Creating web application with Spark Java framework

Background

Spark is  a Java framework that let's you create web application. In this post we will see how we can write a basic web application using Java Spark framework.  Do not confuse this with Apache Spark which is a big data framework.  If you want to quickly bring up a local server to test something out Spark Java let's you do it in the simplest way possible. You do not need application server. It embeds Jetty server inside it.

Setup

Add following dependencies in your pom.xml for gradle build.

        <dependency>
            <groupId>com.sparkjava</groupId>
            <artifactId>spark-core</artifactId>
            <version>2.7.1</version>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.slf4j</groupId>
            <artifactId>slf4j-simple</artifactId>
            <version>1.7.21</version>
        </dependency>

spark-core is the spark framework whereas slf4j-simple is for logging. Once above setup is done we can proceed to actual implement our rest application.

Getting Started with Java Spark

Following is a simple Spark code that starts a server and returns "Hello World!" in the response -

import spark.Request;
import spark.Response;
import spark.Route;
import spark.Spark;

/**
 * 
 * @author athakur
 *
 */
public class HelloWorldWithSpark {

    private static final Logger logger = LoggerFactory.getLogger(HelloWorldWithSpark.class);

    public static void main(String args[]) {
        Spark.get("/", new Route() {

            public Object handle(Request request, Response response) throws Exception {
                logger.debug("Received request!");
                return "Hello World!";
            }
        });
        ;
    }

}

Just run above Java code. It should start a jetty server and start listening for incoming requests. Default port that server listens on is 4567. So after running above code go to the browser and access following url  -

•  http://localhost:4567/

You should see "Hello World!" in the response.

Spark exposes static methods that let you define the URLs or routes you want to do some processing on and return some response. In above example we are listening on path "/" which is the root path and returning "Hello World!".


Same code in Java 8 perspective using functional programming/lambda would be -

public class HelloWorldWithSpark {

    private static final Logger logger = LoggerFactory.getLogger(HelloWorldWithSpark.class);

    public static void main(String args[]) {
        Spark.get("/", (req,res) -> {
            return "Hello World!";
        });
    }

}

NOTE : Here we are using GET verb but you can use any like POST, PUT etc.


You can easily create REST APIs from this. Sample example given below -

public class HelloWorldWithSpark {

    private static final Logger logger = LoggerFactory.getLogger(HelloWorldWithSpark.class);

    public static void main(String args[]) {
        
        Spark.get("/employee/:id", (req,res) -> {
            logger.debug("Got request to get employee with id : {}", req.params(":id"));
            return "Retrieved Employee No " + req.params(":id");
        });
        
        Spark.post("/employee/:id", (req,res) -> {
            logger.debug("Got request to add employee with id : {}", req.params(":id"));
            return "Added Employee No " + req.params(":id");
        });
    }

}

That was simple. Wasn't it? You want to deploy it in production like an actual web application in form of war you need to follow a bit different steps -

• http://sparkjava.com/documentation#embedded-web-server 

Related Links

• Spark Java documentation
• http://sparkjava.com/documentation#embedded-web-server