Creating a RESTful Web Service with Spring Boot

Web services are applications that communicate over the internet using the HTTP protocol. There are many different types of web service architectures, but the principal idea across all designs is the same. In this book, we will create a RESTful web service: nowadays, a really popular design.

In this chapter, we will first create a RESTful web service using a controller class. Then, we will use Spring Data REST to create a RESTful web service that also provides all CRUD functionalities automatically, and document it with OpenAPI 3. After you have created a RESTful API for your application, you can implement the frontend using a JavaScript library such as React. We will be using the database application that we created in the previous chapter as a starting point.

In this chapter, we will cover the following topics:

• Basics of REST
• Creating a RESTful web service with Spring Boot
• Using Spring Data REST
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