Building REST APIs with Firebird and Spring Boot

January 20, 2026

Building REST APIs with Firebird and Spring Boot is straightforward. This guide will show how to connect, query, and expose Firebird data as REST endpoints quickly.

1. Setup Firebird Connection

First, configure Firebird in your application.properties:

spring.datasource.url=jdbc:firebirdsql://localhost:3050/yourdb
spring.datasource.username=sysdba
spring.datasource.password=masterkey
spring.datasource.driver-class-name=org.firebirdsql.jdbc.FBDriver
spring.jpa.hibernate.ddl-auto=update
spring.jpa.show-sql=true

Add the Firebird JDBC driver to your Maven dependencies:

<dependency>
  <groupId>org.firebirdsql.jdbc</groupId>
  <artifactId>jaybird</artifactId>
  <version>5.0.0.java11</version>
</dependency>

2. Create the Entity

Define a simple entity to represent a table in your Firebird database:

@Entity
public class Employee {
    @Id
    @GeneratedValue(strategy = GenerationType.IDENTITY)
    private Long id;
    private String name;
    private String department;
    // Getters and setters
}

3. Define the Repository

Use Spring Data JPA for CRUD operations:

public interface EmployeeRepository extends JpaRepository<Employee, Long> {
}

This automatically provides methods like findAll(), save(), and deleteById().

4. Build the REST Controller

Expose Firebird data as REST endpoints:

@RestController
@RequestMapping("/api/employees")
public class EmployeeController {

    @Autowired
    private EmployeeRepository repository;

    @GetMapping
    public List<Employee> getAll() {
        return repository.findAll();
    }

    @PostMapping
    public Employee create(@RequestBody Employee employee) {
        return repository.save(employee);
    }

    @DeleteMapping("/{id}")
    public void delete(@PathVariable Long id) {
        repository.deleteById(id);
    }
}

5. Test the API

Start your application and test with any REST client:

GET /api/employees → fetch all employees
POST /api/employees → create a new employee
DELETE /api/employees/{id} → remove an employee

The API interacts directly with your Firebird database using standard HTTP methods.

6. Optional: Add Swagger UI

To make testing easier, add Swagger for documentation:

<dependency>
  <groupId>org.springdoc</groupId>
  <artifactId>springdoc-openapi-starter-webmvc-ui</artifactId>
  <version>2.3.0</version>
</dependency>

Access the docs at http://localhost:8080/swagger-ui.html.

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