Spring Data Rest: RepositoryEventHandler methods not invoked

Question

I am trying to add a RepositoryEventHandler as described on Spring Data REST documentation to the REST repository shown below:

@RepositoryRestResource(collectionResourceRel = "agents", path = "/agents")
public interface AgentRepository extends CrudRepository<Agent, Long> {
    // no implementation required; Spring Data will create a concrete Repository
}

I created an AgentEventHandler:

@Component
@RepositoryEventHandler(Agent.class)
public class AgentEventHandler {

    /**
     * Called before {@link Agent} is persisted 
     * 
     * @param agent
     */
    @HandleBeforeSave
    public void handleBeforeSave(Agent agent) {

        System.out.println("Saving Agent " + agent.toString());

    }
}

and declared it in a @Configuration component:

@Configuration
public class RepositoryConfiguration {

    /**
     * Declare an instance of the {@link AgentEventHandler}
     *
     * @return
     */
    @Bean
    AgentEventHandler agentEvenHandler() {

        return new AgentEventHandler();
    }
}

When I am POSTing to the REST resource, the Entity gets persisted but the method handleBeforeSave never gets invoked. What am I missing?

I'm using: Spring Boot 1.1.5.RELEASE

Answer 1

Sometimes obvious mistakes go unnoticed.

POST-ing a Spring Data REST resource, emits a BeforeCreateEvent. To catch this event, the method handleBeforeSave must be annotated with @HandleBeforeCreate instead of @HandleBeforeSave (the latter gets invoked on PUT and PATCH HTTP calls).

Tests pass successfully on my (cleaned up) demo app now.

Answer 2

How does your main Application class look like? Does it import the RepositoryRestMvcConfiguration as described in https://spring.io/guides/gs/accessing-data-rest/?