Spring Boot Student API

Overview

A REST API exercise demonstrating data handling in Spring Boot, covering request parameters, path variables, request bodies, and HTTP headers with in-memory data storage.

Learning Objectives

• Handle HTTP requests using Spring Boot annotations
• Process different types of input data (query params, request body, headers)
• Implement RESTful endpoints (GET, POST)
• Manage application state in memory
• Perform content negotiation based on Accept headers

Endpoints

GET /welcome

Returns a personalized welcome message.

Request Parameter:

• name (string, optional) - Name to greet

Response:

• 200 OK - "Welcome "

Example:

GET /welcome?name=John
Response: Welcome John

POST /students

Adds a list of students to the in-memory storage.

Request Body: Array of student objects

[
{
"reference": "STU001",
"firstName": "John",
"lastName": "Doe",
"age": 20
},
{
"reference": "STU002", "firstName": "Jane",
"lastName": "Smith",
"age": 22
}
]

Response: Comma-separated list of all stored students

John Doe, Jane Smith

GET /students

Retrieves all stored student names.

Accept Header:

• text/plain (default) - Returns student names in plain text format
• Other values - Returns error message "Format non supporté"

Response:

• 200 OK - "John Doe, Jane Smith"
• 400 Bad Request - "Format non supporté" (if Accept header is not text/plain)

Technologies

• Java 17+
• Spring Boot 3.x
• Spring Web

Project Structure

src/main/java/com/example/demo/
├── controller/
│ └── StudentController.java
├── service/
│ └── StudentService.java
├── model/
│ └── Student.java
└── repository/
└── StudentRepository.java

Setup Instructions

1. Clone the repository

git clone https://github.com/DavFilsDev/springboot-student-api

2. Navigate to the project directory

cd springboot-student-api

3. Build the project

./mvnw clean install

4. Run the application

./mvnw spring-boot:run

5. Test the endpoints

# Test GET /welcome
curl "http://localhost:8080/welcome?name=John"# Test POST /students
curl -X POST http://localhost:8080/students \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '[{"reference":"STU001","firstName":"John","lastName":"Doe","age":20}]'# Test GET /students with Accept header
curl -H "Accept: text/plain" http://localhost:8080/students

Key Spring Boot Concepts

• @RestController - Defines RESTful controller
• @GetMapping / @PostMapping - HTTP method mappings
• @RequestParam - Extract query parameters
• @RequestBody - Extract and deserialize request body
• @RequestHeader - Extract HTTP headers
• In-memory storage using collections (List, Map)

Exercise Progression

1. Part A - Basic GET endpoint with query parameters
2. Part B - POST endpoint with request body processing
3. Part C - GET endpoint with header-based content negotiation

License

Educational purposes only