Access to Spring Boot / MongoDB controller-classes from other classes

Question

I'm making a REST API with Spring Boot and MongoDB in Java.

I've got, for instance, a Location class, with a corresponding LocationRepository and LocationController classes. To access the Location-database (LocationRepository), I need to do it through the LocationController (as far as I know). I've got functions in this controller that run on POST/GET requests, and it's working just fine when sending requests from the front-end server (Nuxt.js w/ Axios) or just through Insomnia/Postman.

However, if I wan't to access the Location-database from the backend, and from another class in my program, I'm not sure how to do it. I suppose I either need to send API-requests locally, or I need to get the actual instance of my LocationController to run functions on it.

Is sending API-requests locally like this bad practice?

Can I somehow get a hold of the instance of my LocationController? This is all managed through Spring, which I assume instanciates the controllers somewhere, but I have no idea where, or how to get a hold of them.

Here is an example of one of my controllers:

@RestController
@RequestMapping("api/locations")
public class LocationController {
    @Autowired
    private LocationRepository repository;

    @RequestMapping(value = "/all", method = RequestMethod.GET)
    public List<Location> getAllLocations(@RequestBody String body) {
        return repository.findAll();
    }

}

Appreciate any help!

EDIT: Using @Autowired LocationController locationController in any class that needs access to this seems to work.

Answer 1

You don't have to instantiate your controller, your repository is in charge of fetching data from database. You can do exctly the same that you're doing inside your controller:

public class MyGreatClass{
    @Autowired
    private LocationRepository repository;
    public void myGreatMethod() {
        List<Location> locations = repository.findAll();
        // Do the stuff with location
    }