Spring Boot default H2 jdbc connection (and H2 console)

Question

I am simply trying to see the H2 database content for an embedded H2 database which spring-boot creates when I don't specify anything in my application.properties and start with mvn spring:run. I can see hibernate JPA creating the tables but if I try to access the h2 console at the URL below the database has no tables.

http://localhost:8080/console/

I see suggestions like this one: View content of embedded H2 database started by Spring

But I don't know where to put the suggested XML in spring-boot and even if I did, I don't want the h2console to be available anymore when an external database is configured so it is more likely that I need to handle this with some kind of conditional code (or maybe just allow spring to automatically handle it in the most ideal case where I only include H2 when a maven profile is activated).

Does anyone have some sample code showing how to get the H2 console working in boot (and also the way to find out what the jdbc connection string that spring is using is)?

Answer 1

This is how I got the H2 console working in spring-boot with H2. I am not sure if this is right but since no one else has offered a solution then I am going to suggest this is the best way to do it.

In my case, I chose a specific name for the database so that I would have something to enter when starting the H2 console (in this case, "AZ"). I think all of these are required though it seems like leaving out the spring.jpa.database-platform does not hurt anything.

In application.properties:

spring.datasource.url=jdbc:h2:mem:AZ;DB_CLOSE_DELAY=-1;DB_CLOSE_ON_EXIT=FALSE
spring.datasource.driverClassName=org.h2.Driver
spring.datasource.username=sa
spring.datasource.password=
spring.jpa.database-platform=org.hibernate.dialect.H2Dialect

In Application.java (or some configuration):

@Bean
public ServletRegistrationBean h2servletRegistration() {
    ServletRegistrationBean registration = new ServletRegistrationBean(new WebServlet());
    registration.addUrlMappings("/console/*");
    return registration;
}

Then you can access the H2 console at {server}/console/. Enter this as the JDBC URL: jdbc:h2:mem:AZ

Answer 2

As of Spring Boot 1.3.0.M3, the H2 console can be auto-configured.

The prerequisites are:

• You are developing a web app
• Spring Boot Dev Tools are enabled
• H2 is on the classpath

Even if you don't use Spring Boot Dev Tools, you can still auto-configure the console by setting spring.h2.console.enabled to true

Check out this part of the documentation for all the details.

Note that when configuring in this way the console is accessible at: http://localhost:8080/h2-console/

Answer 3

I have found a nice tutorial about this topic:

https://springframework.guru/using-the-h2-database-console-in-spring-boot-with-spring-security/

Basically the correct JDBC URL for me was: jdbc:h2:mem:testdb