React JS + Spring Boot REST API Example Tutorial

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In this tutorial, we will create a simple "single page application" using React as frontend and spring boot as backend.
React is used to build user interfaces (UI) on the front end.
Spring boot is popular to develop RESTful web services and microservices.
Learn spring boot at https://www.javaguides.net/p/spring-boot-tutorial.html

If you want to use React Hooks in React App then check out React JS ( React Hooks) + Spring Boot Tutorial 

As we know, React is a JavaScript-based library that does not have the ability to make HTTP requests; thus, we need to use third-party libraries to achieve this.
There are plenty of libraries available to make HTTP calls into React apps. A few of them are listed below.
  • Axios
  • Fetch
  • Superagent
  • React-axios
  • Use-http
  • React-request
We will use the Axios HTTP library to make HTTP Get REST API call in this example tutorial.

YouTube Video

5. Prerequisites

  • Basic familiarity with HTML & CSS
  • Basic knowledge of JavaScript and programming
  • Spring Boot Basics
  • ReactJS basics
  • Node.js and npm installed globally

What we will build?

We will build two projects:
  1. sprintboot-backend (server) – To develop REST API
  2. react-frontend (client) – Consume REST API

Client-Server Architecture

1. Develop Spring Boot Backend Application

We will use Spring Data JPA to develop the repository layer and we use the H2 in-memory database to store the data.

1. Create a Spring Boot Application

There are many ways to create a Spring Boot application. You can refer to below articles to create a Spring Boot application.

2. Add maven dependencies

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<project
    xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0"
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
 xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 https://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd">
    <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
    <parent>
        <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-parent</artifactId>
        <version>2.3.0.RELEASE</version>
        <relativePath/>
        <!-- lookup parent from repository -->
    </parent>
    <groupId>net.javaguides</groupId>
    <artifactId>springboot-backend</artifactId>
    <version>0.0.1-SNAPSHOT</version>
    <name>springboot-backend</name>
    <description>Demo project for Spring Boot</description>
    <properties>
        <java.version>1.8</java.version>
    </properties>
    <dependencies>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-data-jpa</artifactId>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-web</artifactId>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>com.h2database</groupId>
            <artifactId>h2</artifactId>
            <scope>runtime</scope>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-test</artifactId>
            <scope>test</scope>
            <exclusions>
                <exclusion>
                    <groupId>org.junit.vintage</groupId>
                    <artifactId>junit-vintage-engine</artifactId>
                </exclusion>
            </exclusions>
        </dependency>
    </dependencies>
    <build>
        <plugins>
            <plugin>
                <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
                <artifactId>spring-boot-maven-plugin</artifactId>
            </plugin>
        </plugins>
    </build>
</project>

Create JPA Entity - User.java

Create a new package called model inside net.javaguides.springboot package and then create the User class inside the model package with the following contents -
package net.javaguides.springboot.model;

import javax.persistence.Column;
import javax.persistence.Entity;
import javax.persistence.GeneratedValue;
import javax.persistence.GenerationType;
import javax.persistence.Id;
import javax.persistence.Table;

@Entity
@Table(name = "users")
public class User {

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

    @Column(name = "first_name")
    private String firstName;

    @Column(name = "last_name")
    private String lastName;

    private String email;

    public User() {

    }

    public User(String firstName, String lastName, String email) {
        super();
        this.firstName = firstName;
        this.lastName = lastName;
        this.email = email;
    }
    public long getId() {
        return id;
    }
    public void setId(long id) {
        this.id = id;
    }
    public String getFirstName() {
        return firstName;
    }
    public void setFirstName(String firstName) {
        this.firstName = firstName;
    }
    public String getLastName() {
        return lastName;
    }
    public void setLastName(String lastName) {
        this.lastName = lastName;
    }
    public String getEmail() {
        return email;
    }
    public void setEmail(String email) {
        this.email = email;
    }
}

Create Spring Data JPA Repository - UserRepository.java

Create a new package called repository inside net.javaguides.springboot package and then create the following interface inside the repository package -
package net.javaguides.springboot.repository;

import org.springframework.data.jpa.repository.JpaRepository;
import org.springframework.stereotype.Repository;

import net.javaguides.springboot.model.User;

@Repository
public interface UserRepository extends JpaRepository<User, Long>{

}

Spring Controller with REST API - /api/users

Let's create a UserController class and add the following code to it:
package net.javaguides.springboot.controller;

import java.util.List;

import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Autowired;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.CrossOrigin;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.GetMapping;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RequestMapping;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RestController;

import net.javaguides.springboot.model.User;
import net.javaguides.springboot.repository.UserRepository;

