SpringData/Hibernate #ManyToOne cascading automatically when it should not - java

Given two entities like so
#Entity
public class Thing {
#ManyToOne
private ThingType thingType;
...
}
#Entity
public class ThingType {
private String name;
...
}
From everything I have read, the default cascade should be nothing so if I get a reference to a Thing thing, and change the name field of its ThingType, then using a JpaRepository<Thing, Long> call thingRepo.save(thing), I would expect the change to ThingTypes name not to be persisted.
However this is not the case and the change is persisted. I am not sure why this is happening? What I am missing here?
Relevant versions:
org.springframework.boot:spring-boot:jar:1.5.7.RELEASE
org.hibernate:hibernate-core:jar:5.0.12.Final
org.springframework.data:spring-data-jpa:jar:1.11.7.RELEASE

Well, I would have expected the same, but it seems that Hibernate has its own default behaviour. In the Hibernate forum someone asked almost the same question. The answer refers to the Hibernate "dirty check" feature, which will detect and perstst/merge the change. You might change that behaviour by using Hibernate's Cascade annotation.

Well cascading is something else, let me ask you something. Do following things:
Thing thing = session.get(Thing .class, someId);
thing.getThingType().setTitle("new title");
and nothing more, again you see hibernate updates thingType.
It is called dirty checking, as long as an entity is attached to an active hibernate session, and its persistence state changes hibernate automatically updates its associated row in database. Event without calling a save or update.
So what is cascade?
Consider following case:
Thing myThing = new Thing();
ThingType myThingType = new ThingType();
myThing.setThingType(myThingType);
session.save(myThing);
if the association cascade type is not set, then you will get an exception, because you are referencing a transient thingType object. But if you set the cascade type to persist, then hibernate first saves the thingType and then saves the thing, and everything goes fine.
So remember, if you fetch an object, then update its properties in the same session, there is no need to call a update or saveOrUpdate method on hibernate session (or jpa entityManager) because it is already in attached state, and its state is traced by hibernate.

Related

Why is an entity being automatically saved without calling persist when using foreign generation strategy in bidirectional one-to-one mapping?

I have been practicing one-to-one mapping in hibernate and don't understand this particular case. I have to say, the program is working fine and as I intended, but apparently I can omit a perist() call and it still works smoothly. The fact that it's working is good, but I want to know exactly why the call is optional. Let me write some details:
This is the user class, which is supposed to be the owning side of the mapping:
#Data
#Entity
public class User {
#Id
#GeneratedValue(strategy=GenerationType.SEQUENCE)
private Long id;
private String name;
#OneToOne
private Ticket ticket;
public User() {}
public User(String name) {
this.name=name;
}
}
And this is the ticket class that's supposed to be the dependent one:
#Data
#Entity
public class Ticket {
#Id
#GeneratedValue(generator="foreignGenerator")
#GenericGenerator(name="foreignGenerator", strategy="foreign",
parameters=#org.hibernate.annotations.Parameter(name="property", value="user"))
private Long id;
#OneToOne(optional = false, mappedBy="ticket")
#PrimaryKeyJoinColumn
private User user;
public Ticket() {
}
public Ticket(User user) {
this.user=user;
}
}
I am trying to test the "shared primary key" strategy in one-to-one mapping. As you can see I have set up the generator with foreign strategy, which is supposed to make Ticket's id the same as it's corresponding User's id.
#Bean
CommandLineRunner loadData() {
return args->{
EntityManager em=emf.createEntityManager();
em.getTransaction().begin();
User user=new User("Test User");
Ticket ticket=new Ticket(user);
//em.persist(user);
user.setTicket(ticket);
em.persist(ticket);
em.getTransaction().commit();
em.close();
//We don't have to call persist on user
};
}
}
This program runs perfectly. Uncommenting the line which calls persist on user makes no difference. I am assuming that persisting ticket, which has it's user property set, automatically saves the user as well. Therefore, the reason it makes no difference is that no matter if user is getting saved or not, it will get persisted when we call ticket.
I want to know if my assumption is correct and any additional links to articles/documentation would be greatly appreaciated. Especially I am wondering about this part that I said above-"I am assuming that persisting ticket, which has it's user property set, automatically saves the user as well." I couldn't find anything that would confirm or deny this. I know that the "shared primary key" approach in one-to-one mapping is the only use case of "foreign" generation strategy, so there are not a lot of posts about it, and whatever posts are there are getting overshadowed by "foreign key" during the search.
Any help regarding this or any other issue that might be wrong with the code provided above would be appreciated. Thanks for taking your time to read this
The JPA specification states this behavior is wrong:
Looking at the 3.0 release:
section "3.2.2. Persisting an Entity Instance" implies user is unmanaged after your persist (you can check with the em.contains method).
Section "3.2.4. Synchronization to the Database" covers the flush/commit which states:
• If X is a managed entity, it is synchronized to the database.
..
◦ For any entity Y referenced by a relationship from X, where the relationship to Y has not been annotated with the cascade element value cascade=PERSIST or cascade=ALL:
▪ If Y is new or removed, an IllegalStateException will be thrown by the flush operation (and the transaction marked for rollback) or the transaction commit will fail.
User is new, so this should be resulting in an exception. That it works might be a glitch in how Hibernate is handling the #PrimaryKeyJoinColumn annotation (speculation on my part) and custom "foreignGenerator".
This is not a pattern I'd suggest you rely on, and should instead call persist to avoid inconsistencies with the behavior on other mapping setups.

