Spring PetClinic Sample Application

Understanding the Spring Petclinic application with a few diagrams

See the presentation here

Running petclinic locally

Petclinic is a Spring Boot application built using Maven. You can build a jar file and run it from the command line:

cd spring-petclinic
./mvnw package
java -jar target/app.jar

You can then access petclinic here: http://localhost:8080/

Or you can run it from Maven directly using the Spring Boot Maven plugin. If you do this it will pick up changes that you make in the project immediately (changes to Java source files require a compile as well - most people use an IDE for this):

./mvnw spring-boot:run

Database configuration

In its default configuration, Petclinic uses an in-memory database (H2) which gets populated at startup with data. The h2 console is automatically exposed at http://localhost:8080/h2-console and it is possible to inspect the content of the database using the jdbc:h2:mem:testdb url.

A similar setup is provided for MySql in case a persistent database configuration is needed. Note that whenever the database type is changed, the app needs to be run with a different profile: spring.profiles.active=mysql for MySql (and also keep in mind that the database details, such as the url/user/password, need to be passed to the application).

Working with Petclinic in your IDE

Prerequisites

The following items should be installed in your system:

• Java 8 or newer.
• Git command line tool
• Your preferred IDE
  • Eclipse with the m2e plugin. Note: when m2e is available, there is an m2 icon in Help -> About dialog. If m2e is not there, just follow the install process here: Eclipse m2e
  • Spring Tools Suite (STS)
  • IntelliJ IDEA
  • VS Code

Steps

1. Inside Eclipse or STS

    File -> Import -> Maven -> Existing Maven project
   

   Then either build on the command line ./mvnw generate-resources or using the Eclipse launcher (right click on project and Run As -> Maven install) to generate the css. Run the application main method by right clicking on it and choosing Run As -> Java Application.

2. Inside IntelliJ IDEA In the main menu, choose File -> Open and select the Petclinic pom.xml. Click on the Open button.

   CSS files are generated from the Maven build. You can either build them on the command line ./mvnw generate-resources or right click on the spring-petclinic project then Maven -> Generates sources and Update Folders.

   A run configuration named PetClinicApplication should have been created for you if you’re using a recent Ultimate version. Otherwise, run the application by right clicking on the PetClinicApplication main class and choosing Run 'PetClinicApplication'.

3. Navigate to Petclinic Visit http://localhost:8080 in your browser.

Looking for something in particular?

Spring Boot Configuration	Class or Java property files
The Main Class	PetClinicApplication
Properties Files	application.properties
Caching	CacheConfiguration

License

The Spring PetClinic sample application is released under version 2.0 of the Apache License.

Notes

This is a slightly modified version of the sample Spring Boot Pet Clinic Application. The original can be found here.