@CrossOrigin(origins = "http://localhost:3000")
@RestController
@RequestMapping("api/")
public class UserController {

    @Autowired
    private UserRepository userRepository;

    @GetMapping("users")
    public List < User > getUsers() {
        return this.userRepository.findAll();
    }
}
Note that we have added the below line of code to avoid CORS issues:
@CrossOrigin(origins = "http://localhost:3000")

Run Spring Boot Application and Test Rest API

Let's insert a few records in the users table while application startup.
Let's run this spring boot application from IDE -> Right-click -> Run As -> Java Application:
package net.javaguides.springboot;

import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Autowired;
import org.springframework.boot.CommandLineRunner;
import org.springframework.boot.SpringApplication;
import org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.SpringBootApplication;

import net.javaguides.springboot.model.User;
import net.javaguides.springboot.repository.UserRepository;

@SpringBootApplication
public class SpringbootBackendApplication implements CommandLineRunner {

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        SpringApplication.run(SpringbootBackendApplication.class, args);
    }

    @Autowired
    private UserRepository userRepository;

    @Override
    public void run(String...args) throws Exception {
        this.userRepository.save(new User("Ramesh", "Fadatare", "ramesh@gmail.com"));
        this.userRepository.save(new User("Tom", "Cruise", "tom@gmail.com"));
        this.userRepository.save(new User("Tony", "Stark", "tony@gmail.com"));
    }
}
Hit this "http://localhost:8080/api/users" link in a browser will popular list of users as JSON:
[{"id":1,"firstName":"Ramesh","lastName":"Fadatare","email":"ramesh@gmail.com"},{"id":2,"firstName":"Tom","lastName":"Cruise","email":"tom@gmail.com"},{"id":3,"firstName":"Tony","lastName":"Stark","email":"tony@gmail.com"}]

Build React JS Frontend Application

Let's go ahead and create a React application to consume /api/users REST API.

1 - Create a React UI with Create React App

The Create React App CLI tool is an officially supported way to create single-page React applications. It offers a modern build setup with no configuration.
To create a new app, you may choose one of the following methods:

Using npx

npx create-react-app react-frontend

Using npm

npm init react-app react-frontend
npm init is available in npm 6+

Using Yarn

yarn create react-app react-frontend
Running any of these commands will create a directory called react-frontend inside the current folder. Inside that directory, it will generate the initial project structure and install the transitive dependencies:
react-frontend
├── README.md
├── node_modules
├── package.json
├── .gitignore
├── public
│   ├── favicon.ico
│   ├── index.html
│   ├── logo192.png
│   ├── logo512.png
│   ├── manifest.json
│   └── robots.txt
└── src
    ├── App.css
    ├── App.js
    ├── App.test.js
    ├── index.css
    ├── index.js
    ├── logo.svg
    └── serviceWorker.js
Let's explore important files and folders of the react project.
For the project to build, these files must exist with exact filenames:
  • public/index.html is the page template;
  • src/index.js is the JavaScript entry point. 
You can delete or rename the other files Let's quickly explore the project structure.

package.json - The package.json file contains all the required dependencies for our React JS project. Most importantly, you can check the current version of React that you are using. It has all the scripts to start, build, and eject our React app.
public folder - The public folder contains index.html. As react is used to build a single page application, we have this single HTML file to render all our components. Basically, it's an HTML template. It has a div element with id as root and all our components are rendered in this div with index.html as a single page for the complete react app.
src folder- In this folder, we have all the global javascript and CSS files. All the different components that we will be building, sit here.
index.js - This is the top renderer of your react app. 
node_modules - All the packages installed by NPM or Yarn will reside inside the node_modules folder.
App.js - The App.js file contains the definition of our App component which actually gets rendered in the browser and this is the root component.

2 - Adding Bootstrap in React Using NPM

Open a new terminal window, navigate to your project's folder, and run the following command:
$ npm install bootstrap --save
After installing the bootstrap package, you will need to import it in your React app entry file.
Open the src/index.js file and add the following code:
import 'bootstrap/dist/css/bootstrap.min.css';

src/index.js

Here is the complete code for the index.js file:
import React from 'react';
import ReactDOM from 'react-dom';
import './index.css';
import App from './App';
import * as serviceWorker from './serviceWorker';
import 'bootstrap/dist/css/bootstrap.min.css';

ReactDOM.render(
  <React.StrictMode>
    <App />
  </React.StrictMode>,
  document.getElementById('root')
);

