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Spring Boot Rest API Enumerate some Java types

I am building Spring Boot webflux REST API functionality that needs to work with data containing few Java type's (let's consider String, Integer, Double for example) information as part of JSON request/responses. Attribute representing Java type must be persistable inside mongodb as well (should not be problem once JSON can work with such attribute). I have following model class and type enumeration which is used by REST API to serialize/deserialize JSON message's.
#Getter
#ToString
#EqualsAndHashCode(exclude = "id")
#Document(collection = "core_scheme")
#JsonDeserialize(builder = SchemeModel.Builder.class)
#Builder(builderClassName = "Builder", toBuilder = true, setterPrefix = "with")
public class SchemeModel {
#Id
private final String id;
#Field(name = "userId") private final String userId;
#Field(name = "date") private final String creationDate;
#Field(name = "properties") private final Map<String, SchemeTypes> properties;
}
public enum SchemeTypes {
INTEGER, STRING, DOUBLE
}
Serialization and deserialization work's well. Now the problem is that when i want to resolve real Java type's stored inside Map<String, SchemeTypes> properties map i need to do mapping similar to this (just abstraction not real code):
SchemeTypes.INTEGER => Java Integer class
SchemeTypes.STRING => Java String class
SchemeTypes.DOUBLE => Java Double class
Is there any more simple way to represent Java type's stored inside model class and used within serialized/deserialized JSON file's so i can directly use it to deduce Java type without additional validation that it's valid Java type. For example if type's enumarated inside mentioned enum would have exactly same naming as real Java type's i could do following without any mapping:
public void deduceClass(SchemeTypes type) {
Class myClass = Class.forName(type.toString());
}
Note that i am looking for a solution which would work out of the box (i don't have to validate type's provided by user). If such solution would be harder to implement as mentioned mapping i will stick with mapping.

If you weren't saving this entity I could say you can actually directly map the SchemeTypes into corresponding class like following
public enum SchemeTypes {
INTEGER(Integer.class), STRING(String.class), DOUBLE(Double.class);
private final Class clazz;
private SchemeTypes(Class clazz){
this.clazz = clazz;
}
public Class getClazz(){
return clazz;
}
}
But as you are saving this it could cause some issue to deserialize.
Maybe you can save not the SchemaType instance directly but just the name of enum to overcome this like following
private final Map<String, String> properties;
and find the corresponding clazz value with a static method on this class like following
public static Class findClazzFor(String schemeTypeName){
return SchemeTypes.valueOf(schemeTypeName).getClazz();
}
Nevertheless I think cleanest solution would be keeping the SchemeType class instance mapping somewhere as a one-to-one map. And retrieve the corresponding class for provided schemeType as in the getClazz method above.

Diff two classes fields names and structure

My task
Force two classes to have the same (or similar) field names (and their types)
Description
I have an entity and Data Transfer Objects (DTO).
How do I force that if someone adds / removes / changes a field in entity, a test will fail, so DTO class matches the entity class by fields names and if possible by fields structure.
class City {
private String name;
private CityDetails cityDetails;
private Mayor mayor;
}
class Mayor {
private String name;
private LocalDate electionFrom;
private LocalDate electionTo;
}
class CityDto {
private String name;
private CityDetailsDto cityDetails;
private MayorDto mayor;
}
class MayorDto {
private String name;
// The client of the end-point of such DTO does not care about the mayor election.
}
CityDetails and CityDetailsDto can be different or not necessary. I would like to have their diff.
Approaches
Using so called diff tool
Let's imagine a diff tool which has input parameters - two objects and output parameter - Map, where Diff is a structure oldValue, newValue. This tool returns difference between input arguments.
public Map<String, Diff> diff(final Object first, final Object second) {
// This is implemented.
return innerDiff(first, second, otherParameters); //
}
public class Diff {
private String oldValue;
private String newValue;
// getters, setters, constructor.
}
// To achieve this, we used Guava Plain map. It works well!
How do I achieve the same for classes. I want to diff two classes and have their fields as difference.
public Map<String, FieldDiff> diff(Class<?> type1, Class<?> type2) {
// How?
}
One idea is to use reflection and iterate though all fields of the class.
How about using toString and compare?
As an alternative, we define toString() methods in both and then compare.
How to do that if some fields are missing?
Serialize into JSON
Similar to the previous one, but serializing both objects into JSON and then compare their classes by json field names. However, if our entity have already annotation DoNotSerializeNulls with is equal to #JsonInclude(JsonInclude.Include.NON_NULL) #JsonIgnoreProperties(ignoreUnknown = true), then how to do that?
References
https://www.baeldung.com/entity-to-and-from-dto-for-a-java-spring-application

Which design pattern to use (if exists)?

I have a question about OOP implementation and design patterns.
I have a fixed class model which I cannot change (because it is generated automatically each time the application starts). There are many classes there with equals fields like in example below: as you can see the fields city and streets are contained in the both classes.
public class A{
String city;
String street;
String name;
....//get methods
}
public class B{
String city;
String street;
String age;
....//get methods
}
I need to extract an address form the both types of classes and I want to implement it with one method (because it seems to be silly to write the same code twice). If the class model were changeable, I could add a new interface Addressable which A and B could implement.
public interface Addressable{
public String getStreet();
public String getCity();
}
//somewhere in code
public Address getAddress(Addressable addressable){
return new Address(addressable.getCity(), addressable.getStreet());
}
What is the most elegant way to implement the same without interface and without coding the same for different classes?

