Handling dynamic queries with Spring - java

The problem I'm trying to solve here is, filtering the table using dynamic queries supplied by the user.
Entities needed to describe the problem:
Table: run_events
Columns: user_id, distance, time, speed, date, temperature, latitude, longitude
The problem statement is to get the run_events for a user, based on a filterQuery.
Query is of the format,
((date = '2018-06-01') AND ((distance < 20) OR (distance > 10))
And this query can combine multiple fields and multiple AND/OR operations.
One approach to solving this is using hibernate and concatenating the filterQuery with your query.
"select * from run_events where user_id=:userId and "+filterQuery;
This needs you to write the entire implementation and use sessions, i.e.
String q = select * from run_events where user_id=:userId and "+filterQuery;
Query query = getSession().createQuery(q);
query.setParameter("userId", userId);
List<Object[]> result = query.list();
List<RunEvent> runEvents = new ArrayList<>();
for(Object[] obj: result){
RunEvent datum = new RunEvent();
int index = -1;
datum.setId((long) obj[++index]);
datum.setDate((Timestamp) obj[++index]);
datum.setDistance((Long) obj[++index]);
datum.setTime((Long) obj[++index]);
datum.setSpeed((Double) obj[++index]);
datum.setLatitude((Double) obj[++index]);
datum.setLongitude((Double) obj[++index]);
datum.setTemperature((Double) obj[++index]);
runEvents.add(datum);
}
This just doesn't seem very elegant and I want to use the #Query annotation to do this i.e.
#Query(value = "select run_event from RunEvent where user_id = :userId and :query order by date asc")
List<RunEvent> getRunningData(#Param("userId") Long userId,
#Param("query") String query,
);
But this doesn't work because query as a parameter cannot be supplied that way in the query.
Is there a better, elegant approach to getting this done using JPA?
Using Specifications and Predicates seems very complicated for this sort of a query.

To answer the plain question: This is not possible with #Query.
It is also in at least 99% of the cases a bad design decision because constructing SQL queries by string concatenation using strings provided by a user (or any source not under tight control) opens you up for SQL injection attacks.
Instead you should encode the query in some kind of API (Criteria, Querydsl, Query By Example) and use that to create your query. There are plenty of questions and answers about this on SO so I won't repeat them here. See for example Dynamic spring data jpa repository query with arbitrary AND clauses
If you insist on using a SQL or JPQL snippet as input a custom implementation using String concatenation is the way to go.

This opens up attack for SQL injection. Maybe that’s why this feature is not possible.
It is generally a bad idea to construct query by appending random filters at the end and running them.
What if the queryString does something awkward like
Select * from Foo where ID=1234 or true;
thereby returning all the rows and bringing a heavy load on DB possibly ceasing your whole application?
Solution: You could use multiple Criteria for filtering it dynamically in JPA, but you’ll need to parse the queryString yourself and add the necessary criteria.

You can use kolobok and ignore fields with null values.
For example create one method like bellow
findByUserIdAndDistanceaLessThanAndDistancebGreaterThan....(String userid,...)
and call that method only with the filter parameters while other parameters are null

Related

JPA CriteriaQuery with LEAST and GREATEST functions

I am have a problem where i need to join two tables using the LEAST and GREATEST functions, but using JPA CriteriaQuery. Here is the SQL that i am trying to duplicate...
select * from TABLE_A a
inner join TABLE_X x on
(
a.COL_1 = least(x.COL_Y, x.COL_Z)
and
a.COL_2 = greatest(x.COL_Y, x.COL_Z)
);
I have looked at CriteriaBuilder.least(..) and greatest(..), but am having a difficult time trying to understand how to create the Expression<T> to pass to either function.
The simplest way to compare two columns and get the least/greatest value is to use the CASE statement.
In JPQL, the query would look like
select a from EntityA a join a.entityXList x
where a.numValueA=CASE WHEN x.numValueY <= x.numValueZ THEN x.numValueY ELSE x.numValueZ END
and a.numValueB=CASE WHEN x.numValueY >= x.numValueZ THEN x.numValueY ELSE x.numValueZ END
You can code the equivalent using CriteriaBuilder.selectCase() but I've never been a big fan of CriteriaBuilder. If requirements forces you to use CriteriaBuilder then please let me know and I can try to code the equivalent.
CriteriaBuilder least/greatest is meant to get the min/max value of all the entries in one column. Let's say you want to get the Entity that had the alphabetically greatest String name. The code would look like
CriteriaBuilder cb = entityManager.getCriteriaBuilder();
CriteriaQuery query = cb.createQuery(EntityX.class);
Root<EntityX> root = query.from(EntityX.class);
Subquery<String> maxSubQuery = query.subquery(String.class);
Root<EntityX> fromEntityX = maxSubQuery.from(EntityX.class);
maxSubQuery.select(cb.greatest(fromEntityX.get(EntityX_.nameX)));
query.where(cb.equal(root.get(EntityX_.nameX), maxSubQuery));
I created a sample Spring Data JPA app that demonstrates these JPA examples at
https://github.com/juttayaya/stackoverflow/tree/master/JpaQueryTest
It turns out that CriteriaBuilder does support calling LEAST and GREATEST as non-aggregate functions, and can be accessed by using the CriteriaBuilder.function(..), as shown here:
Predicate greatestPred = cb.equal(pathA.get(TableA_.col2),
cb.function("greatest", String.class,
pathX.get(TableX_.colY), pathX.get(TableX_.colZ)));

