You accomplish JdbcTemplate batch processing by implementing two methods of a special interface, BatchPreparedStatementSetter, and passing that in as the second parameter in your batchUpdate method call. Use the getBatchSize method to provide the size of the current batch. Use the setValues method to set the values for the parameters of the prepared statement. This method will be called the number of times that you specified in the getBatchSize call. The following example updates the actor table based on entries in a list. The entire list is used as the batch in this example:

public class JdbcActorDao implements ActorDao {
    private JdbcTemplate jdbcTemplate;

    public void setDataSource(DataSource dataSource) {
        this.jdbcTemplate = new JdbcTemplate(dataSource);
    }

    public int[] batchUpdate(final List<Actor> actors) {
        int[] updateCounts = jdbcTemplate.batchUpdate(
                "update t_actor set first_name = ?, last_name = ? where id = ?",
                new BatchPreparedStatementSetter() {
                    public void setValues(PreparedStatement ps, int i) throws SQLException {
                        ps.setString(1, actors.get(i).getFirstName());
                        ps.setString(2, actors.get(i).getLastName());
                        ps.setLong(3, actors.get(i).getId().longValue());
                    }

                    public int getBatchSize() {
                        return actors.size();
                    }
                } );
        return updateCounts;
    }

    //  ... additional methods
}

If you are processing a stream of updates or reading from a file, then you might have a preferred batch size, but the last batch might not have that number of entries. In this case you can use the InterruptibleBatchPreparedStatementSetter interface, which allows you to interrupt a batch once the input source is exhausted. The isBatchExhausted method allows you to signal the end of the batch.

The SimpleJdbcTemplate provides an alternate way of providing the batch update. Instead of implementing a special batch interface, you provide all parameter values in the call. The framework loops over these values and uses an internal prepared statement setter. The API varies depending on whether you use named parameters. For the named parameters you provide an array of SqlParameterSource, one entry for each member of the batch. You can use the SqlParameterSource.createBatch method to create this array, passing in either an array of JavaBeans or an array of Maps containing the parameter values.

This example shows a batch update using named parameters:

public class JdbcActorDao implements ActorDao {
    private SimpleJdbcTemplate simpleJdbcTemplate;

    public void setDataSource(DataSource dataSource) {
        this.simpleJdbcTemplate = new SimpleJdbcTemplate(dataSource);
    }

    public int[] batchUpdate(final List<Actor> actors) {
        SqlParameterSource[] batch = SqlParameterSourceUtils.createBatch(actors.toArray());
        int[] updateCounts = simpleJdbcTemplate.batchUpdate(
            "update t_actor set first_name = :firstName, last_name = :lastName where id = :id",
            batch);
        return updateCounts;
    }

    //  ... additional methods
}

For an SQL statement using the classic "?" placeholders, you pass in a list containing an object array with the update values. This object array must have one entry for each placeholder in the SQL statement, and they must be in the same order as they are defined in the SQL statement.

The same example using classic JDBC "?" placeholders:

public class JdbcActorDao implements ActorDao {
    private SimpleJdbcTemplate simpleJdbcTemplate;

    public void setDataSource(DataSource dataSource) {
        this.simpleJdbcTemplate = new SimpleJdbcTemplate(dataSource);
    }

    public int[] batchUpdate(final List<Actor> actors) {
        List<Object[]> batch = new ArrayList<Object[]>();
        for (Actor actor : actors) {
            Object[] values = new Object[] {
                    actor.getFirstName(),
                    actor.getLastName(),
                    actor.getId()};
            batch.add(values);
        }
        int[] updateCounts = simpleJdbcTemplate.batchUpdate(
                "update t_actor set first_name = ?, last_name = ? where id = ?",
                batch);
        return updateCounts;
    }

    //  ... additional methods
}

All batch update methods return an int array containing the number of affected rows for each batch entry. This count is reported by the JDBC driver. If the count is not available, the JDBC driver returns a -2 value.