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Handling dynamic queries with Spring

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

EntityManager.createNativeQuery returning list of objects instead of list of BigDecimal when using Pagination

I am trying to use Pagination with EntityManager.createNativeQuery(). Below is the skeleton code that I am using:
var query = em.createNativeQuery("select distinct id from ... group by ... having ...");
List<BigDecimal> results = query
.setMaxResults(pageSize)
.setFirstResult(pageNumber * pageSize)
.getResultList();
When pageNumber is 0 (first page), I get the expected List of BigDecimals:
But as soon as pageNumber > 0 (example, second page), I get a List of Objects, and each object in this list seems to contain two BigDecimals, the first of which contains the value from the db, and the second BigDecimal seems to be the position of this row.
and obviously I get this exception
java.lang.ClassCastException: class [Ljava.lang.Object; cannot be cast to class java.math.BigDecimal
Can someone please explain this discrepancy, and how this can be fixed to always return a List of BigDecimals? Thank you.
Update-1 : I have created a sample project to reproduce this issue. I was able to reproduce this issue only with an Oracle database. With H2 database, it worked fine, and I consistently got a list of BigDecimals irrelevant of the page number.
Update-2 : I have also created a sample project with H2 where it works without this issue.

The problem that you are running into is that your OracleDialect adds a column to its selected ResultSet. It wraps the query that you are running as discussed in SternK's answer.
If you were using the Hibernate SessionFactory and the Session interfaces, then the function that you would be looking for would be the "addScalar" method. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be an implementation in pure JPA (see the question asked here: Does JPA have an equivalent to Hibernate SQLQuery.addScalar()?).
I would expect your current implementation to work just fine in DB2, H2, HSQL, Postgres, MySQL (and a few other DB engines). However, in Oracle, it adds a row-number column to the ResultSet which means that Hibernate gets 2 columns from the ResultSet. Hibernate does not implement any query parsing in this case, which means that it simply parses the ResultSet into your List. Since it gets 2 values, it converts them into an Object[] rather than a BigDecimal.
As a caveat, relying on the JDBC driver to provide the expected-data-type is a bit dangerous, since Hibernate will ask the JDBC driver which data-type it suggests. In this case, it suggests a BigDecimal, but under certain conditions and certain implementations would be allowed to return a Double or some other type.
You have a couple options then.
You can modify your oracle-dialect (as SternK) suggests. This will take advantage of an alternate oracle-paging implementation.
If you are not opposed to having hibnerate-specific aspects in your JPA implementation, then you can take advantage of additional hibernate functions that are not offered in the JPA standard. (See the following code...)
List<BigDecimal> results = entitymanager.createNativeQuery("select distinct id from ... group by ... having ...")
.unwrap(org.hibernate.query.NativeQuery.class)
.addScalar("id", BigDecimalType.INSTANCE)
.getResultList();
System.out.println(results);
This does have the advantage of explicitly telling hibnerate, that you are only interested in the "id" column of your ResultSet, and that hibernate needs to explicitly convert to the returned object to a BigDecimal, should the JDBC-driver decide that a different type would be more appropriate as a default.

