Spring Boot REST API: Blog

RESTful API for blog with posts, comments, authorization/authentication using Java/Spring Boot

Branch main is setup to work with a PostgreSQL database, for deployment to Heroku. The application.properties file is also setup to accomodate this - live project here!

To run locally:

• Clone the project to your local machine, and install the dependencies.

• Make sure your Docker container with your database is running (see below - Note 2)

• From the command line, navigate to root directory of the project, and enter the following:

./mvnw spring-boot:run

• If you have maven locally installed, then run instead:

mvn spring-boot:run

Alternatively, use Intellij IDEA and simply run the application from within the IDE.

API documentation:

• To view live documentation, go here!
• To view the Swagger-UI API documentation once the application is up and running, got to (http://localhost:8080/swagger-ui/index.html)

Note 1: Requires use of environment variables

• Required environment variables:

  • your application.properties file requires the use of the following variables:
    • JDBC_DATABASE_URL
      • If running locally the format of this url should be:
      • jdbc:postgresql://localhost:5432/my-database-name?createDatabaseIfNotExist=true
    • JDBC_DATABASE_USERNAME
    • JDBC_DATABASE_PASSWORD
    • JWT_SECRET
  • Either enter these directly into the application.properties file by replacing the respective variable name with same plaintext, or associate the variables correctly using a .env file. Alternatively, you can easily set these variables directly through the Intellij IDEA IDE.

• Use of .env file for Docker

  • The docker-compose.yml file will look for a .env as well, specifically for the POSTGRES_PASSWORD. Make sure this file is created in the root directory of the project. This will be the password assigned to your mysql database that will run in a Docker container.

    • NOTE: JDBC_DATABASE_PASSWORD must match exactly environment variable of the same name in the application.properties file.

      • This will be the password assigned to your mysql database that will run in a Docker container. Your docker-compose.yml file is expecting it, and your application.properties currently requires it.

Note 2: Requires Docker to run locally

• Install Docker Desktop
• Make sure Docker Desktop is running
• Use Docker compose to start the container that holds your database:
  • In the root directory of the project, run the following command from your terminal:

  docker compose up -d
  

  • the -d runs the container in detached mode, allowing you access to your terminal once the container is running