Spring PetClinic Sample Application

This Fork: Spring PetClinic in the Terminal

spring-petclinic-terminal is a fork of Spring PetClinic that replaces the web layer with a fully keyboard-driven Terminal User Interface (TUI) built with TamboUI. There is no embedded HTTP server, no Thymeleaf, and no Spring WebMVC. The entire UI runs in the terminal. The back-end (JPA entities, Spring Data repositories, H2/MySQL/PostgreSQL schemas, Caffeine cache) is left intact.

Aspect	Original (web)	This fork (terminal)
Application type	WebApplicationType.SERVLET	WebApplicationType.NONE
UI rendering	Thymeleaf (HTML)	TamboUI Toolkit DSL (TUI)
Controller layer	5 Spring MVC @Controller	Removed
Network port	8080	None

📝 Blog post: Spring Petclinic Terminal : découvrir TamboUI avec un cas réel (in French)
🎥 Video demo: Spring PetClinic Terminal on YouTube

Understanding the Spring Petclinic application with a few diagrams

See the presentation here:
Spring Petclinic Sample Application (legacy slides)

Note: These slides refer to a legacy, pre–Spring Boot version of Petclinic and may not reflect the current Spring Boot–based implementation.
For up-to-date information, please refer to this repository and its documentation.

Run Petclinic locally

Spring Petclinic is a Spring Boot application built using Maven or Gradle. Java 17 or later is required for the build, and the application can run with Java 17 or newer.

You first need to clone the project locally:

git clone https://github.com/spring-petclinic/spring-petclinic-terminal.git
cd spring-petclinic

If you are using Maven, you can start the application on the command-line as follows:

./mvnw spring-boot:run

With Gradle, the command is as follows:

./gradlew bootRun

You can then access the Petclinic into your terminal.

You can, of course, run Petclinic in your favorite IDE. See below for more details.

Building a Container

There is no Dockerfile in this project. You can build a container image (if you have a docker daemon) using the Spring Boot build plugin:

Running the Container Image

./mvnw spring-boot:build-image
docker images | grep petclinic
docker run -p 8080:8080 docker.io/library/spring-petclinic:latest

Building a Native Image

This project can also be compiled ahead-of-time into a native executable with GraalVM using the native Maven profile.

Build a native container image (requires a Docker daemon and, if you are behind a corporate proxy doing TLS interception, network access to download the GraalVM builder image):

./mvnw -Pnative spring-boot:build-image

Alternatively, build a native executable directly on your machine with a locally installed GraalVM (no Docker required):

./mvnw -Pnative native:compile

Either way, once built, the native executable can be run directly, without a JVM:

target/spring-petclinic-terminal

In case you find a bug/suggested improvement for Spring Petclinic

Our issue tracker is available here.

Database configuration

In its default configuration, Petclinic uses an in-memory database (H2) which gets populated at startup with data. The h2 console is exposed at http://localhost:8080/h2-console, and it is possible to inspect the content of the database using the jdbc:h2:mem:<uuid> URL. The UUID is printed at startup to the console.

A similar setup is provided for MySQL and PostgreSQL if a persistent database configuration is needed. Note that whenever the database type changes, the app needs to run with a different profile: spring.profiles.active=mysql for MySQL or spring.profiles.active=postgres for PostgreSQL. See the Spring Boot documentation for more detail on how to set the active profile.

You can start MySQL or PostgreSQL locally with whatever installer works for your OS or use docker:

docker run -e MYSQL_USER=petclinic -e MYSQL_PASSWORD=petclinic -e MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD=root -e MYSQL_DATABASE=petclinic -p 3306:3306 mysql:9.7

or

docker run -e POSTGRES_USER=petclinic -e POSTGRES_PASSWORD=petclinic -e POSTGRES_DB=petclinic -p 5432:5432 postgres:18.4

Further documentation is provided for MySQL and PostgreSQL.

