Pagination and Sorting using Spring Data JPA - PagingAndSortingRepository

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In this article, we will learn how to implement pagination and sorting using Spring Data JPA.

Learn everything about Spring Data JPA at https://www.javaguides.net/p/spring-data-jpa-tutorial.html

As you know, pagination allows the users to see a small portion of data at a time (a page), and sorting allows the users to view the data in a more organized way. Both paging and sorting help the users consume information more easily and conveniently.

Let's first discuss pagination implementation using Spring Data JPA then we will move to sorting implementation.

1. Pagination Implementation

Understand Spring Data JPA’s Pagination APIs

To use paging and sorting APIs provided by Spring Data JPA, your repository interface must extend the PagingAndSortingRepository interface.

PagingAndSortingRepository is an extension of the CrudRepository to provide additional methods to retrieve entities using the pagination and sorting abstraction. It provides two methods :

• Page findAll(Pageable pageable) – returns a Page of entities meeting the paging restriction provided in the Pageable object.
• Iterable findAll(Sort sort) – returns all entities sorted by the given options. No paging is applied here.

Here is the internal source code of PagingAndSortingRepository interface:

@NoRepositoryBean
public interface PagingAndSortingRepository < T, ID > extends CrudRepository < T, ID > {

    /**
     * Returns all entities sorted by the given options.
     *
     * @param sort
     * @return all entities sorted by the given options
     */
    Iterable < T > findAll(Sort sort);

    /**
     * Returns a {@link Page} of entities meeting the paging restriction provided in the {@code Pageable} object.
     *
     * @param pageable
     * @return a page of entities
     */
    Page < T > findAll(Pageable pageable);
}

JpaRepository interface extends the PagingAndSortingRepository interface so if your repository interface is of type JpaRepository, you don’t have to make a change to it.

Here is the internal source code of the JpaRepository interface which extends PagingAndSortingRepository interface:

@NoRepositoryBean
public interface JpaRepository < T, ID > extends PagingAndSortingRepository < T, ID > , QueryByExampleExecutor < T > {

    List < T > findAll();

    List < T > findAll(Sort sort);

    List < T > findAllById(Iterable < ID > ids);

    <S extends T > List < S > saveAll(Iterable < S > entities);

    void flush();

    <S extends T > S saveAndFlush(S entity);

    void deleteInBatch(Iterable < T > entities);

    void deleteAllInBatch();

    T getOne(ID id);

    @Override <
    S extends T > List < S > findAll(Example < S > example);

    @Override <
    S extends T > List < S > findAll(Example < S > example, Sort sort);
}

Let's understand the usage of the PagingAndSortingRepository interface and it''s methods with an example.

Consider we have an Employee JPA entity:

@Entity
@Table(name = "employees")
public class Employee {

    @Id
    @GeneratedValue(strategy = GenerationType.IDENTITY)
    private long id;

    @Column(name = "first_name")
    private String firstName;

    @Column(name = "last_name")
    private String lastName;

    @Column(name = "email")
    private String email;

Now, we use the following code to get the first page from the database, with 5 items per page:

int pageNumber = 1;
int pageSize = 5;
Pageable pageable = PageRequest.of(pageNumber, pageSize);
 
Page<Employee> page = employeeRepository.findAll(pageable);

Then you can get the actual content as follows:

List<Employee> listEmployees = page.getContent();

With a Page object you can know the total rows in the database and the total pages according to the given page size:

long totalItems = page.getTotalElements();
int totalPages = page.getTotalPages();

Create EmployeeRepository

Let's create an EmployeeRepository interface which extends JpaRepository which intern extends the PagingAndSortingRepository interface so we can leverage pagination API:

package net.javaguides.springboot.repository;

import org.springframework.data.jpa.repository.JpaRepository;
import org.springframework.stereotype.Repository;

import net.javaguides.springboot.model.Employee;

@Repository
public interface EmployeeRepository extends JpaRepository<Employee, Long>{

}

Let's see how to use EmployeeRepository in the service layer.