How to use Hibernate to query a MySQL database with indexes

I have an application developed based on MySQL that is connected through Hibernate. I used DAO utility code to query the database. Now I need optimize my database query by indexes. My question is, how can I query data through Hibernate DAO utility code and make sure indexes are used in MySQL database when queries are executed. Any hints or pointers to existing examples are appreciated!
Update: Just want to make the question more understandable a little bit. Following is the code I used to query the MySQL database through Hibernated DAO utility codes. I'm not directly using HQL here. Any suggestions for a best solution? If needed, I will rewrite the database query code and use HQL directly instead.
public static List<Measurements> getMeasurementsList(String physicalId, String startdate, String enddate) {
List<Measurements> listOfMeasurements = new ArrayList<Measurements>();
Timestamp queryStartDate = toTimestamp(startdate);
Timestamp queryEndDate = toTimestamp(enddate);
MeasurementsDAO measurementsDAO = new MeasurementsDAO();
PhysicalLocationDAO physicalLocationDAO = new PhysicalLocationDAO();
short id = Short.parseShort(physicalId);
List physicalLocationList = physicalLocationDAO.findByProperty("physicalId", id);
Iterator ite = physicalLocationList.iterator();
while(ite.hasNext()) {
PhysicalLocation physicalLocation = (PhysicalLocation)ite.next();
List measurementsList = measurementsDAO.findByProperty("physicalLocation", physicalLocation);
Iterator jte = measurementsList.iterator();
while(jte.hasNext()){
Measurements measurements = (Measurements)jte.next();
if(measurements.getMeasTstime().after(queryStartDate)
&& measurements.getMeasTstime().before(queryEndDate)) {
listOfMeasurements.add(measurements);
}
}
}
return listOfMeasurements;
}
Just like with SQL, you don't need to do anything special. Just execute your queries as usual, and the database will use the indices you've created to optimize them, if possible.
For example, let's say you have a HQL query that searches all the products that have a given name:
select p from Product where p.name = :name
This query will be translated by Hibernate to SQL:
select p.id, p.name, p.price, p.code from product p where p.name = ?
If you don't have any index set on product.name, the database will have to scan the whole table of products to find those that have the given name.
If you have an index set on product.name, the database will determine that, given the query, it's useful to use this index, and will thus know which rows have the given name thanks to the index. It willl thus be able to only read a small subset of the rows to return the queries data.
This is all transparent to you. You just need to know which queries are slow and frequent enough to justify the creation of an index to speed them up.

Spring JdbcTemplate's queryForList() with many args is not readable; SQLQuery don't give me list with column names