The root cause of your problem in the way how the pagination implemented in your hibernate oracle dialect.
There are two cases:
When we have setFirstResult(0) the following sql will be generated:
-- setMaxResults(5).setFirstResult(0)
select * from (
select test_id from TST_MY_TEST -- this is your initial query
)
where rownum <= 5;
As you can see, this query returns exactly the same columns list as your initial query, and therefore you do not have problem with this case.
When we set setFirstResult in not 0 value the following sql will be generated:
-- setMaxResults(5).setFirstResult(2)
select * from (
select row_.*, rownum rownum_
from (
select test_id from TST_MY_TEST -- this is your initial query
) row_
where rownum <= 5
)
where rownum_ > 2
As you can see, this query returns the columns list with additional rownum_ column, and therefore you do have the problem with casting this result set to the BigDecimal.
Solution
If you use Oracle 12c R1 (12.1) or higher you can override this behavior in your dialect using new row limiting clause in this way:
import org.hibernate.dialect.Oracle12cDialect;
import org.hibernate.dialect.pagination.AbstractLimitHandler;
import org.hibernate.dialect.pagination.LimitHandler;
import org.hibernate.dialect.pagination.LimitHelper;
import org.hibernate.engine.spi.RowSelection;
public class MyOracleDialect extends Oracle12cDialect
{
private static final AbstractLimitHandler LIMIT_HANDLER = new AbstractLimitHandler() {
#Override
public String processSql(String sql, RowSelection selection) {
final boolean hasOffset = LimitHelper.hasFirstRow(selection);
final StringBuilder pagingSelect = new StringBuilder(sql.length() + 50);
pagingSelect.append(sql);
/*
see the documentation https://docs.oracle.com/database/121/SQLRF/statements_10002.htm#BABHFGAA
(Restrictions on the row_limiting_clause)
You cannot specify this clause with the for_update_clause.
*/
if (hasOffset) {
pagingSelect.append(" OFFSET ? ROWS");
}
pagingSelect.append(" FETCH NEXT ? ROWS ONLY");
return pagingSelect.toString();
}
#Override
public boolean supportsLimit() {
return true;
}
};
public MyOracleDialect()
{
}
#Override
public LimitHandler getLimitHandler() {
return LIMIT_HANDLER;
}
}
and then use it.
<property name="hibernate.dialect">com.me.MyOracleDialect</property>
For my test data set for the following query:
NativeQuery query = session.createNativeQuery(
"select test_id from TST_MY_TEST"
).setMaxResults(5).setFirstResult(2);
List<BigDecimal> results = query.getResultList();
I got:
Hibernate:
/* dynamic native SQL query */
select test_id from TST_MY_TEST
OFFSET ? ROWS FETCH NEXT ? ROWS ONLY
val = 3
val = 4
val = 5
val = 6
val = 7
P.S. See also HHH-12087
P.P.S I simplified my implementation of the AbstractLimitHandler by removing checking presents FOR UPDATE clause. I think we will not have nothing good in this case and with this checking.
For example for the following case:
NativeQuery query = session.createNativeQuery(
"select test_id from TST_MY_TEST FOR UPDATE OF test_id"
).setMaxResults(5).setFirstResult(2);
hibernate (with Oracle12cDialect) will generate the following sql:
/* dynamic native SQL query */
select * from (
select
row_.*,
rownum rownum_
from (
select test_id from TST_MY_TEST -- initial sql without FOR UPDATE clause
) row_
where rownum <= 5
)
where rownum_ > 2
FOR UPDATE OF test_id -- moved for_update_clause
As you can see, hibernate tries to fix query by moving FOR UPDATE to the end of the query. But anyway, we will get:
ORA-02014: cannot select FOR UPDATE from view with DISTINCT, GROUP BY, etc.

I've simulated your consult and everything works fine. I've used DataJpaTest to instance entityManager for me, h2 memory database and JUnit 5 to run the test. See below:
#Test
public void shouldGetListOfSalaryPaginated() {
// given
Person alex = new Person("alex");
alex.setSalary(BigDecimal.valueOf(3305.33));
Person john = new Person("john");
john.setSalary(BigDecimal.valueOf(33054.10));
Person ana = new Person("ana");
ana.setSalary(BigDecimal.valueOf(1223));
entityManager.persist(alex);
entityManager.persist(john);
entityManager.persist(ana);
entityManager.flush();
entityManager.clear();
// when
List<BigDecimal> found = entityManager.createNativeQuery("SELECT salary FROM person").setMaxResults(2).setFirstResult(2*1).getResultList();
// then
Assertions.assertEquals(found.size(), 1);
Assertions.assertEquals(found.get(0).longValue(), 1223L);
}
I suggest that you review your native query. It's preferable that you use Criteria API instead and let native queries for extreme cases like complex consults.
Update
After the author posted the project, I could reproduce the problem and it was related to the oracle dialect. For unknown reason the query which is running for the second call is: select * from ( select row_.*, rownum rownum_ from ( SELECT c.SHOP_ID FROM CUSTOMER c ) row_ where rownum <= ?) where rownum_ > ?, and that's why this is generating a bug, because it's querying 2 columns instead of only one. The undesired one is this rownum. For other dialects there is no such problem.
I suggest you try other oracle dialect version and whether none of them work, my final tip is try to do the pagination yourself.

