Spring Reactive with PostgreSQL (Spring Boot WebFlux + PostgreSQL)

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  • Jul 20, 2024

In this article, we will see how to perform CRUD operations in a Spring Boot WebFlux application with a PostgreSQL database.

Why non blocking?

When a traditional (non-reactive) Spring Boot application starts, it maintains a preset thread pool to handle incoming requests.

One thread picks up a request and serves it to the end.

In this approach, if the request involves a blocking IO (heavy database call) or long processing time, then the thread remains in a waiting state until the response is sent to the client.

In the meantime, this thread cannot be used to handle other requests, resulting in a waste of resources (memory, CPU, etc.).

If the request load increases and too many threads are blocked by previous requests, new incoming requests are dropped or time out.

We can handle this issue by increasing the thread pool size, but there are limitations (each new thread consumes extra resources like memory, CPU, etc.).

What is Spring WebFlux?

Spring WebFlux was added in Spring 5 as a new reactive, fully non-blocking framework.

It internally uses the Project Reactor, thus supporting the Reactive Streams Specification, and runs on such servers as Netty.

It provides a non-blocking web stack to handle concurrency with a small number of threads and fewer hardware resources.

Spring WebFlux supports both functional endpoints (using functions to route and handle requests) and annotated controllers (like old Spring MVC).

Spring WebFlux sits parallel to the traditional web framework in Spring and doesn't necessarily replace it.

Reactor Netty is the default embedded server in the Spring Boot WebFlux starter.

Netty uses the event loop model to provide highly scalable concurrency in a reactive, asynchronous manner.

What is R2DBC?

Reactive Relational Database Connectivity (R2DBC) is a specification designed from the ground up for reactive programming with SQL databases.

Spring Data R2DBC applies familiar Spring abstractions and repository support to R2DBC.

Spring Data R2DBC is compatible with H2, MariaDB, MS SQL Server, MySQL, Postgres, Oracle, etc.

What are Mono and Flux ?

The Spring WebFlux Handler method handles the request and returns Mono or Flux as a response.

Mono and Flux are both implementations of the Publisher interface.

A Mono object can emit at most one value for the onNext() request and then terminate with the onComplete() signal. Or, in case of failure, it only emits a single onError() signal.

A Flux can emit 0—many asynchronous values, possibly infinite values for onNext() requests—and then terminate with either a completion signal or an error signal.

Implementation (Spring Boot WebFlux + PostgreSQL)

Let's create a Spring Boot WebFlux application. This application will provide REST APIs to perform non-blocking CRUD operations.

We will use the PostgreSQL database to create, retrieve, update, and delete "User" related data.

1) Database

Let's first create a database and the required tables in PostgreSQL.

CREATE DATABASE "userDb"
    WITH 
    OWNER = postgres
    ENCODING = 'UTF8'
    LC_COLLATE = 'C'
    LC_CTYPE = 'C'
    TABLESPACE = pg_default
    CONNECTION LIMIT = -1;

CREATE TABLE users (
    id serial primary key,
    first_name varchar(50),
    last_name varchar(50)
)

2) Dependencies

Let's create a project with spring initializr, make sure to add required dependencies as shown in the picture below:

Dependencies

The final "pom.xml" should look something like this:

3) Configuration

Let's add the required "postgresql" related properties to "application.yml".

4) Model

We are creating non-blocking "CRUD" Rest APIs for a "User." Here are the model and dto to represent it:

5) Repository

This is where Spring Data R2DBC" comes into the picture, we are creating a "UserRepository" implementing "ReactiveCrudRepository", this will save us from writing any boilerplate code for JDBC stuff.

6) Service

This is just an abstraction between the data layer and controller; note how we are implementing "update()" to avoid any unintended data loss:

7) Controller

Finally, this is the place where we are defining the rest endpoints for our service; please pay special attention to the usage of "@RequestBody" and "@PathVariable".

8) Utility

This utility class provides static methods for conversion to and from "User" and "UserDto."

9) Spring Boot

This is a standard Spring Boot driver class; all execution begins here.

10) Testing

Now that we've completed the project setup, run the application and use Swagger for testing:

Source code: GitHub

Index
How to Implement PostgreSQL Full-Text Search with Spring Boot

15 min

Spring's transaction management with the @Transactional annotation

9 min

Spring Boot Rest APIs with PostgreSQL (Spring Boot + Rest APIs)

15 min

Caching in Spring Boot (@Cacheable, @CacheEvict & @CachePut)

21 min

Declarative REST Client in Spring Boot (Spring 6 HTTP Interface)

13 min

Circuit Breaker in Spring Boot (Spring Cloud Circuit Breaker + Resilience4j)

12 min

Handling Concurrent Service Calls in a Spring Boot Application: Asynchronous vs. Reactive Approaches

11 min

Profiling a Spring Boot application with Pyroscope

7 min

Service discovery in Spring Boot (Spring Cloud + Netflix Eureka)

9 min

Dockerize Spring Boot app and Push image to DockerHub (Spring Boot + DockerHub)

4 min

Creating a Jenkins Pipeline for Spring Boot application

2 min

Monitoring Microservices (Spring Boot + Micrometer + Prometheus + Grafana)

7 min

Edge Server Pattern in Microservices (Spring Cloud Gateway)

7 min

Circuit Breaker Pattern in Microservices (Spring BOOT + Resilience4j)

4 min

Spring Cloud config server setup with Git

8 min

Distributed Tracing in Microservices (Spring Cloud Sleuth + Zipkin)

9 min

Circuit Breaker Pattern with Resilience4J in a Spring Boot Application

24 min

Deploying Spring Boot microservices on Kubernetes Cluster

12 min

Reactive programming in Java with Project Reactor

50 min

Spring Reactive with PostgreSQL (Spring Boot WebFlux + PostgreSQL)

13 min

Spring Reactive, Thymeleaf Hello World (Spring Webflux + Thymeleaf + JS/CSS)

9 min

Problem JSON (application/problem+json) in Spring WebFlux

15 min

Spring Boot Login/Logout (Spring Security + MySql + Thymeleaf)

21 min

Securing Server-to-Server Communication with "Spring Boot" & "OAuth 2"

18 min

Integrating Elasticsearch with a Spring Boot and PostgreSQL application

16 min

Sending Emails in Spring Boot via SMTP

7 min

How to create a basic Spring 6 project using Maven

5 min

Spring Boot, Thymeleaf Hello World (Spring Boot + Thymeleaf + JS/CSS)

9 min