Spring Boot REST API Development
23 lessons in this section of the Spring Boot tutorial. Work through them in order, or jump to the one you need.
- 1.Building REST APIs
Spring Boot is the most widely used framework for building REST APIs in Java.
- 2.REST Principles
REST (Representational State Transfer) is an architectural style for distributed hypermedia systems, defined by Roy Fielding in 2000.
- 3.CRUD Operations
CRUD — Create, Read, Update, Delete — is the standard set of operations for managing persistent resources in a REST API.
- 4.Request Mapping
Request mapping is how Spring Boot routes incoming HTTP requests to controller handler methods.
- 5.Path Variables
Path variables extract dynamic segments from a URI directly into handler method parameters.
- 6.Request Parameters
Request parameters are the key-value pairs appended to a URL after the ?
- 7.Request Body
@RequestBody binds the HTTP request body to a method parameter, deserializing it from JSON (or XML) into a Java object using Spring's HttpMessageConverters.
- 8.ResponseEntity
ResponseEntity<T> gives you full control over the HTTP response returned from a controller handler — status code, headers, and body in a single return value.
- 9.HTTP Status Codes
HTTP status codes are the standard mechanism for communicating the result of an HTTP request.
- 10.REST Controller
@RestController is the central annotation for building REST APIs in Spring Boot.
- 11.JSON Handling
Spring Boot uses Jackson as its default JSON library, auto-configured through spring-boot-starter-web.
- 12.XML Response
Spring Boot can serve XML responses alongside JSON using Jackson's XML extension (jackson-dataformat-xml).
- 13.Content Negotiation
Content negotiation is the mechanism by which Spring Boot selects the response format — JSON, XML, CSV, or any custom media type — based on the client's Accept header…
- 14.File Upload API
Spring Boot handles file uploads through MultipartFile, auto-configured by MultipartAutoConfiguration.
- 15.File Download API
Spring Boot serves file downloads through ResponseEntity<Resource>.
- 16.Pagination
Spring Data provides first-class pagination support through the Pageable abstraction and Page<T> return type.
- 17.Sorting
Spring Data resolves Sort from request parameters automatically when Pageable is used, or as a standalone method parameter.
- 18.Filtering APIs
Filtering lets clients narrow a collection to only the records they need.
- 19.API Versioning
API versioning lets you evolve a REST API without breaking existing clients.
- 20.Validation in REST APIs
Spring Boot integrates Jakarta Bean Validation (Hibernate Validator) out of the box via spring-boot-starter-validation.
- 21.Exception Handling in APIs
Proper exception handling shapes how errors are communicated to API consumers.
- 22.Global Exception Handling
@RestControllerAdvice is the central place for all exception handling in a Spring Boot REST API.
- 23.Custom Exceptions
A well-designed custom exception hierarchy makes error handling explicit, consistent, and easy to extend.