After a lot of trails with different versions of different spring libraries, I was finally able to figure out the issue. In one of my attempts, the issue seems to have disappeared, as soon as I updated the spring-data-commons library from v2.1.5.RELEASE to v2.1.6.RELEASE. I looked up the changelog of this release, and this bug, which is related to this bug in spring-data-commons, is the root cause of this issue. I was able to fix the issue after upgrading the spring-data-commons library.

Can't cast the result of query to entity

everyone. I'm new to Hibernate. And I'm making desktop application. I have 2 tables: Worker and Ceh (i.e. Department). Relation between them: many-to-one, i.e. 1 Ceh may contain many workers.
I run hql query with inner join to show info about all workers including name of the department and want to show the results in JTable.
The hql query:
private static String query_All_Workers="select W.fio, W.nomer, W.salary, C.name from Worker W Inner Join W.ceh C;
The method that runs query:
try {
Session session = HibernateUtil.getSessionFactory().openSession();
session.beginTransaction();
Query q = session.createQuery(hql);
List resultList = q.list();
displayResult(resultList);
session.getTransaction().commit();
} catch (HibernateException he) {
he.printStackTrace();
}
The method displayResult(List resultList):
Vector<String> tableHeaders = new Vector<>();
tableHeaders.add("FIO");
tableHeaders.add("Nomer");
tableHeaders.add("Salary");
tableHeaders.add("Ceh");
Vector tableData = new Vector();
for(Object o : resultList) {
Worker worker = (Worker)o;
Vector<Object> oneRow = new Vector<Object>();
oneRow.add(worker.getFio());
oneRow.add(worker.getNomer());
oneRow.add(worker.getSalary());
oneRow.add(worker.getCeh());
tableData.add(oneRow);
}
resultTable.setModel(new DefaultTableModel(tableData, tableHeaders));
And the exception occurs like this:
"java.lang.ClassCastException: [Ljava.lang.Object; cannot be cast to
workers.entity.Worker"
It happens because the list contains objects which are results of inner join query. So I don't know how I can correctly cast the object to Worker entity in order to use its getters.

You’re getting the “java.lang.ClassCastException” because you are trying to cast object of type java.lang.Object to custom class Worker:
Worker worker = (Worker)o;
There’s nothing wrong with what you’re trying to do just make sure that the result set returns actually Worker, which is not the case. In your example you are returning resultSet of Objects, because you’re writing regular JDBC select SQL statement.
In order to fix that you will need to checkout Hibernate’s Query Language (HQL) syntax and write HQL query instead of regular JDBC one.
Quick tutorial here http://www.tutorialspoint.com/hibernate/hibernate_query_language.htm
I will advise you do to so from now on, because you will gain the following benefits:
When you write select statements (or any other for that matter) with HQL you think and use Java objects, not DB tables (it helps a lot with table foreign key mappings);
HQL returns whole Java object back since Hibernate will do the necessary conversion for you.
In your case you just need to replace the query_All_Workers with this: “from Worker”. Yup, that’s it! Looks weird but as I said before, Hibernate is taking care of all conversions;
Once you’ve done that, and assuming that your Java class is properly mapped to Hibernate entity, resultSet will contain Workers this time, from which you can easily extract Ceh’s name by using Java getter method:
worker.getCeh.getName();
Also using HQL you will not need to make a second select to Ceh table, just to get the name, like you need to do right now.
Hope that helps.

