@EnableCaching annotation in Spring Boot - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Using @EnableCaching Annotation in Spring Boot

📖 Scenario: You are building a simple Spring Boot application that fetches product details. To improve performance, you want to cache the product data so repeated requests do not hit the database every time.

🎯 Goal: Learn how to enable caching in a Spring Boot application using the @EnableCaching annotation and create a simple cacheable method.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a Spring Boot application main class

Add the @EnableCaching annotation to the main class

Create a service class with a method to fetch product details

Use @Cacheable annotation on the service method to enable caching

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Caching is used in real applications to speed up data retrieval and reduce load on databases or external services.

💼 Career

Understanding @EnableCaching and @Cacheable is important for backend developers working with Spring Boot to build efficient, scalable applications.

1

Create Spring Boot main application class

Create a class called ProductApplication annotated with @SpringBootApplication and add a main method that runs SpringApplication.run(ProductApplication.class, args).

Spring Boot

import org.springframework.boot.SpringApplication;
import org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.SpringBootApplication;

@SpringBootApplication
public class ProductApplication {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        // Your code here
    }
}

Need a hint?

Use SpringApplication.run(ProductApplication.class, args); inside the main method.

2

Enable caching with @EnableCaching annotation

Add the @EnableCaching annotation above the ProductApplication class declaration to enable caching support in the Spring Boot application.

Spring Boot

import org.springframework.boot.SpringApplication;
import org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.SpringBootApplication;
import org.springframework.cache.annotation.EnableCaching;

// Add @EnableCaching annotation below
@SpringBootApplication
public class ProductApplication {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        SpringApplication.run(ProductApplication.class, args);
    }
}

Need a hint?

Place @EnableCaching above @SpringBootApplication.

3

Create ProductService with cacheable method

Create a class called ProductService annotated with @Service. Inside it, create a method getProductById that takes a Long id and returns a String. Annotate this method with @Cacheable("products") and return a string like "Product " + id.

Spring Boot

import org.springframework.stereotype.Service;
import org.springframework.cache.annotation.Cacheable;

@Service
public class ProductService {
    // Create getProductById method with @Cacheable("products")
    // Your code here
}

Need a hint?

Use @Cacheable("products") on the method that returns product details.

4

Complete application with caching enabled

Ensure the ProductApplication class has @EnableCaching and the ProductService class has the @Cacheable("products") method getProductById. This completes the caching setup in the Spring Boot app.

Spring Boot

// The caching setup is complete
// Your code here if needed

Need a hint?

Verify both classes have the correct annotations and method.