Role-based Leave Management System Using Spring Boot and RESTful Architecture

Abstract

Traditional leave management processes in academic and corporate institutions continue to suffer from inefficiencies caused by paper-based workflows, weak validation, inconsistent leave balance tracking, and limited system integration. Although several web-based solutions exist, many lack transactional consistency, enforce minimal business rules, or fail to follow modular architectural principles. This paper presents the design and implementation of a role-based Employee Leave Management System developed using Spring Boot and RESTful architectural principles. The system follows a layered architecture separating controller, service, repository, and data transfer con- cerns to improve maintainability and extensibility. Core business rules—including non-overlapping leave validation, balance sufficiency checks, controlled status transitions, and role restricted operations—are enforced at the service layer with declarative transaction man- agement ensuring atomicity and data consistency. A key design decision defers leave balance deduction until managerial approval rather than request submission, preventing balance inconsistencies for rejected requests. Functional validation confirms correct enforcement of business rules and transactional behavior across common and edge-case scenarios. The proposed system demonstrates how structured ar- chitectural design and transaction-aware workflows can address limitations observed in existing leave management solutions and provides a foundation for further enhancement toward production-ready HR system integration.

Introduction

Human Resource Management (HRM) includes essential organizational processes such as employee administration, attendance tracking, payroll processing, and leave management. Among these, leave management is operationally complex due to the need for coordination between employees, managers, HR, attendance, and payroll departments. Traditional paper-based and spreadsheet-driven systems cause delays, calculation errors, lack of transparency, and poor synchronization across departments.

Although digital leave management systems have been developed, many existing solutions suffer from architectural weaknesses, inadequate transaction management, limited validation mechanisms, and poor scalability. To address these issues, this paper presents an academic prototype of a Leave Management System implemented as a RESTful web service using Spring Boot 4.0.1 and Java 21, following modern enterprise architectural principles.

Problem Overview

Traditional and early digital systems exhibit the following issues:

• Manual routing and slow approval workflows

• Error-prone leave balance calculations

• Lack of centralized, real-time visibility

• Poor transaction handling during multi-step approval operations

• Weak server-side validation

• Inconsistent leave balance deduction policies

• Inadequate overlap detection logic

These issues result in inefficiencies, inconsistencies, and maintainability challenges.

Literature Review Insights

Existing systems can be categorized into:

1. Web-Based Systems (PHP/MySQL)

   • Focused on replacing paperwork

   • Weak architectural layering

   • Limited validation and transaction control

2. Platform-Specific Solutions (Android apps)

   • Improved mobility

   • Limited cross-platform integration

3. Framework-Based Implementations (e.g., MERN stack)

   • Modern UI and REST APIs

   • Insufficient transaction guarantees

   • Integrity risks during concurrent updates

4. AI-Driven Systems

   • Intelligent automation

   • High complexity

   • Limited focus on transactional integrity

Identified Gaps

• Poor separation of concerns

• Validation only at UI level

• Non-atomic multi-step operations

• Weak overlapping leave detection

• Inconsistent leave balance deduction

The proposed system addresses these through strict architectural layering, robust server-side validation, atomic transaction management, and advanced overlap detection.

System Architecture

The system follows a three-tier client–server architecture:

4

1?? Presentation Tier

• ReactJS frontend

• Handles leave submission, tracking, and approval

• Communicates via REST APIs

2?? Application Tier

• Built using Spring Boot

• Implements Controller–Service–Repository pattern

• Contains validation logic and transaction coordination

3?? Data Tier

• MySQL relational database

• Managed via Hibernate ORM

• Ensures ACID compliance and referential integrity

RESTful API Design

The system exposes 20 REST endpoints across 8 controllers, including:

• Authentication

• Employee management

• Department management

• Leave request lifecycle

• Attendance

• Payroll

• Holiday calendar

Key REST principles followed:

• Resource-oriented endpoints

• Proper HTTP verbs (GET, POST, PUT)

• JSON-based communication

• Standard HTTP status codes

• Use of Data Transfer Objects (DTOs)

Data Model

The database includes seven core entities:

• User (authentication & role)

• Employee (organizational profile)

• Department

• LeaveRequest (PENDING, APPROVED, REJECTED)

• Attendance

• Payroll

• Holiday

Entity relationships are defined using JPA annotations with foreign key constraints to ensure referential integrity.

Core Implementation Highlights

1?? Strict Architectural Layering

• Controller → Service → Repository separation

• Improves maintainability and testability

2?? Comprehensive Server-Side Validation

Validation includes:

• Date validation (no past dates)

• Chronological validation (end ≥ start)

• Leave type validation

• Employee existence verification

3?? Advanced Overlapping Leave Detection

Uses JPQL query to detect:

• Partial overlaps

• Full containment

• Inverse containment

Ensures no conflicting leave requests exist for the same employee.

4?? Transaction Management

Spring’s declarative @Transactional annotations ensure:

• Atomic updates of leave status and balance

• Prevention of partial updates

• Consistency across multi-table operations

Balance deduction occurs only during approval, preventing discrepancies from rejected requests.

Technology Stack

• Spring Boot 4.0.1

• Java 21

• Spring Data JPA

• Hibernate ORM

• MySQL

• Maven

• ReactJS (frontend)

The research contribution primarily focuses on backend architecture and transactional integrity.

Key Contributions

This system demonstrates:

• Proper enterprise-level architectural layering

• Robust validation beyond UI constraints

• Atomic transaction coordination

• RESTful API design best practices

•  

Conclusion

This paper presents a Leave Management System prototype demonstrating layered architecture, comprehensive validation, transaction management, and RESTful API design. The system confirms key software engineering principles through working code. The layered architectural approach supports maintainability and clear separation of concerns, while transaction-coordinated workflows prevent data inconsistencies during concurrent operations or failure scenarios. The system demonstrates the effectiveness of modern enterprise Java frameworks in developing structured and reliable leave management solutions.

References

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Copyright

Copyright © 2026 Raghabendra Kumar Shah, Aman Verma, Pabitra Khatri, Pasupuleti Niranjan, B. Ganga Bhavani. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.