If you are not able to change A or B, you would have necessarily a degraded solution.
A simple and good designed solution would rely of course on a interface defining an Address retrieval method (Address getAddress()) that A and B would implement.
You could also define a wrapper class :
public class WrapperA implements Addressable {
private final A a;
public WrapperA(A a) {
this.a = a;
}
#Override
public Address getAddress(){
return new Address(a.getCity(), a.getStreet(), etc...);
}
}
But it may be rather clumsy if you have to duplicate this kind code for many classes.
Besides the client will not manipulate any longer a A but a WrapperA class.
It may break the actual client code.
So also here, an interface is required if you want to implement a real adapter.
As said, without redesigning a minimum A or B, a really good solution is complicated.
As workaround, you may define an Address class that provides factory methods to create Address from a A or a B instance.
public class Address{
...
String city;
String street;
...
private Address(){
}
public static Address of(A a){
return new Address(a.getStreet(), a.getCity(), ....);
}
public static Address of(B b){
return new Address(b.getStreet(), b.getCity(), ...);
}
}
Then use these methods to create the Address on the demand as you need it.

You could write adapters to provide a common interface.
public class AdpaterA implements Addressable {
private final A a;
public AdapterA(A a) {
this.a = a;
}
#Override public String getStreet() {
return this.a.street;
}
// other method is omitted as homework ;-)
}
Then you would use the adapter classes for further processing.

I had a similar situation, where classes are generated during the build process. (In my case, the build process would inspect the database, and generate one class per database table, with all the fields.)
You state that the classes are generated when your application starts. In case they are generated during the build process, you can add an extra element to the build process which alters the genreated files. In my case our build servers were only Linux, so I added a sed line to our ant script.

Java deepclone an object without some properties

I have following classes
class A {
private Long id
private List<B> listB;
private C c;
...
}
class B {
private Long id
private A a;
private List<D> listD;
...
}
class C {
private Long id
private A a;
...
}
class D {
private Long id
private B b;
...
}
I need a copy of A, include all of it's properties except all id column.
I have 2 solutions:
1. Clone each object and set all of the ids null;
2. Make a constructor like this:
public A (A a){
//copy all properties except id
this.xxx = a.xxx;
...
}
But i need write so much code for this function, any one has some better method to implement this function?
Thanks a lot.

When you are saying Deep cloning of the object particularly the one of type Class A where you have an instance variable of a container type, you have below two widely known ways:
1) You Serialize and Deserialize the object.
2) You traverse through each method and call clone explicitely.
For first implementation, you may mark the id fields as transient and that should solve your purpose.
For second approach, you may override the clone method in each class where you set the id field as 0/-1) and call super.clone()

You can use Mapstruct , it's a powerful mapping library where you can configure all the fields exclusions for your specific class or nested class, without having to write all the getters/setters manually.
I personally use it for deep cloning jpa entities excluding ids or auditable fields.
Ex:
#Mapping(target="id",ignore=true")
EntityA cloneEntityAWithoutId(EntityA origin);
Mapstruct will generate for you the implementations using getters and setters of the EntityA, excluding the id field.
Obviously is a lot configurable, see the documentation I shared above.

How to map custom collection in JPA?

I have problems in mapping custom collection with JPA (Hiberante provider). For example when I am using object with attribute
List<Match> matches;
with
<one-to-many name="matches">
<cascade>
<cascade-all />
</cascade>
</one-to-many>
in my ORM file, it is allright; But if I replace "List matches;" by
private Matches matches;
,where "Matches" is defined like:
public class Matches extends ArrayList<Match> {
private static final long serialVersionUID = 1L;
}
It produces following error:
Caused by: org.hibernate.AnnotationException: Illegal attempt to map a non collection as a #OneToMany, #ManyToMany or #CollectionOfElements: by.sokol.labs.jpa.MatchBox.matches
Thanks for your attention!

You can, but you have to refer to it as one of the common collections - List or Set.
so:
private List matches = new Matches();
Why? Because Hibernate makes proxies to your collections to enable lazy loading, for example. So it creates PersistentList, PersistentSet and PersistentBag, which are List but aren't Matches. So, if you want to add additional methods to that collection - well, you can't.
Check this article for more details.
You have a solution, however. Don't use inheritance, use composition. You can, for example, add a method to your entity called getMatchesCollection() (in addition to the traditional getter), which looks like:
public Matches getMatchesCollection() {
return new Matches(matches);
}
And your Matches class would look like (using google-collections' ForwardingList):
public class Matches extends ForwardingList {
private List<Match> matches;
public Matches(List<Match> matches) { this.matches = matches; }
public List<Match> delegate() { return matches; }
// define your additional methods
}
If you can't use google collections, simply define the ForwardingList yourself - it's calling all the methods of the underlying List
If you don't need any additional methods to operate on the structure, then don't define a custom collection.

Hibernate requires persistent collection-valued fields to be declared as an interface type (because they will be replaced with Hibernate's implementation for lazy loading purposes). From the reference documentation:
6.1. Persistent collections
Hibernate requires that persistent collection-valued fields be declared as an interface type. For example:
public class Product {
private String serialNumber;
private Set parts = new HashSet();
public Set getParts() { return parts; }
void setParts(Set parts) { this.parts = parts; }
public String getSerialNumber() { return serialNumber; }
void setSerialNumber(String sn) { serialNumber = sn; }
}
The actual interface might be
java.util.Set, java.util.Collection,
java.util.List, java.util.Map,
java.util.SortedSet,
java.util.SortedMap or anything you
like ("anything you like" means you
will have to write an implementation
of
org.hibernate.usertype.UserCollectionType.)
Notice how the instance variable was
initialized with an instance of
HashSet. This is the best way to
initialize collection valued
properties of newly instantiated
(non-persistent) instances. When you
make the instance persistent, by
calling persist() for example,
Hibernate will actually replace the
HashSet with an instance of
Hibernate's own implementation of Set.
So your second approach is not possible, at least not the way you declared it. But to be honest, I don't really see the point.