In our , we looked at running a Spring Boot application on Choreo. We used an in-memory H2 database, which isn't robust enough for a real-world application. For instance, if the application restarts, all the added employee data disappears. In this article, we’ll address how to configure a persistent database, moving our app one step closer to being production-ready. previous article To create the database, I’m using the newly introduced feature in Choreo, which allows you to create MySQL or PostgreSQL databases on any cloud provider of your choice. DB as a Service Creating a Database Navigate to the Choreo Console and go to your Organization’s Home page. Make sure you're in the view that lists all projects in your organization. Select -> from the left menu (this option only appears in the organization’s view). Dependencies Databases It will bring up the following screen. Click ' ' and select a database type. I’ll be using MySQL. Give a name like and click ' '. Create employee-db Next You’ll be prompted to select a cloud provider and a plan. I’ll go with as the Provider and as the plan. Since my application runs in the US region, I’ll choose the for the Database location. Click . Digital Ocean Hobbyist United States Next Your database will now start provisioning, which will take a few minutes. While the database is provisioning, we can make some changes to our Spring Boot application. If you want to follow along, you can get the base version - where we stopped from the previous article. Or you can use if you prefer to skip ahead and go straight to deployment. from here this branch Changing the Spring Boot App Clone the repository and check out the code: git clone git@github.com:jaadds/employee.git

cd employee Since we’re transitioning from an in-memory H2 database, we need to replace the H2 dependency with the MySQL driver in the . pom.xml Replace: <dependency>
	<groupId>com.h2database</groupId>
	<artifactId>h2</artifactId>
	<version>2.2.222</version>
</dependency> with <dependency>
	<groupId>mysql</groupId>
	<artifactId>mysql-connector-java</artifactId>
	<version>8.0.27</version>
</dependency> Then, you need to add the following properties specifying connection details for your database. Add these to . src/main/resources/application.properties spring.datasource.url=jdbc:mysql://<HOST>:<PORT>/<DEFAULT DATABASE>
spring.datasource.username=<DEFAULT USER>
spring.datasource.password=<PASSWORD>
spring.datasource.driver-class-name=com.mysql.cj.jdbc.Driver If the database has finished provisioning, you can start the application and verify its connectivity: ./mvnw spring-boot:run Since the database is empty, the GET operation won’t return any results. Instead, try adding an employee with a POST request: curl -H "Content-Type: application/json" -X POST http://localhost:8080/api/employees -d '{"firstName":"Frodo","lastName":"Baggins","email":"frodo@bagend.me"}' If you’re getting a response without errors, then you’ve configured the database correctly. But don’t hastily commit the code just yet. There are a few more changes to be made. Using Environment Variables for Connection Parameters In practice, we don’t commit sensitive details like database connection parameters in plain text. Since they’re in a repository, anyone with access to the repo could then change the database. Instead, we use environment variables as placeholders. We can set these variables in our local environment to get the values resolved properly. Let’s change the application.properties file to use environment variables. In Spring Boot, when you specify a name in the format, the value is read from the environment. Replace our connection details with the following: ${VAR_NAME} spring.datasource.url=jdbc:mysql://${DB_HOST}:${DB_PORT}/${DB_NAME}
spring.datasource.username=${DB_USER}
spring.datasource.password=${DB_PASSWORD} Set the values for these variables in your environment like this: export DB_PORT=<PORT>
export DB_HOST=<HOST>
export DB_NAME=<DEFAULT DATABASE>
export DB_PASSWORD=<PASSWORD>
export DB_USER=<DEFAULT USER> Restart the Spring Boot application and make sure it starts without errors: ./mvnw spring-boot:run Call the GET operation and verify that the application can access the database and return results: curl http://localhost:8080/api/employees Now, you’re ready to commit the changes and push them to your repository. Deploying Changes to Choreo If you’re using a single branch to keep your changes, you can proceed directly to the . In my case, I've used a different branch named to maintain the changes discussed here. So, I need to inform Choreo about this new branch. deployment section database Pointing the new branch (Optional) Go to your component's overview page on Choreo. Select the ' ' dropdown in the top-left corner and click ' '. Deployment Track Create New Choose the branch and enter for the API version, then click ' '. We're effectively creating a new deployment track by pointing to our new branch. This feature allows you to run two versions of the same app simultaneously. Changes in the 'main' branch are exposed as API version 1.0, and changes in the 'database' branch will be under v1.1. You can learn more about this feature . v1.1 Create here Now, if you go to the ' ' page, you'll see changes from the 'Database' branch ready for deployment. Deploy Deploying the App In this section, we’ll continue with deploying the app and look at how to securely set the connection details using the environment variables we defined earlier. Go to the Deploy page and make sure the Build Area shows your latest commit. Click the ' button to start the wizard. The first step is to set environment variables. Configure & Deploy’ Click the ' ' button and input the following environment variables: Add - The database host URL DB_HOST - The database port DB_PORT - The database name DB_NAME - The default username DB_USER - The database password (mark this as a secret) DB_PASSWORD After specifying all the values, click ' ' to proceed through the remaining steps, which we won't need to modify. Finally, click ' ' to initiate the deployment. Next Deploy This will trigger the build and deployment, which will take a couple of minutes to complete. So, while the deployment is in progress, let’s recap what we’ve done. By setting the environment variables, we've specified the connection details for that particular environment. When deploying an app through Choreo, underneath, they get deployed to a Kubernetes cluster. The environment variables we specified, are set in a config map. Since the app and the config map are in the same namespace, these values are available only to that specific app. What about the password? Since we marked it as a secret, Choreo stores it as a Kubernetes secret, and its value is kept in an . Because the app, secret, and ConfigMap are all deployed in the same namespace, only the intended app gets to read the values. Different apps from different organizations cannot read the values just by guessing their names. Azure KeyVault If the deployment is done by now, we can test the app. Testing the App Open the Swagger console and test the API by invoking the operation. Check whether the details you added locally are correctly retrieved. GET /employees !! You've configured the database successfully. Well done In this post, our goal was to add persistence to our application. We connected a DB to our application running on the Development environment. However, when dealing with micro-services, it's common practice to use separate databases for different environments. As an exercise, you can create another database and use it while promoting your app to Production. Let me know how it goes.

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Amila De Silva

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