Spring Data Rest – Sort by multiple properties

Solution (tl;dr)

When wanting to sort on multiple fields you simply put the sort parameter multiple times in the URI. For example your/uri?sort=name,asc&sort=numberOfHands,desc. Spring Data is then capable of constructing a Pageable object with multiple sorts.

Explanation

There is not really a defined standard on how to submit multiple values for a parameter in a URI. See Correct way to pass multiple values for same parameter name in GET request.

However there is some information in the Java Servlet Spec which hints on how Java servlet containers parse request parameters.

The getParameterValues method returns an array of String objects containing all the parameter values associated with a parameter name. … – Java Servlet Spec, section 3.1

The sample further in that section states (although it mixes request and body data)

For example, if a request is made with a query string of a=hello and a post body of a=goodbye&a=world, the resulting parameter set would be ordered a=hello, goodbye, world.

This sample shows that when a parameter (a in the example) is presented multiple times the results will be aggregated into a String[].