RESTHeart

RESTHeart is a Java backend framework that facilitates the rapid development of REST, GraphQL, and WebSocket APIs, leveraging MongoDB for data storage.

Who Benefits from RESTHeart?

RESTHeart is designed for:

Developers seeking a low-code solution to build scalable, secure, and high-performance APIs.
Teams aiming to reduce development time and complexity when working with MongoDB.
Businesses looking for a reliable and efficient way to expose data through REST or GraphQL APIs.

Key Features

✅ Low-Code Development: Create APIs with minimal coding effort.
✅ Seamless MongoDB Integration: Instantly expose your MongoDB collections via REST, GraphQL, and WebSocket APIs.
✅ Built-in Security: Provides declarative authentication and authorization mechanisms.
✅ High Performance: Utilizes Java 21 Virtual Threads for efficient concurrency.
✅ Customizable: Flexible architecture that adapts to your specific needs.

Compatible Databases

(*) Might be partially compatibile with MongoDB.

Default Configuration

The default configuration connects to a local MongoDB instance using the connection string mongodb://127.0.0.1.
To prevent unintentional exposure of all your data, the API root ("/") is, by default, mapped to a database named "restheart". If you want to expose existing databases and collections through the API, you must update your configuration by replacing the default admin password and explicitly mapping your own databases to API endpoints.

Ask Sophia AI!

Before digging the full documentation, our AI assistant Sophia can quickly help you with any question about RESTHeart.

Quick Start with Docker Compose

Run both RESTHeart and MongoDB with Docker Compose using the following one-liner:

$ curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/SoftInstigate/restheart/master/docker-compose.yml \
  --output docker-compose.yml \
  && docker compose up --pull=always --attach restheart

Call RESTHeart's ping service with curl to verify it's running:

$ curl -i localhost:8080/ping

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Connection: keep-alive
Access-Control-Allow-Origin: *
X-Powered-By: restheart.org
Access-Control-Allow-Credentials: true
Access-Control-Expose-Headers: Location, ETag, Auth-Token, Auth-Token-Valid-Until, Auth-Token-Location, X-Powered-By
Content-Type: application/json
Content-Length: 112
Date: Fri, 21 Mar 2025 10:27:26 GMT

{"message": "Greetings from RESTHeart!", "client_ip": "127.0.0.1", "host": "localhost:8080", "version": "8.4.0"}

ℹ️ Look at Setup with Docker for more.

Running Without Docker

Download a pre-built binary of RESTHeart from the Releases page.
Uncompress the restheart.tar.gz or restheart.zip archive
cd restheart
Start MongoDB on localhost:27017 and then run RESTHeart with its default configuration:

$ java -jar restheart.jar

Connect to a remote MongoDB

To connect to a MongoDB server running in a remote host, you can quickly modify the configuration with the RHO env var.

Example:

$ RHO='/mclient/connection-string->"mongodb://127.0.0.1"' java -jar restheart.jar

Native executables

Or CI/CD pipeline builds native executables for main MacOS, Linux and Windows. Have a look at the Native Executables document for more information.

ℹ️ The native executables use the same configuration approach as the Java version.

Build from Source

To build from source or to run the integration tests suite look at BUILD.md.

Documentation

The full documentation is available on restheart.org/docs.

To explore the APIs, start with:

Community Support

Open an issue on GitHub to report a specific problem.
Ask technical questions on Stack Overflow.
Chat with other users on Slack.
Book a free 1-to-1 demo with us.