java 41 lines · 7 steps

Calling the GitHub API with Spring WebClient

A reactive Spring service that wraps GitHub's REST API with a preconfigured WebClient and typed responses.

Explained by highlit

Spring Intermediate reactive http-client dependency-injection error-handling json-mapping

1@Service
2public class GitHubClient {
3 
  private final WebClient webClient;
5 
  public GitHubClient(WebClient.Builder builder) {
      this.webClient = builder
              .baseUrl("https://api.github.com")
              .defaultHeader(HttpHeaders.ACCEPT, "application/vnd.github+json")
              .build();
  }
12 
  public Mono<Repository> getRepository(String owner, String name) {
      return webClient.get()
              .uri("/repos/{owner}/{name}", owner, name)
              .retrieve()
              .onStatus(HttpStatusCode::is4xxClientError, response ->
                      Mono.error(new RepositoryNotFoundException(owner + "/" + name)))
              .bodyToMono(Repository.class);
  }
21 
  public Flux<Repository> listRepositories(String owner) {
      return webClient.get()
              .uri(uriBuilder -> uriBuilder
                      .path("/users/{owner}/repos")
                      .queryParam("sort", "updated")
                      .queryParam("per_page", 50)
                      .build(owner))
              .retrieve()
              .bodyToFlux(Repository.class);
  }
32 
  public record Repository(
          Long id,
          String name,
          @JsonProperty("full_name") String fullName,
          @JsonProperty("html_url") String url,
          @JsonProperty("stargazers_count") int stars,
          @JsonProperty("private") boolean isPrivate) {
  }
41}

01 / 01

STEP 01

Walkthrough

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Three takeaways

1Configuring a WebClient once in the constructor centralizes base URL and headers for every call.
2Mono and Flux let you model single versus multiple results without blocking threads.
3onStatus turns HTTP error codes into meaningful domain exceptions instead of generic failures.

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