializer
>> Create Spring Boot Project in Spring Tool Suite [STS]

2. Add Maven Dependencies

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<project
    xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0"
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
 xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd">
    <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
    <groupId>net.javaguides</groupId>
    <artifactId>springboot-kotlin-demo</artifactId>
    <version>0.0.1-SNAPSHOT</version>
    <packaging>jar</packaging>
    <name>springboot-kotlin-demo</name>
    <description>Demo project for Spring Boot</description>
    <parent>
        <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-parent</artifactId>
        <version>2.0.0.BUILD-SNAPSHOT</version>
        <relativePath/>
        <!-- lookup parent from repository -->
    </parent>
    <properties>
        <kotlin.compiler.incremental>true</kotlin.compiler.incremental>
        <project.build.sourceEncoding>UTF-8</project.build.sourceEncoding>
        <project.reporting.outputEncoding>UTF-8</project.reporting.outputEncoding>
        <java.version>1.8</java.version>
        <kotlin.version>1.1.2-5</kotlin.version>
    </properties>
    <dependencies>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-data-jpa</artifactId>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-data-rest</artifactId>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-thymeleaf</artifactId>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-web</artifactId>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.jetbrains.kotlin</groupId>
            <artifactId>kotlin-stdlib-jre8</artifactId>
            <version>${kotlin.version}</version>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.jetbrains.kotlin</groupId>
            <artifactId>kotlin-reflect</artifactId>
            <version>${kotlin.version}</version>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>com.h2database</groupId>
            <artifactId>h2</artifactId>
            <scope>runtime</scope>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-test</artifactId>
            <scope>test</scope>
        </dependency>
    </dependencies>
    <build>
        <sourceDirectory>${project.basedir}/src/main/kotlin</sourceDirectory>
        <testSourceDirectory>${project.basedir}/src/test/kotlin</testSourceDirectory>
        <plugins>
            <plugin>
                <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
                <artifactId>spring-boot-maven-plugin</artifactId>
            </plugin>
            <plugin>
                <artifactId>kotlin-maven-plugin</artifactId>
                <groupId>org.jetbrains.kotlin</groupId>
                <version>${kotlin.version}</version>
                <configuration>
                    <compilerPlugins>
                        <plugin>spring</plugin>
                    </compilerPlugins>
                    <jvmTarget>1.8</jvmTarget>
                </configuration>
                <executions>
                    <execution>
                        <id>compile</id>
                        <phase>compile</phase>
                        <goals>
                            <goal>compile</goal>
                        </goals>
                    </execution>
                    <execution>
                        <id>test-compile</id>
                        <phase>test-compile</phase>
                        <goals>
                            <goal>test-compile</goal>
                        </goals>
                    </execution>
                </executions>
                <dependencies>
                    <dependency>
                        <groupId>org.jetbrains.kotlin</groupId>
                        <artifactId>kotlin-maven-allopen</artifactId>
                        <version>${kotlin.version}</version>
                    </dependency>
                </dependencies>
            </plugin>
        </plugins>
    </build>
    <repositories>
        <repository>
            <id>spring-snapshots</id>
            <name>Spring Snapshots</name>
            <url>https://repo.spring.io/snapshot</url>
            <snapshots>
                <enabled>true</enabled>
            </snapshots>
        </repository>
        <repository>
            <id>spring-milestones</id>
            <name>Spring Milestones</name>
            <url>https://repo.spring.io/milestone</url>
            <snapshots>
                <enabled>false</enabled>
            </snapshots>
        </repository>
    </repositories>
    <pluginRepositories>
        <pluginRepository>
            <id>spring-snapshots</id>
            <name>Spring Snapshots</name>
            <url>https://repo.spring.io/snapshot</url>
            <snapshots>
                <enabled>true</enabled>
            </snapshots>
        </pluginRepository>
        <pluginRepository>
            <id>spring-milestones</id>
            <name>Spring Milestones</name>
            <url>https://repo.spring.io/milestone</url>
            <snapshots>
                <enabled>false</enabled>
            </snapshots>
        </pluginRepository>
    </pluginRepositories>
</project>

3. User.kt

Create a JPA entity called User and add the following content to it:

import javax.persistence.*

@Entity
@Table(name="users")
class User(
        @Id @GeneratedValue(strategy = GenerationType.AUTO)
        var id: Long = -1,
        var name: String = "",
        var email: String = ""
        ) {

    override fun toString(): String {
        return "User(id=$id, name='$name', email='$email')"
    }
}

JPA entities should have a default constructor. One option is to have a User entity with a primary constructor using the var type properties with their default values. Another option is to create a no-arg default constructor as a secondary constructor and pass default values to the primary constructor.

4. UserRepository.kt

Let's create a Spring Data JPA repository for the User entity:

import org.springframework.data.jpa.repository.JpaRepository

interface UserRepository : JpaRepository<User, Long> {

    fun findByEmail(email: String): Iterable<User>
}

5. HomeController.kt

Create a SpringMVC controller to display the list of users:

import org.springframework.stereotype.Controller
import org.springframework.ui.Model
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.GetMapping

@Controller
class HomeController(val repository:UserRepository) {

    @GetMapping("/")
    fun home(model: Model): String {
        model.addAttribute("users", repository.findAll())
        return "home"
    }
}

6. data.sql

Here is a data.sql script to populate sample users:

delete from users;

insert into users(id, name, email) values
(1,'admin','[email protected]'),
(2,'code','[email protected]'),
(3,'test','[email protected]');

7. src/main/resources/templates/home.html

Create the Thymeleaf view home.html to render users:

<!DOCTYPE HTML>
<html xmlns:th="http://www.thymeleaf.org">
<head>
    <title>Users List</title>
    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" />
</head>
<body>
<table>
    <thead>
    <tr>
        <th>Id</th>
        <th>Name</th>
    </tr>
    </thead>
    <tbody>
    <tr th:each="user : ${users}">
        <td th:text="${user.id}">Id</td>
        <td th:text="${user.name}">Name</td>
    </tr>
    </tbody>
</table>
</body>
</html>

8. SpringbootKotlinDemoApplication.kt

Finally, create the main entry point class:

import org.springframework.boot.SpringApplication
import org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.SpringBootApplication

@SpringBootApplication
class SpringbootKotlinDemoApplication

fun main(args: Array<String>) {
    SpringApplication.run(SpringbootKotlinDemoApplication::class.java, *args)
}

Now if you run the main() method, it will start the application. You can then access http://localhost:8080/, which shows the list of users.

← Back to Spring Boot Tutorial