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Dealing with EntityNotFoundException

I am creating simple REST API. I want to create an object via post method. Object contains other object. When I want to post it, I am receiving EntityNotFoundException which is thrown when nested object does not exist.
Code of object that I want to post:
#Entity
#Data
#NoArgsConstructor
#AllArgsConstructor
public class Book {
private String title;
#ManyToOne
private Author author;
#Id
#Column(unique = true)
private String isbn;
}
Service of this object:
#Service
#RequiredArgsConstructor
public class BookServiceImpl implements BookService {
private final BookRepository bookRepository;
private final AuthorRepository authorRepository;
#Override
public Book save(Book book) {
try {
Author byId = authorRepository.getById(book.getAuthor().getId());
} catch (EntityNotFoundException e) {
authorRepository.save(book.getAuthor());
}
return bookRepository.save(book);
}
}
After using post method I get this error:
javax.persistence.EntityNotFoundException: Unable to find com.jakubkolacz.qualificationTask.domain.dao.Author with id 0
at org.hibernate.jpa.boot.internal.EntityManagerFactoryBuilderImpl$JpaEntityNotFoundDelegate.handleEntityNotFound(EntityManagerFactoryBuilderImpl.java:163) ~[hibernate-core-5.4.32.Final.jar:5.4.32.Final]
at org.hibernate.event.internal.DefaultLoadEventListener.load(DefaultLoadEventListener.java:216) ~[hibernate-core-5.4.32.Final.jar:5.4.32.Final]
I thought that using try catch to check if object exist, and saving author if necessary will help but it did not.
My question is where should I add some code to solve the problem. I understand why it is happening but do not know how to resolve it. The necessary thing is that I can not create service to add authors manually, they have to be added to repo only during adding new book.

The problem is that the save operation is not being cascaded down to the author object. You should add a cascade type inside ManyToOne annotation:
#ManyToOne(cascade = CascadeType.ALL)

Exception handling in Spring
If you are specifically wondering how to handle exceptions in Spring, then I would highly recommend THIS tutorial.
Entity Creation
First I would like to point out two minor problems with your entity creation.
1)#ManyToOne : while it is not necessary, I always like to annotate a many-to-one relationship with the #JoinColumn annotation. It just acts as a simple and friendly visual reminder that (assuming your relationship is bidirectional) this side is the owner of the relationship(has the foreign key)
2)#Id : as it currently stands, the JPA provider(lets assume hibernate) assumes that you the developer are taking care of assigning a unique identifier to the id field. Granted, this is sometimes neccessary when dealing with old legacy databases. However, if you are not dealing with a legacy database, I would recommend that you delete #Column(unique = true) and the String value to replace them with:
#GeneratedValue(strategy = GenerationType.IDENTITY)
private Long isbn;
#GeneratedValue will allow the system to automatically generate a value for isnb field.
strategy = GenerationType.IDENTITY tells the underlying database to handle the uniqueness and the auto incrementation in a way specific to the relational database.
Long instead of String because it can hold a larger number of bytes.
Service implementation
I have a few things to say about the BookServiceImpl class but first, good job on implementing an interface with BookService most people forget to program to an interface.
1) Single Responsibility
You are using both BookRepository and AuthorRepository which is of course fine(If it works it works). However, moving forward you should be weary not to add too many dependencies to one class. If you do so, you are breaking the Single Responsibility principle, which makes code harder to test and refactor.
2) Try and catch
The code inside your try catch blocks is a little confusing, especially since you have not shown the Author entity class. However, I am assuming you logic goes like this: if the author does not exist, save the author. Lastly save and return the book. Now you are correct in thinking that you handle the exceptions in the catch block. However, there is quite a lot to question here and only so little code to go on.
My overall recommendations
1) Break this method up : This method is trying to do three things at once. Create one method for saving the book, one for looking for the author and one for saving the author. This will allow for greater code reuse moving forward.
2) Read up on CascadeType : Specifically PERSIST, that might help you with your issues. Also, look into a many-to-many relationship as it is not uncommon for multiple books to have multiple authors.