Note: This may be a simple question but I can't find a short way to make it clear. So, sorry for this long question.
In a project I am responsible, I use Spring 2.5, Hibernate 3.3.2 as middleware and Oracle database. As database is related to many other projects, some queries as really very complicated and I can't get a solution with Hibernate's solutions (HQL, Criteria, etc...). So I feel more comfortable with JdbcTemplate's queryForX() methods, as an example;
String sql = "select * from myTable";
jdbc.queryForList(sql);
Sure there are mostly "where" conditions and params indeed:
jdbc.querForList(sql, new Object[]{obj1,obj2,obj3 /* and many more arguments... */})
In this case, I must write question marks "?" for my parameters, so my SQL query string turns out some messy and hard to read; something like this:
select t1.col1, t2.col2, t1.col, --...some cols ,
sum(nvl(some_col1,?)-nvl(other_col2,?)) over (partition by col1,col2,col3,col4) sum_of_cols
from weird_table t1, another_table t2
where t1.col20=? and sum_of_cols>? and t1.col3=t2.col3 --and many ?'s...
and not exists (
select ? from boring_table t3 where -- many ?'s
)
--group by and order by order by etc
So now, which question mark is for which parameter? It is obvious but hard to read. But there are some other solutions for binded params like:
select * from a_table t where t.col1= :col1 and t.col2= :col2 -- and many more ":param"s
For this type query, we can write if it were Hibernate:
Query q = hibernateTemplate.createQuery();
q.setString("col1","a value");
q.setInteger("col2", 3);
I think it is more readable and easy to understand which value is what. I know I can do this with SQLQuery;
SQLQuery sq = hibernateTemplate.createSQLQuery();
/* same as above setInteger() etc. */
But this sq.list() gives me a list without a column name. so I have a basic array which is difficult to use:
[[1,2,"a"],[1,2,"b"], ...]
But with queryForList() I get better one:
[{COL1=1,COL2=2,COL3="a"},{COL1=1,COL2=2,COL3="b"},...]
So if I use queryForList(), I must write a very messy params Object;
or I use SQLQuery and then I have to get my list without a map as column names.
Is there a simple solution with mapped list using more readable param setting (like query.setX()) ?
Well you can use NamedParameterJdbcTemplate to do just that
Heres a sample
String query = "INSERT INTO FORUMS (FORUM_ID, FORUM_NAME, FORUM_DESC)
VALUES (:forumId,:forumName,:forumDesc)";
Map namedParameters = new HashMap();
namedParameters.put("forumId", Integer.valueOf(forum.getForumId()));
namedParameters.put("forumName", forum.getForumName());
namedParameters.put("forumDesc", forum.getForumDesc());
namedParameterJdbcTemplate.update(query, namedParameters);
You check the complete example with the source code in the below link
Spring NamedParameterJdbcTemplate Tutorial

How to Manipulate SQL specified in jrxml template

Problem: Report Templates are created by Admin Users who only decide what data to show where as the filter for the data is specified by the business user. In simpler SQL terms, query is specified by the Admin User, Business User specifies the WHERE clause.
Jasper allows user to specify parameters in SQL query like $P{city}. I have tried to retrieve the query dynamically using the method specfied in the link.
Possible Solution can be
Use WHERE clause parameters in JRXML and replace them while report creation - This will save me SQL parsing but I don't want to guide the admin user with this complexity. Parsing is not a huge problem.
Use my custom jdbc query executor and factory, only created to allow me extension point before jasper fire SQL query. I will be completely relying on vanilla Jasper JDBC data source but will only modify query before execution. JRAbstractQueryExecuter simplifies the query and replace the jasper related tokens before firing query - This will be very dirty and will force me to be implementation specific.
Do the same replacement as it is done in JRAbstractQueryExecuter in my application code base, parse the SQL query, modify it and set it again as specified in link
Can you please suggest a better way of doing this? I have a feeling that this can definitly be done in cleaner way.
Thanks for your help
You could create an input control to determine the desired WHERE clause and use a parameter to hold the contents of that WHERE clause. The default value expression would be something like:
$P{theParameter} == "value_1" ?
(" AND CONDITION_1 IN ('A', 'B', 'C') AND CONDITION_2 = 'Yes' "
) : " AND CONDITION_3 = 'Other' AND CONDITION_4 = 'No' "
Then in your WHERE clause you would reference it like:
WHERE
.... = .....
AND .... = ....
AND .... = ....
$P!{theParameter}
If your constraint columns are the same across your WHERE clauses, you could use $P! to bring in the parameter value literally, and reference it in your query:
WHERE
.... = .....
AND .... = ....
AND .... = ....
AND thisValue = $P!{theParameter}

