Spring Data Rest - Add link to search endpoint

Question

In our Spring-Data-Rest Project we have a custom (fuzzy) search on a /buergers/search/findBuergerFuzzy?searchString="..." endpoint.

Is it possible to add a link for it on the /buergers/search endpoint (Without overriding the automatically exposed Repository findBy Methods)?

The Controller exposing the search:

@BasePathAwareController
@RequestMapping("/buergers/search/")
public class BuergerSearchController {

    @Autowired
    QueryService service;

    @RequestMapping(value = "/findBuergerFuzzy", method = RequestMethod.GET)
    public
    @ResponseBody
    ResponseEntity<?> findBuergerFuzzy(PersistentEntityResourceAssembler assembler, @Param("searchString") String searchString) {
        if (searchString.length() < 3)
            throw new IllegalArgumentException("Search String must be at least 3 chars long.");
        List<Buerger> list = service.query(searchString, Buerger.class, new String[]{"vorname", "nachname", "geburtsdatum", "augenfarbe"});
        final List<PersistentEntityResource> collect = list.stream().map(assembler::toResource).collect(Collectors.toList());
        return new ResponseEntity<Object>(new Resources<>(collect), HttpStatus.OK);
    }
}

Answer 1

Digging the spring-data-rest source i found the RepositorySearchesResource which seems to solve the problem.

@Component
public class SearchResourcesProcessor implements ResourceProcessor<RepositorySearchesResource> {

    @Override
    public RepositorySearchesResource process(RepositorySearchesResource repositorySearchesResource) {
        final String search = repositorySearchesResource.getId().getHref();
        final Link findFullTextFuzzy = new Link(search + "/findFullTextFuzzy{?q}").withRel("findFullTextFuzzy");
        repositorySearchesResource.add(findFullTextFuzzy);

        return repositorySearchesResource;
    }
}

Because we generate this code by templates, this is sufficient and fullfills our needs. Make sure to check the comments for the right and safe way.