Updating a "complex" Entity in JPA

entity = MainDao.findByUUID(getEntityManager(), dto.getUuid());
Adress i = new AdressDao().findById(dto.getIdAdress());
i.setPhone(dto.getPhone());
entity.setAdress(i);
return MainDao.update(getEntityManager(), entity);
I have a main Entity in which there is a #ManytoOne relationship to Adress. I want to update the field "phone" inside adress, how do I do it? My code fails to do so.
Hope you can help me out, it seems there is no "patch" method inside JPA. I would love to know the best practices.
By default #ManyToOne doesn't cascade the changes (as it refers to a parent which may be have other child associations).
You can do either of below,
save the changes of Address entity via your AddressDao like addressDao.save(addressEntity)
use #ManyToOne(cascade = CascadeType.ALL).
1st options is preferable.
Read about CascadeType to utilize wisefully.

what is the reason that Hibernate does not allow to save the object which references an unsaved transient instance?

I'm newbie in Hibernate and I'm trying to learn about JPA and Hibernate.
I want to know that what is the reason that Hibernate does not allow to save the object which references an unsaved transient instance? I want to know WHY this is a problem?
I asked someone and some of them answer me like this:
How could we possibly map the customer to the address, if there is no
adress record in the DB yet?
and
you are assigning particular Address to Customer. But Address does
not have any ID
but honestly I can't understand them.
(I know that an exception will be thrown and the solution is Cascade but I want to the reason of the problem inside the database)
now, let's assume we have all of these code:
(I use Bidirectional One-To-One relationship for my example)
public class Customer {
#Id
#GeneratedValue(strategy = GenerationType.IDENTITY)
private Long id;
private String firstName;
private String lastName;
#OneToOne(mappedBy = "customer")
private Address address;
}
#Entity
public class Address {
#Id
#GeneratedValue(strategy = GenerationType.IDENTITY)
private Long id;
private String street;
private String zipCode;
#OneToOne
private Customer customer;
}
public static void main(String[] args) {
EntityManager entityManager = emf.createEntityManager();
entityManager.getTransaction().begin(); // Begin Transaction
Customer c1 = new Customer("Mi", "S");
Address addrss1 = new Address("5412 S 5th", "212524");
c1.setAddress(addrss1);
addrss1.setCustomer(c1);
entityManager.persist(c1);
entityManager.getTransaction().commit(); // Commit
entityManager.close();
}
and let's assume that the exception is not thrown and java and hibernate have allowed us to run our code and this is our customer table.
id firstName lastName
---------------------------------
1 Mi S
and this is our address table:
id street zipCode customer_id
---------------------------------------------
- - - -
now, what is the problem? everything in these Bidirectional One-To-One relationship seems right.
then what is the problem?
PS:
if it is possible, please explain and show me code.
I can understand better with code. thank you.
I want to see for example if we are allowed to save the object which references an unsaved transient instance, what problems will we face in our code and in our tables (for example do we have any problem when we want to retrieve a customer and etc)
Because your adress entity have the primay key of customer as a foreign key ,(since mappedby is in Customer entity) ,and the customer referenced by the adress has no id ,which tells hibernate that that entity was never persisted in the database (which literally means transient) ,and hibernate needs a persisted/managed entity to make sure it exists in the database so that the adress object can be associated with an existing customer.
Customer is new, and it is clear from the persist call you want to insert it, but it isn't clear what you want to happen to any of customer's references. To make it clear, you define what you want the JPA provider (Hibernate) to do in the mappings under any/all circumstances - this is what the cascade operations refer to. In this case, JPA will look at the customer.address OneToOne mapping and find nothing defined; Address is NOT managed in this EntityManager context, so it doesn't know what to do to handle this relationship, so it signals you've made a mistake by throwing an error.
If it let it through, your Customer instance references something that does not exist, and its state does not match what is in the database. What you pass into persist should be what you would get back on reads, so it should reflect the state that is in the database.
The issue isn't directly with your persist call, as the spec does allow providers to ignore references to detached/new instances that don't have cascade settings - what happens is just undefined. Where you go wrong in this situation is on flush/commit, which is when the persistence unit is synchronized to the database (section 3.2.4 of JPA 3.0), which requires providers to go through managed entities and then determine any changes. Adding a new address pre persist will result in the same issue as if you did it post persist, and requires providers to throw an IllegalStateException if it discovers new or removed entities and rollback the transaction.
Why this is a problem: JPA is very big on entity Identity, as this enables caching of these entities in multiple levels of caches, and this entity might go into those caches as it is. It has to know what to do with references to entities that do not exist, and the spec decided to require an exception. Even to your app this is and should be a problem, as the EntityManager context is a unit of work, and the state within that unit of work is based on something that is wrong. Your Customer doesn't really have an address when this is said and done, yet your application business logic thinks it assigned one, with state that just isn't going to be there afterward.
You already know the solutions:
correct the customer to have a valid, managed address by calling persist on it directly in this same EntityManager context.
set the cascade options on the mapping to cascade persist to address for you
don't set addresses on a new customer in the same operation.