Cleanest way to build an SQL string in Java

I want to build an SQL string to do database manipulation (updates, deletes, inserts, selects, that sort of thing) - instead of the awful string concat method using millions of "+"'s and quotes which is unreadable at best - there must be a better way.
I did think of using MessageFormat - but its supposed to be used for user messages, although I think it would do a reasonable job - but I guess there should be something more aligned to SQL type operations in the java sql libraries.
Would Groovy be any good?
First of all consider using query parameters in prepared statements:
PreparedStatement stm = c.prepareStatement("UPDATE user_table SET name=? WHERE id=?");
stm.setString(1, "the name");
stm.setInt(2, 345);
stm.executeUpdate();
The other thing that can be done is to keep all queries in properties file. For example
in a queries.properties file can place the above query:
update_query=UPDATE user_table SET name=? WHERE id=?
Then with the help of a simple utility class:
public class Queries {
private static final String propFileName = "queries.properties";
private static Properties props;
public static Properties getQueries() throws SQLException {
InputStream is =
Queries.class.getResourceAsStream("/" + propFileName);
if (is == null){
throw new SQLException("Unable to load property file: " + propFileName);
}
//singleton
if(props == null){
props = new Properties();
try {
props.load(is);
} catch (IOException e) {
throw new SQLException("Unable to load property file: " + propFileName + "\n" + e.getMessage());
}
}
return props;
}
public static String getQuery(String query) throws SQLException{
return getQueries().getProperty(query);
}
}
you might use your queries as follows:
PreparedStatement stm = c.prepareStatement(Queries.getQuery("update_query"));
This is a rather simple solution, but works well.
For arbitrary SQL, use jOOQ. jOOQ currently supports SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE, TRUNCATE, and MERGE. You can create SQL like this:
String sql1 = DSL.using(SQLDialect.MYSQL)
.select(A, B, C)
.from(MY_TABLE)
.where(A.equal(5))
.and(B.greaterThan(8))
.getSQL();
String sql2 = DSL.using(SQLDialect.MYSQL)
.insertInto(MY_TABLE)
.values(A, 1)
.values(B, 2)
.getSQL();
String sql3 = DSL.using(SQLDialect.MYSQL)
.update(MY_TABLE)
.set(A, 1)
.set(B, 2)
.where(C.greaterThan(5))
.getSQL();
Instead of obtaining the SQL string, you could also just execute it, using jOOQ. See
http://www.jooq.org
(Disclaimer: I work for the company behind jOOQ)
One technology you should consider is SQLJ - a way to embed SQL statements directly in Java. As a simple example, you might have the following in a file called TestQueries.sqlj:
public class TestQueries
{
public String getUsername(int id)
{
String username;
#sql
{
select username into :username
from users
where pkey = :id
};
return username;
}
}
There is an additional precompile step which takes your .sqlj files and translates them into pure Java - in short, it looks for the special blocks delimited with
#sql
{
...
}
and turns them into JDBC calls. There are several key benefits to using SQLJ:
completely abstracts away the JDBC layer - programmers only need to think about Java and SQL
the translator can be made to check your queries for syntax etc. against the database at compile time
ability to directly bind Java variables in queries using the ":" prefix
There are implementations of the translator around for most of the major database vendors, so you should be able to find everything you need easily.
I am wondering if you are after something like Squiggle (GitHub). Also something very useful is jDBI. It won't help you with the queries though.
I would have a look at Spring JDBC. I use it whenever I need to execute SQLs programatically. Example:
int countOfActorsNamedJoe
= jdbcTemplate.queryForInt("select count(0) from t_actors where first_name = ?", new Object[]{"Joe"});
It's really great for any kind of sql execution, especially querying; it will help you map resultsets to objects, without adding the complexity of a complete ORM.
I tend to use Spring's Named JDBC Parameters so I can write a standard string like "select * from blah where colX=':someValue'"; I think that's pretty readable.
An alternative would be to supply the string in a separate .sql file and read the contents in using a utility method.
Oh, also worth having a look at Squill: https://squill.dev.java.net/docs/tutorial.html
I second the recommendations for using an ORM like Hibernate. However, there are certainly situations where that doesn't work, so I'll take this opportunity to tout some stuff that i've helped to write: SqlBuilder is a java library for dynamically building sql statements using the "builder" style. it's fairly powerful and fairly flexible.
I have been working on a Java servlet application that needs to construct very dynamic SQL statements for adhoc reporting purposes. The basic function of the app is to feed a bunch of named HTTP request parameters into a pre-coded query, and generate a nicely formatted table of output. I used Spring MVC and the dependency injection framework to store all of my SQL queries in XML files and load them into the reporting application, along with the table formatting information. Eventually, the reporting requirements became more complicated than the capabilities of the existing parameter mapping frameworks and I had to write my own. It was an interesting exercise in development and produced a framework for parameter mapping much more robust than anything else I could find.
