Hackforge Academy

Explanation

Search APIs allow clients to find records based on specific criteria such as name, email, department, or keyword. Spring Boot and Spring Data JPA provide multiple approaches to implement search functionality efficiently.

Code:

@Entity
public class Student {

    @Id
    @GeneratedValue(strategy = 
GenerationType.IDENTITY)
    private Long id;

    private String name;
    private String email;
    private String department;
}

Explanation

Spring Data JPA can generate search queries automatically using method naming conventions. The 'Containing' keyword is commonly used for partial text searches.

Code:

public interface StudentRepository 
extends JpaRepository<Student, Long> {

    List<Student> 
findByNameContaining(String keyword);
}

Explanation

A REST endpoint can accept search keywords through query parameters and return matching records from the database.

Code:

@GetMapping("/students/search")
public List<Student> searchStudents(
        @RequestParam String keyword) {

    return studentRepository.
findByNameContaining(keyword);
}

Explanation

Custom JPQL queries provide more control when searching across multiple fields. This is useful when users need to search by name, email, or department using a single keyword.

Code:

@Query("SELECT s FROM Student s WHERE " +
       "LOWER(s.name) LIKE 
LOWER(CONCAT('%', :keyword, '%')) OR " +
       "LOWER(s.email) 
LIKE LOWER(CONCAT('%', :keyword, '%'))")
List<Student> searchByKeyword(
@Param("keyword") String keyword);

Explanation

Search APIs often include pagination and sorting to improve performance and user experience. This prevents large result sets from being returned in a single response.

Code:

@GetMapping("/students/search")
public Page<Student> searchStudents(
        @RequestParam String keyword,
        @RequestParam int page,
        @RequestParam int size) {

    Pageable pageable = 
PageRequest.of(page, size);
    return studentRepository.
findByNameContaining(keyword, pageable);
}