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I started the REST project on github to explore writing an elegant RESTful Web Service with the latest and greatest Spring had to offer. That was the daily SNAPSHOT builds of Spring 3.1, which went GA at the end of last year.

Since then, the project has generated a number of posts, on a variety of topics, all targeting the process of building, configuring and securing a proper REST API with Spring.

Bootstrapping the web application with Spring 3.1 and Java based Configuration

The focus is on bootstrapping the web application by configuring Spring fully with Java. As an alternative, the Spring Context can be defined in Java while still leaving the bulk of the configuration in XML.

The Persistence Layer with Spring 3.1 and Hibernate

The focus here is setting up the persistence with Spring 3.1 and Hibernate.

The Persistence Layer with Spring 3.1 and JPA

This article is similar – it discusses the option of setting up persistence with Spring 3.1 and JPA, with Hibernate as the persistence provider behind JPA.

Simplifying the Data Access Layer with Spring and Java Generics

Before turning to Spring Data to simplify the DAO layer with Spring, a pure Java option is introduced – a single, generified DAO, resulting in elegant data access, with no unnecessary clutter.

The Persistence Layer with Spring Data JPA

This makes the jump into Spring Data JPA, detailing the configuration and setup of Persistence with Spring 3.1 and Spring Data JPA. This will result in an extremely lightweight DAO layer, with only a few interfaces, with Spring Data actually generating the DAOs and queries automatically.

Transaction configuration with JPA and Spring 3.1

The focus here is transaction configuration with Spring 3.1 and JPA; transaction management in Spring, best practices, the transaction propagation and common JPA pitfalls are all discussed in detail.

Building a RESTful Web Service with Spring 3.1 and Java based Configuration

Moving to the Web Layer, the article focuses on setting up REST with Spring, the Controller and HTTP response codes, configuration of payload marshalling and content negotiation with both XML and JSON.

RESTful Web Service Discoverability

This continues the discussion on RESTful architecture, focusing on Discoverability of the RESTful service, HATEOAS and practical scenarios driven by tests.

REST Service Discoverability with Spring

Continuing the previous article on Discoverability in a RESTful architecture, the focus here is on the actual implementation of discoverability and satisfying the HATEOAS constraint in Spring 3.1.

Securing a RESTful Web Service with Spring Security 3.1

Moving over to security, the focus here is on basic Form-based authentication with Spring Security 3.1.

Basic and Digest authentication for a RESTful Service with Spring Security 3.1

This article picks up the other options of securing a REST service with Spring – discussing Basic and Digest authentication and how to configure both protocols for the same URI mapping of the API.

That was 2011; looking ahead, to get the REST service to production quality, 2012 will focus on:

• pagination in REST
• a request limitation mechanism for REST
• richer link semantics in REST and a ATOM based REST representation
• moving to Neo4J as the main persistence engine
• securing REST with Spring and OAuth 2

If you found this series useful, you should follow me on twitter here.