Hey everyone! 👋

Over the past week, I’ve been diving deep into Spring JDBC — another major milestone on my Spring Framework learning journey! 🚀
Coming from a JavaScript background where I usually managed database connections manually or used ORMs like Mongoose or Sequelize, seeing how Spring handles database operations was both refreshing and a little intimidating at first. 😅

But after pushing through tutorials, official docs, and lots of hands-on practice, things started making sense.
So, here’s a detailed breakdown of what I learned about Spring JDBC — from a student's point of view.

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🌱 What Exactly is Spring JDBC?

At its core, Spring JDBC is a part of the larger Spring ecosystem designed to simplify database interactions.
Instead of manually handling tedious steps like:

• Opening connections

• Writing repetitive try-catch-finally blocks

• Closing connections/resources properly

• Mapping ResultSet manually to Java objects

Spring provides tools that abstract most of these tasks so that developers can focus on what matters — writing logic and queries.

👉 In short:
It’s like Spring is saying — "Leave the boring setup work to me. You just handle your SQL and business logic." 😄

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💡 Core Concepts I Learned This Week

1. JdbcTemplate — The Real Hero 🦸‍♂️

Spring provides a class called JdbcTemplate, and honestly, it's a lifesaver.
With JdbcTemplate, we can:

• Execute SQL queries

• Update database records

• Fetch data

• Handle transactions (basic ones)

• Map database rows directly into Java objects

All this without manually opening/closing connections every time!

Example basic usage I practiced:

String sql = "SELECT * FROM students WHERE id = ?";
Student student = jdbcTemplate.queryForObject(sql, new Object[]{id}, new StudentRowMapper());

One line. That’s it. No ResultSet juggling, no resource closing, nothing. 😌

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2. CRUD Operations

Of course, just learning the tool isn’t enough — so I practiced Create, Read, Update, and Delete (CRUD) operations using JdbcTemplate.

Examples I worked on:

• Inserting new users into a database.

• Fetching user details.

• Updating user information.

• Deleting records.

Working on small projects really helped solidify these basics.

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3. RowMapper Interface — Smooth Data Mapping

Instead of manually looping over ResultSet rows and setting each field, I learned that RowMapper can map database rows into Java objects cleanly.

Here’s a basic example of what I wrote:

public class StudentRowMapper implements RowMapper<Student> {
    public Student mapRow(ResultSet rs, int rowNum) throws SQLException {
        Student student = new Student();
        student.setId(rs.getInt("id"));
        student.setName(rs.getString("name"));
        return student;
    }
}

Super neat, right? It keeps code organized, reusable, and clean.

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4. Dependency Injection for JdbcTemplate

Rather than creating a JdbcTemplate object everywhere manually, I learned to inject it via Spring’s Dependency Injection (either using @Autowired or constructor injection).

Makes sense because Spring wants to manage everything and reduce object creation headaches for us. 🧹

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5. Exception Handling

Instead of getting stuck with tons of ugly SQLException handling everywhere, Spring JDBC provides a unified exception hierarchy based on DataAccessException.

Which means — fewer ugly catch blocks, cleaner error handling! ✅

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🔥 GitHub Repository - Hands-on Codes

Throughout the week, I worked on different small examples to practice CRUD operations, dependency injection, error handling, and RowMapper usage.
Everything is pushed and organized nicely in the repo here:

🔗 GitHub Repository (Spring JDBC Practice):
https://github.com/Arkadipta-Kundu/springJDBC

Feel free to check it out if you’re also learning Spring JDBC — I made sure to push my working examples and experiments so others can reference them easily!

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🚀 What’s Next for Me?

Now that I’m pretty comfortable with basic database operations in Spring JDBC, it's time to move on to Spring ORM!

Next on my learning list:

• Hibernate ORM integration

• Understanding Entity mapping

• Advanced transaction management

• Fetch strategies (lazy loading vs eager loading)

• JPQL (Java Persistence Query Language)

Honestly, it feels like things are getting more real-world now! (Also slightly scarier 😬 but also exciting!)

I'll keep practicing, coding, and writing articles about my progress — just like I did for Spring Core and Spring JDBC!

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📦 In a Nutshell (TL;DR)

• Spring JDBC simplifies database operations massively.

• Learned how to use JdbcTemplate for CRUD operations without messy boilerplate code.

• RowMapper makes mapping database rows into Java objects super easy.

• Dependency Injection keeps our JDBC usage clean and maintainable.

• Practiced everything hands-on — link to my GitHub repo is above!

• Next stop: Spring ORM and Hibernate! 🛤️