How to model a three-way relationship in a JPA Spring Boot micro service with a MySQL back end

I have created a Spring Boot JPA micro service with a MySQL back end. I have two simple entities in my model, users and skills. These are used to represent the skills base within my organisation. Each user may have many skills and so I have used a one to many join to model this and can successfully assign skills to users. In my database, I can see that a users_skills table has been created by JPA to achieve this.
However, I am now struggling because, for each skill that a user has, an experience level needs to be specified (e.g. basic, advanced, expert) and I am unsure how to achieve this. I'm not sure whether 'levels' should just be an enum type within the Skill entity, or perhaps it should be a separate entity in its own right? Could I configure JPA so that it generates a users_skills_levels table which would represent this three-way relationship? Any advice would be most welcome!
These are my Entity classes: -
#Entity
#Table(name = "users")
public class User {
#Id
#GeneratedValue(strategy=GenerationType.IDENTITY)
private Integer id;
private String name;
private String email;
#OneToMany(
cascade = CascadeType.ALL,
orphanRemoval = true
)
private Set<Skill> skills = new HashSet<>();
getters and setters
}
#Entity
#Table(name = "skills")
public class Skill {
#Id
#GeneratedValue(strategy= GenerationType.IDENTITY)
private Integer id;
private String name;
getters and setters
}

That's not possible what you try to achieve.
You should create an Entity for the users_skills_levels. E.g. UserSkillLevel This entity will then have a ManyToOne relationship to User and a ManyToOne relationship to Skills plus the attribute level.
The User has a collection of UserSkillLevel and the Skill entity as well.
Please find a more in-depth example here:
https://thoughts-on-java.org/many-relationships-additional-properties/

Hibernate the effective way to persist parent-child data

I have the following entities and I would like to give some additional thoughts before I make a final decision.
Post
#Entity
public class Post {
#Id
#GeneratedValue
private long id;
private String author;
private String content;
private String title;
#OneToMany
private List<Comment> comments;
// Standard getters and setters...
}
And the entity, which holds child rows
#Entity
public class Comment {
#Id
#GeneratedValue
private long id;
private String author;
private String content;
#ManyToOne
private Post post;
// Standard getters and setters...
}
A post could have a big number of comments, the most of them of course are not changed during the user session. I would like to find out the best way to save data in the following scenarios:
1. Post data is not changed;
2. Post data is changed.
The standard way is to use the following code
Post saved = postRepository.save(post);
But is this approach the most effective when you have only one comment added or changed to the post? Should the approach be different here, namely remove the one to many relationship between Post and Comment entities and treat them separately? Also, I don't like the idea that a post object, which needs to be updated in the database, may contain a large number of comments, which in turn adds additional load on network.

First to make that work you need a cascade in the post entity else it will just update/save the Post entity
#OneToMany(cascade = CascadeType.ALL ,mappedBy = "post")
private List<Comment> comments;
Also hibernate works by dirty checking your entity.
Hibernate during the merge(update) will dirty check your managed entities and generate one update query just for the entities that you changed, so if you don't touch the Post entity and just update one Comment hibernate will generate one update query.
Also this phrase make no sense.
Also, I don't like the idea that a post object, which needs to be
updated in the database, may contain a large number of comments, which
in turn adds additional load on network.
The OneToMany relationship specified in Post is just for hibernate convenience and it's actually optional.
With that you define what is called a bi-directional relationship.
There is nothing in db except for the fk on Comment referencing Post

What is appropriate way of creating objects with One-to-Many relationship using Objectify and RequestFactory?