The new parameter mappings looked as such:
select app.name as "App",
${optional(" app.owner as "Owner", "):showOwner}
sv.name as "Server", sum(act.trans_ct) as "Trans"
from activity_records act, servers sv, applications app
where act.server_id = sv.id
and act.app_id = app.id
and sv.id = ${integer(0,50):serverId}
and app.id in ${integerList(50):appId}
group by app.name, ${optional(" app.owner, "):showOwner} sv.name
order by app.name, sv.name
The beauty of the resulting framework was that it could process HTTP request parameters directly into the query with proper type checking and limit checking. No extra mappings required for input validation. In the example query above, the parameter named serverId
would be checked to make sure it could cast to an integer and was in the range of 0-50. The parameter appId would be processed as an array of integers, with a length limit of 50. If the field showOwner is present and set to "true", the bits of SQL in the quotes will be added to the generated query for the optional field mappings. field Several more parameter type mappings are available including optional segments of SQL with further parameter mappings. It allows for as complex of a query mapping as the developer can come up with. It even has controls in the report configuration to determine whether a given query will have the final mappings via a PreparedStatement or simply ran as a pre-built query.
For the sample Http request values:
showOwner: true
serverId: 20
appId: 1,2,3,5,7,11,13
It would produce the following SQL:
select app.name as "App",
app.owner as "Owner",
sv.name as "Server", sum(act.trans_ct) as "Trans"
from activity_records act, servers sv, applications app
where act.server_id = sv.id
and act.app_id = app.id
and sv.id = 20
and app.id in (1,2,3,5,7,11,13)
group by app.name, app.owner, sv.name
order by app.name, sv.name
I really think that Spring or Hibernate or one of those frameworks should offer a more robust mapping mechanism that verifies types, allows for complex data types like arrays and other such features. I wrote my engine for only my purposes, it isn't quite read for general release. It only works with Oracle queries at the moment and all of the code belongs to a big corporation. Someday I may take my ideas and build a new open source framework, but I'm hoping one of the existing big players will take up the challenge.
Why do you want to generate all the sql by hand? Have you looked at an ORM like Hibernate Depending on your project it will probably do at least 95% of what you need, do it in a cleaner way then raw SQL, and if you need to get the last bit of performance you can create the SQL queries that need to be hand tuned.
You can also have a look at MyBatis (www.mybatis.org) . It helps you write SQL statements outside your java code and maps the sql results into your java objects among other things.
Google provides a library called the Room Persitence Library which provides a very clean way of writing SQL for Android Apps, basically an abstraction layer over underlying SQLite Database. Bellow is short code snippet from the official website:
#Dao
public interface UserDao {
#Query("SELECT * FROM user")
List<User> getAll();
#Query("SELECT * FROM user WHERE uid IN (:userIds)")
List<User> loadAllByIds(int[] userIds);
#Query("SELECT * FROM user WHERE first_name LIKE :first AND "
+ "last_name LIKE :last LIMIT 1")
User findByName(String first, String last);
#Insert
void insertAll(User... users);
#Delete
void delete(User user);
}
There are more examples and better documentation in the official docs for the library.
There is also one called MentaBean which is a Java ORM. It has nice features and seems to be pretty simple way of writing SQL.
Read an XML file.
You can read it from an XML file. Its easy to maintain and work with.
There are standard STaX, DOM, SAX parsers available out there to make it few lines of code in java.
Do more with attributes
You can have some semantic information with attributes on the tag to help do more with the SQL. This can be the method name or query type or anything that helps you code less.
Maintaince
You can put the xml outside the jar and easily maintain it. Same benefits as a properties file.
Conversion
XML is extensible and easily convertible to other formats.
Use Case
Metamug uses xml to configure REST resource files with sql.
If you put the SQL strings in a properties file and then read that in you can keep the SQL strings in a plain text file.
That doesn't solve the SQL type issues, but at least it makes copying&pasting from TOAD or sqlplus much easier.
How do you get string concatenation, aside from long SQL strings in PreparedStatements (that you could easily provide in a text file and load as a resource anyway) that you break over several lines?
You aren't creating SQL strings directly are you? That's the biggest no-no in programming. Please use PreparedStatements, and supply the data as parameters. It reduces the chance of SQL Injection vastly.

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