// If you want your app to work offline and load faster, you can change
// unregister() to register() below. Note this comes with some pitfalls.
// Learn more about service workers: https://bit.ly/CRA-PWA
serviceWorker.unregister();

3. React Service Component - REST API Call

For our API calls, we will be using Axios. Below is the npm command to install Axios.
npm add axios
Below is the UserService.js service implementation to make our HTTP REST call via Axios. 
Our backend User endpoint is available at http://localhost:8080/api/users.
import axios from 'axios'

const USERS_REST_API_URL = 'http://localhost:8080/api/users';

class UserService {

    getUsers(){
        return axios.get(USERS_REST_API_URL);
    }
}

export default new UserService();
Make sure that you create an object of UserService class export it as:
export default new UserService();

4. Develop a React Component

Components are the building blocks of our whole react app. They are like functions that accept inputs in terms of props, state, and outputs a UI that is rendered in the browser. They are reusable and composable.
React components can be either a function component or a class component. In this example, we are going to use the class component.
Let's create a UserComponent.js file and add the following code to it.
import React from 'react';
import UserService from '../services/UserService';

class UserComponent extends React.Component {

    constructor(props){
        super(props)
        this.state = {
            users:[]
        }
    }

    componentDidMount(){
        UserService.getUsers().then((response) => {
            this.setState({ users: response.data})
        });
    }

    render (){
        return (
            <div>
                <h1 className = "text-center"> Users List</h1>
                <table className = "table table-striped">
                    <thead>
                        <tr>

                            <td> User Id</td>
                            <td> User First Name</td>
                            <td> User Last Name</td>
                            <td> User Email Id</td>
                        </tr>

                    </thead>
                    <tbody>
                        {
                            this.state.users.map(
                                user => 
                                <tr key = {user.id}>
                                     <td> {user.id}</td>   
                                     <td> {user.firstName}</td>   
                                     <td> {user.lastName}</td>   
                                     <td> {user.email}</td>   
                                </tr>
                            )
                        }

                    </tbody>
                </table>

            </div>

        )
    }
}

export default UserComponent
Let's understand the above code step by step.
  • constructor() - The constructor () is invoked before the component is mounted. In the constructor, we have declared our state variables and bind the different methods so that they are accessible from the state inside of the render() method.
  • componentDidMount() - The componentDidMount() is called as soon as the component is mounted and ready. 
  • render() - The render() method is the most used lifecycle method. The render() method actually outputs HTML to the DOM.
We are using the map operator to loop over our user list and create the view like:
{
 this.state.users.map(
  user => 
  <tr key = {user.id}>
    <td> {user.id}</td>   
    <td> {user.firstName}</td>   
    <td> {user.lastName}</td>   
    <td> {user.email}</td>   
  </tr>
 )
}

5. App.js

In the previous step, we have created UserComponent so let's go ahead add UserComponent to the App component:
import React from 'react';
import logo from './logo.svg';
import './App.css';
import UserComponent from './components/UserComponent';

function App() {
  return (
    <div className="App">
        <UserComponent />
    </div>
  );
}

export default App;

6. Run React App

Use the below command to start the project:
npm start
Use yarn to start the project:
yarn start
Runs the app in development mode. Open http://localhost:3000 to view it in the browser.

Conclusion

In this tutorial, we have created a simple "single page application" using React as frontend and spring boot as backend. We have also seen how to integrate React frontend application with spring boot backend using Axios HTTP library.
If you want to use React Hooks in React App then check out React JS ( React Hooks) + Spring Boot Tutorial 

Related Spring and Spring Boot Tutorials/Guides:

Spring Boot Tutorials [500+] Spring Boot Testing Tutorial Spring Boot Microservice Tutorial Spring Boot Kafka Microservices Spring Boot + Apache Kafka Tutorial Spring Core Tutorial Spring MVC Tutorial Spring Data JPA Tutorial Spring Framework for Beginners Spring AOP Tutorial Spring Security Tutorial Spring Exceptions Tutorial Spring Boot Interview Questions Spring Boot Microservices Interview Questions Apache Kafka Tutorials Docker Tutorials and Guides Spring Boot RabbitMQ Tutorials Angular CRUD Example with Spring Boot Spring Boot + Angular 12 CRUD Full Stack Spring Boot + Angular 8 CRUD Full Stack Spring Boot + Angular 10 CRUD Full Stack Spring Boot + React JS CRUD Full Stack React JS ( React Hooks) + Spring Boot Spring Boot Thymeleaf CRUD Full Stack Spring Boot User Registration and Login Node Js + Express + MongoDB CRUD Vue JS + Spring Boot REST API Tutorial

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