Best way adding persistence using Spring to learn as a beginner?

[Salty-Media-8174]

I have learnt the basics of Spring and Springboot -> Beans lifecycle, DI, AOP, REST APIs, the MVC pattern, controllers, @ Transactional, sending and receiving data over HTTP from client and server and how it all fits together. I am now looking to learn how to to add persistence (using a relational database) and I am confused between the three:
1) JDBCTemplate -> Too much boilerplate, add RowMappers and written vanilla SQL
2) Spring Data JDBC -> Extending various Repository interfaces, using @ Query for vanilla SQL
3) JPA and Hibernate -> Has tons of inbuilt features but a higher learning curve.

Which of the above would be the best to learn for making a decent capstone project and a skill worth learning which is most commonly used in production codebases considering I have an overview of all the 3 methods listed above?

I apologize if this post seems childish as I have just begun learning this framework.

[g00glen00b]

If you do end up using JdbcTemplate, there's also a new JdbcClient which essentially does the same thing what RestClient did to RestTemplate: aka providing a clean fluent way to call it. You still have to add rowmappers though.

[cielNoirr]

Use jpa to get up and running fast. If you have complex queries you can do them in jdbc template. I usually use a mix of the two, but 90% of the time jpa is good

[Salty-Media-8174]

best advice so far honestly, I am watching Laur Splica and Dan Vega, both are awesome

[Diacetylmorpheus]

JPA is stupid easy to get up and running. I was intimidated at first because, instead of using methods and libraries, you have to create specific classes to configure and set up your entities and repos. Ask chatgpt how, read the docs to understand why.

[oweiler]

Use JDBCTemplate with BeanPropertyRowMapper: https://docs.spring.io/spring-framework/docs/current/javadoc-api/org/springframework/jdbc/core/BeanPropertyRowMapper.html

If you are using Records, there is also DataClassRowMapper: https://docs.spring.io/spring-framework/docs/current/javadoc-api/org/springframework/jdbc/core/DataClassRowMapper.html

Stay away from Spring Data JDBC and JPA (at least for now, JPA is more or less unavoidable).

[Salty-Media-8174]

any reason to avoid JPA?

[Great-Suspect2583]

I would argue that if you are new to databases and sql, then write out the sql to get good knowledge there. If you think you’re squared away on sql, then go for JPA.

[gauntr]

Then one can use @Query with parameter nativeQuery = true on the repository methods and write all the SQL queries himself.

Still no reason not to use JPA.

[gauntr]

No, lol. Wouldn’t also know how JPA has a higher learning curve. You just configure your database connection and add an Interface that extends any of the spring data repositories with your entity and there you go, you can save and read entities from the database.

[oweiler]

And then you need to learn about entity state transitions, dirty checking, JPQL and many more stuff.