Building a Spring Boot CRUD App With Postgres from Scratch: The Complete Guide

Want to learn how to build a real-world Java backend using Spring Boot and PostgreSQL?
This blog series walks you through each step. From setting up the project and database connection, to building CRUD endpoints and REST APIs, with more posts coming soon including: validation, testing, security, documentation, and deployment.

What are Spring & Spring Boot?

• Spring is a popular Java framework that helps you build robust, testable, and maintainable applications.
• Spring Boot builds on top of Spring, giving you production-ready features like autoconfiguration, embedded servers, and simplified project setup all with minimal boilerplate.

Why use Spring Boot?

• Opinionated defaults for fast development
• Excellent support for testing and modular design
• Huge ecosystem (Spring Security, Spring Data, etc.)
• Easy to deploy and scale for real-world apps

What & Why PostgreSQL?

• PostgreSQL is a powerful, open-source relational database known for its stability and standards compliance. It supports complex queries, ACID transactions, indexing, and much more, making it a great choice for Java backends where reliability and data integrity matter.

Series Progress

Follow along with the series GitHub repo.

• ✅ Part 1 – Setting Up Spring Boot and PostgreSQL
• ✅ Part 2 – Creating Your First JPA Entity and Repository
• ✅ Part 3 – Building Your First REST API
• ✅ Part 4 – DTOs and Clean API Design
• ✅ Part 5 – Input Validation & Error Handling with Spring Boot
• ✅ Part 6 – Testing APIs in Spring Boot
• ✅ Part 7 – API Documentation with Swagger
• 🔨 Part 8 – Securing Your API with Spring Security (Coming soon)
• 🔨 Part 9 – Dockerizing Your App (Coming soon)
• 🔨️ Part 10 – Deploying to the Cloud (Coming soon)