springboot-elasticsearch-thymeleaf

The goal of this project is to implement an application called product-app. It consists of two Spring Boot services: product-api (backend) and product-ui (frontend). The data will be stored in Elasticsearch.

Proof-of-Concepts & Articles

On ivangfr.github.io, I have compiled my Proof-of-Concepts (PoCs) and articles. You can easily search for the technology you are interested in by using the filter. Who knows, perhaps I have already implemented a PoC or written an article about what you are looking for.

Project diagram

Applications

• product-api

  Spring Boot Web Java application that exposes a REST API to manage products. Product information is stored in Elasticsearch. product-api uses Spring Data Elasticsearch to persist/query/delete data in Elasticsearch.

• product-ui

  Spring Boot Web application that was implemented using Thymeleaf as HTML template. Also, it uses Http Interfaces to simplify HTTP remote access to product-api.

Prerequisites

• Java 21 or higher;

• A containerization tool (e.g., Docker, Podman, etc.)

Start Environment

• Open a terminal and navigate to the springboot-elasticsearch-thymeleaf root folder run:

  docker compose up -d

• Wait for Elasticsearch Docker container to be up and running. To verify it, run:

  docker ps -a

Initialize Elasticsearch

Note	In the following steps, we will create an index, an alias and do a reindex using pre-defined scripts. In case you prefer to do it step-by-step calling Elasticsearch API, refer to Creating indexes, alias and reindexing using Elasticsearch API.

• In a terminal, make sure you are in the springboot-elasticsearch-thymeleaf root folder;

• Run the following script to create the index ecommerce.products.v1 with the alias ecommerce.products (you can use the default values by just pressing Enter on every user input):

  ./create-index.sh

• If you want to insert some products, run:

  ./insert-products.sh

• If you want to fix the reference property mapping error (explained below), run:

  ./reindex.sh

  The script ./reindex.sh is used to reindex one index to another. The default will reindex from ecommerce.products.v1 to ecommerce.products.v2. The only difference between elasticsearch/mapping-v1.json (used by ecommerce.products.v1) and elasticsearch/mapping-v2.json (used by ecommerce.products.v2) is the type of the reference property. In the former, it is set the type text and, in the latter, the type keyword.

  It’s interesting because the reference property has some special characters. An example of reference code is SBES@DDR4-10000. As it has the type text, Elasticsearch (using the standard analyzer) splits the content in tokens ['SBES', 'DDR4', 10000]. So, for example, if you are looking for a product with DDR4 RAM and, for some reason, the string DDR4 is present in the reference code of some product X, the product X will be selected, even if it doesn’t have DDR4 in its description.

  So, the script ./reindex.sh aims to fix it, setting the type keyword to the reference property. The DDR4 search issue won’t happen again because, from now on, Elasticsearch won’t tokenize the content present in the reference property.

Running applications using Maven

Below are the steps to start and run the applications using Maven. We will need to open a terminal for each one. Make sure you are in the springboot-elasticsearch-thymeleaf root folder while running the commands.

• product-api

  ./mvnw clean spring-boot:run --projects product-api

• product-ui

  ./mvnw clean spring-boot:run --projects product-ui -Dspring-boot.run.jvmArguments="-Dserver.port=9080"

Running applications as Docker containers

• Build Docker Images

  • In a terminal, make sure you are in the springboot-elasticsearch-thymeleaf root folder;

  • Run the following script:

    ./build-docker-images.sh

• Environment Variables

  • product-api

    Environment Variable	Description
    ELASTICSEARCH_URIS	Specify uris of the Elasticsearch search engine to use (default localhost:9200)

  • product-ui

    Environment Variable	Description
    PRODUCT_API_URL	Specify url of the product-api service to use (default http://localhost:8080)

• Run Docker containers

  • In a terminal, make sure you are in the springboot-elasticsearch-thymeleaf root folder;

  • Run the following script:

    ./start-apps.sh

Application’s URL

Application	URL
product-api	http://localhost:8080/swagger-ui.html
product-ui	http://localhost:9080

Demo

• Below is a simple demo showing a user interacting with product-ui:

  

Shutdown

• To stop applications:

  • If they were started with Maven, go to product-api and product-ui terminals and press Ctrl+C;

  • If they were started as Docker containers, go to a terminal and, inside the springboot-elasticsearch-thymeleaf root folder, run the script below:

    ./stop-apps.sh

• To stop and remove docker compose containers, network and volumes, go to a terminal and, inside the springboot-elasticsearch-thymeleaf root folder, run the following command:

  docker compose down -v

Cleanup

To remove the Docker images created by this project, go to a terminal and, inside the springboot-elasticsearch-thymeleaf root folder, run the script below:

./remove-docker-images.sh