Instead of vanilla docker you can also use the provided docker-compose.yml file to start the database containers. Each one has a service named after the Spring profile:

docker compose up mysql

or

docker compose up postgres

Test Applications

At development time we recommend you use the test applications set up as main() methods in PetClinicIntegrationTests (using the default H2 database and also adding Spring Boot Devtools), MySqlTestApplication and PostgresIntegrationTests. These are set up so that you can run the apps in your IDE to get fast feedback and also run the same classes as integration tests against the respective database. The MySql integration tests use Testcontainers to start the database in a Docker container, and the Postgres tests use Docker Compose to do the same thing.

Working with Petclinic in your IDE

Prerequisites

The following items should be installed in your system:

• Java 17 or newer (full JDK, not a JRE)
• Git command line tool
• Your preferred IDE
  • Eclipse with the m2e plugin. Note: when m2e is available, there is a m2 icon in Help -> About dialog. If m2e is not there, follow the installation process here
  • Spring Tools Suite (STS)
  • IntelliJ IDEA
  • VS Code

Steps

1. On the command line run:

   git clone https://github.com/spring-petclinic/spring-petclinic-terminal.git

2. Inside Eclipse or STS:

   Open the project via File -> Import -> Maven -> Existing Maven project, then select the root directory of the cloned repo.

   Then either build on the command line ./mvnw generate-resources or use the Eclipse launcher (right-click on project and Run As -> Maven install) to generate the CSS. Run the application's main method by right-clicking on it and choosing Run As -> Java Application.

3. Inside IntelliJ IDEA:

   In the main menu, choose File -> Open and select the Petclinic pom.xml. Click on the Open button.

   • CSS files are generated from the Maven build. You can build them on the command line ./mvnw generate-resources or right-click on the spring-petclinic project then Maven -> Generates sources and Update Folders.

   • A run configuration named PetClinicApplication should have been created for you if you're using a recent Ultimate version. Otherwise, run the application by right-clicking on the PetClinicApplication main class and choosing Run 'PetClinicApplication'.

   • Note: since this is a terminal (TUI) application, IntelliJ's default run/debug console does not provide a real terminal, so the UI won't render properly. This is a known IntelliJ limitation, see IJPL-11655.

4. Inside VS Code:

   Open the project folder and use the Java extension's Run | Debug code lens above the main method. VS Code runs and debugs the application directly in its integrated terminal, so the TUI renders correctly out of the box, including while debugging with breakpoints.

   

5. Navigate to the Petclinic

   The TUI opens directly in your terminal — no browser needed.

Looking for something in particular?

Spring Boot Configuration	Class or Java property files
The Main Class	PetClinicApplication
Properties Files	application.properties
Caching	CacheConfiguration
TUI Runner (entry point)	PetClinicTuiRunner
TUI Orchestrator (screen dispatcher)	PetClinicTui
Navigation State	AppState

Interesting Spring Petclinic branches and forks

The Spring Petclinic "main" branch in the spring-projects GitHub org is the "canonical" implementation based on Spring Boot and Thymeleaf. There are quite a few forks in the GitHub org spring-petclinic. If you are interested in using a different technology stack to implement the Pet Clinic, please join the community there.

Interaction with other open-source projects

One of the best parts about working on the Spring Petclinic application is that we have the opportunity to work in direct contact with many Open Source projects. We found bugs/suggested improvements on various topics such as Spring, Spring Data, Bean Validation and even Eclipse! In many cases, they've been fixed/implemented in just a few days. Here is a list of them:

Name	Issue
Spring JDBC: simplify usage of NamedParameterJdbcTemplate	SPR-10256 and SPR-10257
Bean Validation / Hibernate Validator: simplify Maven dependencies and backward compatibility	HV-790 and HV-792
Spring Data: provide more flexibility when working with JPQL queries	DATAJPA-292

Contributing

The issue tracker is the preferred channel for bug reports, feature requests and submitting pull requests.

For pull requests, editor preferences are available in the editor config for easy use in common text editors. Read more and download plugins at https://editorconfig.org. All commits must include a Signed-off-by trailer at the end of each commit message to indicate that the contributor agrees to the Developer Certificate of Origin. For additional details, please refer to the blog post Hello DCO, Goodbye CLA: Simplifying Contributions to Spring.

License

The Spring PetClinic sample application is released under version 2.0 of the Apache License.