JPA 2.1 Create entity within JPA EntityListener

I try to create a log entry as soon as one of my entities got changed or created. In order to do this, I registered an EntityListener on an AbstractEntity class. AbstractEntity has a List of LogEntries and the cascade type of this list is ALL (all of my entities inherits from AbstractEntity).
Current implementation of my EntityListener:
public class EntityChangeListener {
#Inject
SessionController sessionController;
#PreUpdate
public void preUpdate(AbstractEntity entity) {
createLogEntryFor(entity, LogEntry.ChangeType.UPDATED);
}
#PrePersist
public void prePersist(AbstractEntity entity) {
createLogEntryFor(entity, LogEntry.ChangeType.CREATED);
}
private void createLogEntryFor(AbstractEntity entity, LogEntry.ChangeType changeType) {
if (!(entity instanceof LogEntry)) {
Date now = Calendar.getInstance().getTime();
LogEntry logEntry = new LogEntry();
logEntry.setCreator(sessionController.getCurrentUser());
logEntry.setAbstractEntity(entity);
logEntry.setChangeDate(now);
logEntry.setChangeType(changeType);
entity.getLogEntries().add(logEntry);
}
}
}
The problem is that the log entries are not persisted, although using cascade type all. I also tried to remove the cascade type and inject my LogEntryService (SLSB with CRUD methods) in order to persist the LogEntry manually, but it has no effect as well.
Same problem occurs by using #PostPersist and #PostUpdate.
JPA provider is EclipseLink (2.5.0).
Switching to Hibernate and using Envers is no option.
The prePersist event should work, as prePersist is called before changes are computed.
For preUpdate this will not work as the changes are computed before the preUpdate event is called, so it is too late to change anything further.
You can use the EclipseLink DescriptorEvents instead, as the give you access to more advanced options. You can get the Session and call insertObject() on it directly to force the insertion of the log entry, or change the object or UnitOfWork ChangeSet.
Also consider EclipseLink's history support,
http://wiki.eclipse.org/EclipseLink/Examples/JPA/History
EclipseLink should provide an option to do a two pass commit, to allow events to change objects, please log a bug for this and vote for it (or find and vote for an existing one).

Spring Data JPA causes EntityExistsException with cascading save

I have a Challenge class, which has a many to one relationship with the User class. It is uni-directional, so it looks like this:
#Entity
#Table(name = "UserTable")
public class User {
#Id
private String userId;
}
#Entity
#Table(name = "ChallengeTable")
public class Challenge {
#Id
private String challengeId;
#ManyToOne(fetch = FetchType.EAGER, cascade = {CascadeType.MERGE, CascadeType.PERSIST, CascadeType.REFRESH})
#JoinColumn(name = "userId")
private User user;
}
I'm using Spring Data JPA, and when I use the save method from the CRUDRepository on a Challenge object, I want it to persist the attached user if that user doesn't already exist, and merge the user into the old user if it does already exist.
I'm using a findOne(String id) method in the UserRepository to get a user using a userId, and that's the user I'm setting in the Challenge.
It cascades just fine if the user doesn't already exist, but when I try to save it with a pre-existing user I get the exception:
javax.persistence.EntityExistsException: a different object with the same identifier value was already associated with the session: [com.mywebsite.model.User#zk9moo78sx685g6o9yphegdx6lpoll9x]
I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong here. Changing the CascadeType to ALL doesn't change anything. Trying to remove the CascadeType entirely and manually saving the User first doesn't work either. That gives me the error:
org.hibernate.TransientPropertyValueException: object references an unsaved transient instance - save the transient instance before flushing: com.mywebsite.model.Challenge.user -> com.mywebsite.model.User
That appears to take place when the transaction exits (as I have my service layer class annotated with #Transactional).
If I take out the #Transactional annotation and manually persist the user it seems to all work fine. (I still want the cascading saves and transactions on the service level though.)
Taking out the #Transactional and trying to use cascading saves fails with a SQLIntegrityConstraintViolationException exception because it seems like the User becomes a detached entity and it tries to persist it anew, but that primary key already exists so it fails.
Can anyone help me understand what's going on here, and help me get cascading saves working with transactions in Spring Data JPA?
I tried using hibernate-specific cascading options, and everything else I could think of, but I couldn't get cascading saves to work as a Hibernate CascadeType.SAVE_UPDATE is supposed to. I believe it's a hard limitation of JPA with Spring Data.
Instead, I added a layer between the service and the interface repository. It saves the dependent entity (the user) then the challenge.

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