Using Hibernate with H2 in Spring Boot

October 19, 2025

This guide explains how to use Hibernate ORM with the H2 database in a Spring Boot project for quick development and testing.

1. Add Dependencies

In pom.xml:

<dependency>
  <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
  <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-data-jpa</artifactId>
</dependency>
<dependency>
  <groupId>com.h2database</groupId>
  <artifactId>h2</artifactId>
</dependency>

2. Configure H2 and Hibernate

In application.properties:

spring.datasource.url=jdbc:h2:mem:testdb
spring.datasource.driver-class-name=org.h2.Driver
spring.datasource.username=sa
spring.datasource.password=
spring.jpa.hibernate.ddl-auto=update
spring.jpa.show-sql=true
spring.jpa.properties.hibernate.dialect=org.hibernate.dialect.H2Dialect

3. Create Entity

import jakarta.persistence.*;

@Entity
public class Product {
    @Id
    @GeneratedValue(strategy = GenerationType.IDENTITY)
    private Long id;
    private String name;
    private Double price;
}

4. Repository

import org.springframework.data.jpa.repository.JpaRepository;

public interface ProductRepository extends JpaRepository<Product, Long> {
}

5. Service with Hibernate

import org.springframework.stereotype.Service;
import org.springframework.transaction.annotation.Transactional;

@Service
public class ProductService {
    private final ProductRepository repo;

    public ProductService(ProductRepository repo) {
        this.repo = repo;
    }

    @Transactional
    public Product saveProduct(Product product) {
        return repo.save(product);
    }
}

6. Run Application

Start the Spring Boot app. Hibernate will create the Product table in H2 automatically and handle all CRUD operations.