Create EmployeeService interface

In the service layer, let's create the EmployeeService interface and add the following code to it:

package net.javaguides.springboot.service;

import java.util.List;

import org.springframework.data.domain.Page;

import net.javaguides.springboot.model.Employee;

public interface EmployeeService {
    Page < Employee > findPaginated(int pageNo, int pageSize);
}

EmployeeServiceImpl Class

In the service layer, let's create an EmployeeServiceImpl class which implements the EmployeeService interface and provides implementation for pagination:

@Override
public Page<Employee> findPaginated(int pageNo, int pageSize) {
    Pageable pageable = PageRequest.of(pageNo - 1, pageSize);
    return this.employeeRepository.findAll(pageable);
}

Check out the complete example at Pagination and Sorting with Spring Boot, ThymeLeaf, Spring Data JPA, Hibernate, MySQL

2. Sorting Implementation

Understand Spring Data JPA’s Sorting API

The Spring Data JPA provides PagingAndSortingRepository interface which supports sorting and pagination with the following APIs:

@NoRepositoryBean
public interface PagingAndSortingRepository < T, ID > extends CrudRepository < T, ID > {

    /**
     * Returns all entities sorted by the given options.
     *
     * @param sort
     * @return all entities sorted by the given options
     */
    Iterable < T > findAll(Sort sort);

    /**
     * Returns a {@link Page} of entities meeting the paging restriction provided in the {@code Pageable} object.
     *
     * @param pageable
     * @return a page of entities
     */
    Page < T > findAll(Pageable pageable);
}

First, create a Sort object like this:

Sort sort = Sort.by(“fieldName”).ascending();

This will sort the result by fieldName in ascending order. fieldName must match a field name declared in the entity class. 

We can also sort by more than one field, for example:

Sort sort = Sort.by("fieldName1").ascending().and(Sort.by("fieldName2").descending());

Then we pass the Sort object to create a Pageable as follows:

Pageable pageable = PageRequest.of(pageNum - 1, pageSize, sort);

Finally, we pass the pageable object to the findAll() method:

this.employeeRepository.findAll(pageable);

Create EmployeeRepository

Let's create an EmployeeRepository interface which extends JpaRepository which intern extends the PagingAndSortingRepository interface so we can leverage sorting API:

package net.javaguides.springboot.repository;

import org.springframework.data.jpa.repository.JpaRepository;
import org.springframework.stereotype.Repository;

import net.javaguides.springboot.model.Employee;

@Repository
public interface EmployeeRepository extends JpaRepository<Employee, Long>{

}

Let's see how to use EmployeeRepository in the service layer.

EmployeeService.java interface changes

Let's add two fields to the existing method:

Page<Employee> findPaginated(int pageNo, int pageSize, String sortField, String sortDirection);

The complete code:

package net.javaguides.springboot.service;

import java.util.List;

import org.springframework.data.domain.Page;

import net.javaguides.springboot.model.Employee;

public interface EmployeeService {
    Page < Employee > findPaginated(int pageNo, int pageSize, String sortField, String sortDirection);
}

EmployeeServiceImpl.java class changes

The sorting logic implemented in the below method:

@Override
public Page<Employee> findPaginated(int pageNo, int pageSize, String sortField, String sortDirection) {
    Sort sort = sortDirection.equalsIgnoreCase(Sort.Direction.ASC.name()) ? Sort.by(sortField).ascending() :
     Sort.by(sortField).descending();
 
    Pageable pageable = PageRequest.of(pageNo - 1, pageSize, sort);
    return this.employeeRepository.findAll(pageable);
}

Note that we are using the same method to perform both pagination and sorting operations.

Check out the complete example at Pagination and Sorting with Spring Boot, ThymeLeaf, Spring Data JPA, Hibernate, MySQL

3. Spring Data JPA interfaces

Check out the below diagram which shows the main interfaces of Spring Data JPA for your reference:

Video Tutorial

Watch this video on my YouTube channel to understand more about pagination and sorting implementations in Spring boot application using Spring Data JPA:

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