I am attempting to implement a Hibernate/JPA2 solution over an existing schema, which cannot be changed. Here is a minimal example of the existing schema:
CREATE TABLE REASON (
REASON_CODE CHAR(1),
REASON_DESCRIPTION CHAR(50))
CREATE TABLE HEADER (
REASON_CODE CHAR(1),
OTHERFIELD1 CHAR(40),
OTHERFIELD2 CHAR(40) )
Normally this would be the "correct" way from a DB perspective: Link REASON to HEADER by the REASON_CODE. However it's presenting me with an awkward problem in Java and I'm not sure of the best way to solve it. I've modeled these entities as follows:
#Entity
#Table(name="REASON")
public class Reason implements java.io.Serializable {
#Id
#Column(name="REASON_CODE", unique=true, nullable=false, length=1)
private Character reasonCode;
#Column(name="REASON_DESCRIPTION", nullable=false, length=25)
private String reasonDescription;
}
#Entity
#Table(name="HEADER")
public class Header implements java.io.Serializable {
#ManyToOne
#JoinColumn(name = "REASON_CODE", nullable = false)
private Reason reason;
#Column(name="OTHERFIELD1")
private String otherField1;
#Column(name="OTHERFIELD2")
private String otherField2;
}
Once again, as far as I can tell, this is "correct" from a Java perspective - linking Header to Reason with a reference.
The problem is that when I need to use one of these Reason values in my code I wind up with awkward syntax like:
Reason r = reasonService.findOne('X'); // X is the REASON_CODE in the database record
// Do some processing with variable r
Or this:
header.setReason(reasonService.findOne('X'));
Ideally I could implement Reason as an enum like:
public enum Reason {
X_MARKSTHESPOT("X"),
C_MEANSSOMETHINGELSE("C"),
F_MEANSATHIRDTHING("F") ;
private String code;
private Reason(String code) {
this.code = code;
}
}
And then simply have this in my code:
header.setReason(Reason.X_MARKSTHESPOT);
But from what I understand that is not possible with JPA, which offers only EnumType.STRING (basically the name) or EnumType.ORDINAL (even worse, the index in the enum list). A possible way around this would be JPA 2.1's Converter, but I have never used it. I have also read here (in one of the answers) that a Hibernate User Type might be useful. One of our programmers has solved this in another app by writing two complete classes - an enum class for internal use and a "shadow" class which iterates through the enum and syncs the records in the database on every startup. But this seems like a kludgey way to do it. What is the best way to handle this, bearing in mind that the database schema cannot be changed?
Related
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.
My Issue entity was created from a DB table that has several fields (id, etc...). Each issue has as a field a list of Articles, which are stored in a separate DB table. Articles have a int issueID field, which is used to map them to the appropriate Issue (there is no corresponding column in the issues table): Ultimately, when an Issue object is constructed, I'm going to have it pull all of the articles whose issueID matches its ID, so that I can return a single serialized object that contains the issue data as well as a JSONArray representing its list of articles.
At this point, though, I'm just doing some testing - creating a few dummy Article objects and adding them to the articles collection. The problem is that, when I test GET requests on the Issue object, the JSONObject returned includes only the fields stored in the database (id, etc...) - no sign of the Article collection. Why is that?
I'm equally interested to know what other code you would need to see to answer this question: I've just begun teaching myself how to write web services and am still in the phase of wrapping my head around the broad concepts, so figuring out which of the moving parts has affects which behaviors - and which annotations are needed where - is ultimately what I'm trying to do.
That being the case, broader-based advice is welcomed.
#Entity
#Table(name = "issues")
#XmlRootElement
public class Issue implements Serializable {
private static final long serialVersionUID = 1L;
#Id
#Basic(optional = false)
#NotNull
#Column(name = "id")
private Integer id;
....//other fields
#OneToMany(mappedBy = "issueID")
private Collection<Articles> articlesCollection;
public Issue() {
articlesCollection = new ArrayList<Articles>();
Articles a = new Articles();
a.setHeadline("butt cheese");
articlesCollection.add(a);
Articles b = new Articles();
articlesCollection.add(b);
Articles c = new Articles();
articlesCollection.add(c);
}
By default the relationship initialization is lazy so when the Issue object is loaded the articlesCollection is not fetched unless used.
In your case seems its the same situation.
Explore OpenEntityManagerInViewFilter if you do not intend to explicitly load articlesCollection. When your object serializes the articlesCollection will be loaded if you have configured OpenEntityManagerInViewFilter.
Does your Articles Class also has #XmlType or #XMLRootElement Tag?
Onany generic class like List<T> jaxb expects that T is annotated with #XMLType or #XMLRootElelemt
I'm developing an Java-application which stores its data via Hibernate in a database.
One feature of this application is to define templates like types, etc. for reuse. For instance the type has attributes and you can create instances of an type, which has values for the attributes.
The problem is, that I don't know how to ensure that only values for attributes can assigned which the type defines. In my solution there is a redundancy which cause the problem, but I don't know how to remove it.
My current (and problematic) approach looks like this:
#Entity
class Type
{
#Id
#Generated
private Long id;
#OneToMany(mappedBy="type")
private List<Attribute> attributes;
//...
}
#Entity
class Attribute
{
#Id
#Generated
private Long id;
#ManyToOne
private Type type;
//...
}
#Entity
class Instance
{
#Id
#Generated
private Long id;
#ManyToOne
private Type type;
//...
}
#Entity
class AttributeValue
{
#Id
#Embedded
private ResourceAttributValueId id;
#Column(name="val")
private String value;
//...
}
#Embeddable
public class ResourceAttributValueId implements Serializable
{
#ManyToOne
private ResourceStateImpl resource;
#ManyToOne
private ResourceAttributeImpl attribute;
//...
}
There the definition of the type is redundant: Type can be reached via AttributeValue->Attribute->Type and AttributeValue->Instance->Type
Another idea was to use type + attribute name as id of the attribute and instance + attribute name as id of the attribute value, but that doesn't solves my problem.
The key for correctly modeling "diamond-shaped" dependencies like this is the usage of identifying relationships:
(I took a liberty of renaming your entities slightly, to what I believe is a more consistent naming scheme.)
Note how we migrate the TYPE_ID from the top of the diamond, down both sides, all the way to the bottom and then merge it there. So, since there is only one ATTRIBUTE_INSTANCE.TYPE_ID field and is involved in both FKs, we can never have an attribute instance whose attribute type's type differs from instance's type.
While this avoids "mismatched" attributes, it still doesn't ensure the presence of attribute instances (if you support the concept of "required attribute"), which is best enforced at the application level. Theoretically you could enforce it at the database level, using circular deferred FKs, but not all DBMSes support that, and I doubt it would play nicely with ORMs.
Unfortunately, I'm not experienced enough with Hibernate to answer whether this can be mapped there and how.
See also:
Choosing from multiple candidate keys
How to keep foreign key relations consistent in a “diamond-shaped” system of relationships
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
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.