GridFS in Spring Data MongoDB

Last updated: October 8, 2025

Written by: Alexey Semenyuk

Reviewed by: David Martinez

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1. Overview

This tutorial will explore one of the core features of Spring Data MongoDB: interacting with GridFS.

The GridFS storage spec is mainly used for working with files that exceed the BSON-document size limit of 16MB. And Spring Data provides a GridFsOperations interface and its implementation – GridFsTemplate – to easily interact with this filesystem.

2. Configuration

2.1. XML Configuration

Let’s start with the simple XML configuration for the GridFsTemplate:

<bean id="gridFsTemplate" class="org.springframework.data.mongodb.gridfs.GridFsTemplate">
    <constructor-arg ref="mongoDbFactory" />
    <constructor-arg ref="mongoConverter" />
</bean>

The constructor arguments to the GridFsTemplate include bean references to mongoDbFactory, which creates a Mongo database, and mongoConverter, which converts between Java and MongoDB types. Their bean definitions are below.

<mongo:db-factory id="mongoDbFactory" dbname="test" mongo-client-ref="mongoClient" />

<mongo:mapping-converter id="mongoConverter" base-package="com.baeldung.converter">
    <mongo:custom-converters base-package="com.baeldung.converter"/>
</mongo:mapping-converter>

2.2. Java Configuration

Let’s create a similar configuration, only with Java:

@Configuration
@EnableMongoRepositories(basePackages = "com.baeldung.repository")
public class MongoConfig extends AbstractMongoClientConfiguration {
    @Autowired
    private MappingMongoConverter mongoConverter;

    @Bean
    public GridFsTemplate gridFsTemplate() throws Exception {
        return new GridFsTemplate(mongoDbFactory(), mongoConverter);
    }
    
    // ...
}

For this configuration, we used the mongoDbFactory() method and auto-wired the MappingMongoConverter defined in the parent class AbstractMongoClientConfiguration.

**3. GridFsTemplate Core Methods**

3.1. store

The store method saves a file into MongoDB.

Suppose we have an empty database and wish to store a file in it:

InputStream inputStream = new FileInputStream("src/main/resources/test.png"); 
gridFsTemplate.store(inputStream, "test.png", "image/png", metaData).toString();

Note that we can save additional metadata along with the file by passing a DBObject to the store method. For our example, the DBObject might look something like this:

DBObject metaData = new BasicDBObject();
metaData.put("user", "alex");

GridFS uses two collections to store the file metadata and its content. The file’s metadata is stored in the files collection, and the file’s content is stored in the chunks collection. Both collections are prefixed with fs.

If we execute the MongoDB command db[‘fs.files’].find(), we will see the fs.files collection:

{
    "_id" : ObjectId("5602de6e5d8bba0d6f2e45e4"),
    "metadata" : {
        "user" : "alex"
    },
    "filename" : "test.png",
    "aliases" : null,
    "chunkSize" : NumberLong(261120),
    "uploadDate" : ISODate("2015-09-23T17:16:30.781Z"),
    "length" : NumberLong(855),
    "contentType" : "image/png",
    "md5" : "27c915db9aa031f1b27bb05021b695c6"
}

The command db[‘fs.chunks’].find() retrieves the file’s content:

{
    "_id" : ObjectId("5602de6e5d8bba0d6f2e45e4"),
    "files_id" : ObjectId("5602de6e5d8bba0d6f2e45e4"),
    "n" : 0,
    "data" : 
    { 
        "$binary" : "/9j/4AAQSkZJRgABAQAAAQABAAD/4QAqRXhpZgAASUkqAAgAAAABADEBAgAHAAAAGgAAAAAAAABHb29nbGUAAP/bAIQAAwICAwICAwMDAwQDAwQFCAUFBAQFCgcHBggM
          CgwMCwoLCw0OEhANDhEOCwsQFhARExQVFRUMDxcYFhQYEhQVFAEDBAQGBQUJBgYKDw4MDhQUFA8RDQwMEA0QDA8VDA0NDw0MDw4MDA0ODxAMDQ0MDAwODA8MDQ4NDA0NDAwNDAwQ/8AA
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          yvRFFv1iRsVGDaqYGWVsIoBZydsDhQGf/Z", 
        "$type" : "00" 
    }
}

3.2. findOne

findOne returns exactly one document that satisfies the specified query criteria.

String id = "5602de6e5d8bba0d6f2e45e4";
GridFSFile gridFsFile = gridFsTemplate.findOne(new Query(Criteria.where("_id").is(id)));

The code above will return the result record which was added in the example above. If the database contained more than one record which matched the query, it would return only one document. The specific record returned would be selected according to natural ordering (the order in which the documents were stored in the database).

3.3. find

find selects documents from a collection and returns a cursor to the selected documents.

Suppose we have the following database, containing 2 records:

[
    {
        "_id" : ObjectId("5602de6e5d8bba0d6f2e45e4"),
        "metadata" : {
            "user" : "alex"
        },
        "filename" : "test.png",
        "aliases" : null,
        "chunkSize" : NumberLong(261120),
        "uploadDate" : ISODate("2015-09-23T17:16:30.781Z"),
        "length" : NumberLong(855),
        "contentType" : "image/png",
        "md5" : "27c915db9aa031f1b27bb05021b695c6"
    },
    {
        "_id" : ObjectId("5702deyu6d8bba0d6f2e45e4"),
        "metadata" : {
            "user" : "david"
        },
        "filename" : "test.png",
        "aliases" : null,
        "chunkSize" : NumberLong(261120),
        "uploadDate" : ISODate("2015-09-23T17:16:30.781Z"),
        "length" : NumberLong(855),
        "contentType" : "image/png",
        "md5" : "27c915db9aa031f1b27bb05021b695c6"
    }
]

If we use the GridFsTemplate to execute the following query:

List<GridFSFile> fileList = new ArrayList<GridFSFile>();
gridFsTemplate.find(new Query()).into(fileList);

The resulting list should contain two records since we provided no criteria.