What is appropriate way of creating objects with One-to-Many relationship using Objectify and RequestFactory? I've read documentation for these libraries, and also reviewed number of sample projects such as listwidget and gwtgae2011. All of them use #Embedded annotation which is not what I want because it stores everything within one entity. Another option according to documentation would be to use #Parent property in child classes. In my example (getters/setters removed for simplicity) I have entities Person and Organization which defined as
#Entity
public class Person extends DatastoreObject
{
private String name;
private String phoneNumber;
private String email;
#Parent private Key<Organization> organizationKey;
}
and
#Entity
public class Organization extends DatastoreObject
{
private String name;
private List<Person> contactPeople;
private String address;
}
Now if I understood documentation correctly in order to persist Organization with one Person I have to persist Organization first, then set organizationKey to ObjectifyService.factory().getKey(organization) for Person object and then persist it. I already don't like that I have to iterate through every child object manually but using RequestFactory makes everything is more convoluted due to presence of proxy classes. How would I define Organization and OrganizationProxy classes - with Key<> or without it ? Will I have to define something like this in Organization ?
public void setContactPeople(List<Person> contactPeople)
{
for (int i = 0; i < contactPeople.size(); ++i)
{
DAOBase dao = new DAOBase();
Key<Organization> key = dao.ofy().put(this);
contactPeople.get(i).setOrganizationKey(key);
}
this.contactPeople = contactPeople;
}
And how would I load Organization with its children from Datastore ? Will I have to manually fetch every Person and fill out Organization.contactPeople in #PostLoad method ?
It seems like I'll have to write A LOT of maintenance code just to do what JPA/JDO does behind the scene. I simply don't get it :(
Am I missing something or it's the only way to implement it ?
Thanks a lot for answers in advance!!!

You need to make it as #Parent only when you going to use it in transaction against all Person in this Organization. I'm sure it's not what you want.
It's enough to save just private Key<Organization> organizationKey, and filter by this field when you need to find Person for specified Organization
As about loading all referenced objects - yes, it is, you have to load it manually. It's pita, but it's not a lot of code.
Also, there is a different way to store this relationship, if your organization are small enough, and consists of few hundreds of people. At this case you can have List<Key<Person>> contactPeopleKey;, and load all this people by existing Key, manually, it much be much faster than loading by new Query

EJB3/JPA entity with an aggregated attribute

I wanted to know if there is a way to get in a One2Many relationship a field of the One side that is an aggregate of the Many side.
Let's take the following example:
#Entity
public class A {
#Id
private Long id;
#OneToMany (mappedBy="parentA")
private Collection<B> allBs;
// Here I don't know how to Map the latest B by date
private B latestB;
// Acceptable would be to have : private Date latestBDate;
}
#Entity
public class B {
#Id
private Long id;
private Date date;
#ManyToOne (targetEntity=A.class)
private A parentA;
}
My question is how can I make the mapping of the field latestB in the A entity object without doing any de-normalization (not keeping in sync the field with triggers/listeners)?
Perhaps this question gives some answers, but really I don't understand how it can work since I still want to be able to fetch all childs objects.
Thanks for reading/helping.
PS: I use hibernate as ORM/JPA provider, so an Hibernate solution can be provided if no JPA solution exists.
PS2: Or just tell me that I should not do this (with arguments of course) ;-)

I use hibernate as ORM/JPA provider, so an Hibernate solution can be provided if no JPA solution exists.
Implementing the acceptable solution (i.e. fetching a Date for the latest B) would be possible using a #Formula.
#Entity
public class A {
#Id
private Long id;
#OneToMany (mappedBy="parentA")
private Collection<B> allBs;
#Formula("(select max(b.some_date) from B b where b.a_id = id)")
private Date latestBDate;
}
References
Hibernate Annotations Reference Guide
2.4.3.1. Formula
Resources
Hibernate Derived Properties - Performance and Portability

See,
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Java_Persistence/Relationships#Filtering.2C_Complex_Joins
Basically JPA does not support this, but some JPA providers do.
You could also,
- Make the variable transient and lazy initialize it from the OneToMany, or just provide a get method that searches the OneToMany.
- Define another foreign key to the latest.
- Remove the relationship and just query for the latest.