Overview

This is a learning project, and can be used as a starting point for a RESTful web service implemented with Spring 3.1 and Java configuration.

Because it's a learning project, most of it's implementation is explained carefully and in great detail, in a series of posts:

Spring and Maven basics

• Java based Spring Configuration
  
• Usage of new concepts introduced with Spring 3.1
  
• How to set up Integration Testing with the Maven Cargo plugin

Web Tier (REST)

• Spring MVC for the REST web service
  
• Driving API discoverability with integration test
  
• Implementation of Discoverability with Spring
  
• REST advanced content type negotiation
  

Security

• Security of the REST web service with Spring Security 3.1
  
• Basic and Digest authentication for the same URI mapping of the RESTful service
  

Persistence

• The Persistence Layer with Spring 3.1 and Hibernate
  
• The Persistence Layer with Spring 3.1 and JPA
  
• Simplifying the Data Access Layer with Spring and Java Generics
  

Testing

• Integration testing of the REST service
  
• Comprehensive unit testing of the web tier, focusing on relevant behaviors to avoid brittleness
  

TECHNOLOGY STACK

• Spring 3.1 with Jackson, JAXB
  
• Hibernate 3.6 (to be moved to Hibernate 4.0 soon)
  
• Junit, Mockito, Hamcrest, rest-assured
  

FURTHER DEVELOPMENT

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• improvements in validation and HTTP response codes
• improving the marshaling of the server stack trace
• expand on the design document, covering: details of the transaction strategy