Build a Book Catalog API with Spring Boot 4

Table of Contents

1. Challenge

   Introduction

   The purpose of this lab is to guide you through the basics of building an application in Spring Boot 4. This lab will cover the views and controller of the presentation layer, as well as, the service used in the business layer. Since you will be working with a local JSON file for data, the persistence and database layers will be outside the scope of this lab.

   You can run the application after completing the lab by clicking the Run button in the Terminal or by running the command ./gradlew bootRun. Once your application is running, visit your application using this URL: {{localhost:8081}}

   On the Please sign in screen, type admin for the Username and pspassword123 for the Password.

2. Challenge

   Implementing the Service

   The first component of this application you will need to complete is the BookCatalogService.java. This service contains all of the logic and functions your application will need to perform such as adding, editing, and deleting books.

   The boilerplate code to the service already instantiates the catalog as a list of book data from a json file and sorts it by id for you. Next, you will need to implement the binarySearch() function to search for the index of a book in the book catalogue using the binary search algorithm. Next, you will need to implement the addBook() method, which should generate a new Book based on the given parameters before adding it to the catalog of books. Now, you will to implement the updateBook() method, which will update the specified book in the book catalog with its updated values. Lastly, you will need to implement the removeBook() method, which will use the binarySearch() function you implemented earlier to remove a book from the catalog.

3. Challenge

   Implementing the Controller

   Now you need to complete the controller for the application, which is located in BookController.java. The controller is responsible for handling HTTP requests from the apps HTML views by using the methods implemented in BookCatalogService. It then passes back data to the views to be displayed for the user.

   The first endpoint you will need to implement is the homePage(). Next, you will need to implement the editBookPage() endpoint for when the user wishes to edit a book currently in the catalog. The updateBook() endpoint is then called after the user has inputted any edits to the book they wish to modify and submits those changes. The addBookPage() is called when the user wishes to add a new book to the catalog. Like the updateBook() endpoint, the addNewBook() endpoint is called after the user has inputted the data for a new book to be added and submits them. Lastly, the deleteBook() endpoint is called when a user wishes to delete a book from the catalog.

4. Challenge

   Implementing the View

   Lastly, you will need to add some finishing touches to the views layer. In this application, the Thymeleaf template engine from Spring is used to render HTML files such as home.html, add-book.html, and edit-book.html. The controller endpoints you implemented in the previous step dictates which of these HTML files the user is currently viewing at any given time.

   While the HTML files are mostly complete, you will need to add a few Thymeleaf specific attributes to certain elements that will dynamically render data from the catalog. Let's start with home.html. Next, you will need to add the appropriate attribute bindings to add-book.html. Once more, you will also need to add the appropriate attribute bindings to edit-book.html. With all of these tasks completed, the application is now complete and should be fully functional! Refer back to the introduction on running and viewing the application.