We can, of course, provide some criteria for the find method. For example, if we would like to get files whose metadata contains users with name alex, the code would be:

List<GridFSFile> gridFSFiles = new ArrayList<GridFSFile>();
gridFsTemplate.find(new Query(Criteria.where("metadata.user").is("alex"))).into(gridFSFiles);

The resulting list will contain only one record.

3.4. delete

delete removes documents from a collection.

Using the database from the previous example, suppose we have the code:

String id = "5702deyu6d8bba0d6f2e45e4";
gridFsTemplate.delete(new Query(Criteria.where("_id").is(id)));

After executing delete, only one record remains in the database:

{
    "_id" : ObjectId("5702deyu6d8bba0d6f2e45e4"),
    "metadata" : {
        "user" : "alex"
    },
    "filename" : "test.png",
    "aliases" : null,
    "chunkSize" : NumberLong(261120),
    "uploadDate" : ISODate("2015-09-23T17:16:30.781Z"),
    "length" : NumberLong(855),
    "contentType" : "image/png",
    "md5" : "27c915db9aa031f1b27bb05021b695c6"
}

with chunks:

{
    "_id" : ObjectId("5702deyu6d8bba0d6f2e45e4"),
    "files_id" : ObjectId("5702deyu6d8bba0d6f2e45e4"),
    "n" : 0,
    "data" : 
    { 
        "$binary" : "/9j/4AAQSkZJRgABAQAAAQABAAD/4QAqRXhpZgAASUkqAAgAAAABADEBAgAHAAAAGgAAAAAAAABHb29nbGUAAP/bAIQAAwICAwICAwMDAwQDAwQFCAUFBAQFCgcHBggM
          CgwMCwoLCw0OEhANDhEOCwsQFhARExQVFRUMDxcYFhQYEhQVFAEDBAQGBQUJBgYKDw4MDhQUFA8RDQwMEA0QDA8VDA0NDw0MDw4MDA0ODxAMDQ0MDAwODA8MDQ4NDA0NDAwNDAwQ/8AA
          EQgAHAAcAwERAAIRAQMRAf/EABgAAQEBAQEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAgGBwUE/8QALBAAAgEDAgQFAwUAAAAAAAAAAQIDBAURBiEABwgSIjFBYXEyUYETFEKhw
          f/EABoBAAIDAQEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMEAQIFBgD/xAAiEQACAgEDBAMAAAAAAAAAAAAAAQIRAyIx8BJRYYETIUH/2gAMAwEAAhEDEQA/AHDyq1Bb6GjFPMAszLkZHHCTi1I6O
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          yvRFFv1iRsVGDaqYGWVsIoBZydsDhQGf/Z", 
        "$type" : "00" 
    }
}

3.5. getResources

getResources returns all GridFsResource with the given file name pattern.

Suppose we have the following records in the database:

[
   {
       "_id" : ObjectId("5602de6e5d8bba0d6f2e45e4"),
       "metadata" : {
           "user" : "alex"
       },
       "filename" : "test.png",
       "aliases" : null,
       "chunkSize" : NumberLong(261120),
       "uploadDate" : ISODate("2015-09-23T17:16:30.781Z"),
       "length" : NumberLong(855),
       "contentType" : "image/png",
       "md5" : "27c915db9aa031f1b27bb05021b695c6"
   },
   {
       "_id" : ObjectId("5505de6e5d8bba0d6f8e4574"),
       "metadata" : {
           "user" : "david"
       },
       "filename" : "test.png",
       "aliases" : null,
       "chunkSize" : NumberLong(261120),
       "uploadDate" : ISODate("2015-09-23T17:16:30.781Z"),
       "length" : NumberLong(855),
       "contentType" : "image/png",
       "md5" : "27c915db9aa031f1b27bb05021b695c6"
    },
    {
       "_id" : ObjectId("5777de6e5d8bba0d6f8e4574"),
       "metadata" : {
           "user" : "eugen"
       },
       "filename" : "baeldung.png",
       "aliases" : null,
       "chunkSize" : NumberLong(261120),
       "uploadDate" : ISODate("2015-09-23T17:16:30.781Z"),
       "length" : NumberLong(855),
       "contentType" : "image/png",
       "md5" : "27c915db9aa031f1b27bb05021b695c6"
    }

Now let’s execute getResources using a file pattern:

GridFsResource[] gridFsResource = gridFsTemplate.getResources("test*");

This will return the two records whose file names begin with “test” (in this case, they are both named test.png).

**4. GridFSFile Core Methods**

The GridFSFile API is quite simple as well:

getFilename – gets the filename of the file
getMetaData – gets the metadata for the given file
containsField – determines if the document contains a field with the given name
get – gets a field from the object by name
getId – gets the file’s object ID
keySet – gets the object’s field names