What's the fastest way to check if a row exists in DB using Hibernate & spring?

I need to check if a row exists in a database in a very fast way.
Let's say I've got the primary key.
I found this code snippet in Hibernate's FAQ website:
Integer count = (Integer) session.createQuery("select count(*) from ....").uniqueResult();
I just started using spring, so I have HibernateTemplate object injected into my class.
How do I translate this snippet to work with HibernateTemplate.
Does anyone knows a better/faster way than this ?
Thanks.

Long count = hibernateTemplate.execute(new HibernateCallback<Long>() {
#Override
public Long doInHibernate(Session session) {
return (Long) session.createQuery("select count(someEntity.id) from SomeEntiuty someEntity ...").uniqueResult();
}
});
Hibernate used Integer for count queries before, but now uses Long. Also, note that even if not deprecated, Spring recommends not to use HibernateTemplate anymore and use the Hibernate API directly (using sessionFactory.getCurrentSession()).

Fastest way of checking primary key exist or not in database.
public void exist(Long id) {
Session session = sessionFactory.getCurrentSession();
String queryString = "select 1 from Employee e where e.id= :id";
Query query = session.createQuery(queryString);
query.setParameter("id", 1l);
Integer result = (Integer) query.uniqueResult();
System.out.println(result);
}

Again this also depends on a lot on what engine that you are using MyISAM vs innodb.
select count(col1) from table; will return the number of rows where the column is not null.
select count(*) from table; will return the number of rows.
Depending upon the database that you are using , a select count(*) will be more expensive than reading it from meta data table or system level tables that keep track of the row count.
Just my 2 cents.
Depending upon various other factors like indexes and other information / joins / access privileges this may be faster
SELECT table_rows FROM `information_schema`.`TABLES` where table_schema = 'database_schema_name' and table_name = 'table_name';

I think it's better to get an specific representative field of the first row found (using the PK or at least another indexed field), than counting all of the possible records that would match your search criteria.
If you're using Spring it will throw EmptyResultDataAccessException if no record was found.

How to convert nested SQL to HQL

I am new to the Hibernate and HQL. I want to write an update query in HQL, whose SQL equivalent is as follows:
update patient set
`last_name` = "new_last",
`first_name` = "new_first"
where id = (select doctor_id from doctor
where clinic_id = 22 and city = 'abc_city');
doctor_id is PK for doctor and is FK and PK in patient. There is one-to-one mapping.
The corresponding Java classes are Patient (with fields lastName, firstName, doctorId) and Doctor (with fields doctorId).
Can anyone please tell what will be the HQL equivalent of the above SQL query?
Thanks a lot.

String update = "update Patient p set p.last_name = :new_last, p.first_name = :new_first where p.id = some (select doctor.id from Doctor doctor where doctor.clinic_id = 22 and city = 'abc_city')";
You can work out how to phrase hql queries if you check the specification. You can find a section about subqueries there.

I don't think you need HQL (I know, you ask that explicitly, but since you say you're new to Hibernate, let me offer a Hibernate-style alternative). I am not a favor of HQL, because you are still dealing with strings, which can become hard to maintain, just like SQL, and you loose type safety.
Instead, use Hibernate criteria queries and methods to query your data. Depending on your class mapping, you could do something like this:
List patients = session.CreateCriteria(typeof(Patient.class))
.createAlias("doctor", "dr")
.add(Restrictions.Eq("dr.clinic_id", 22))
.add(Restrictions.Eq("dr.city", "abc_city"))
.list();
// go through the patients and set the properties something like this:
for(Patient p : patients)
{
p.lastName = "new lastname";
p.firstName = "new firstname";
}
Some people argue that using CreateCriteria is difficult. It takes a little getting used to, true, but it has the advantage of type safety and complexities can easily be hidden behind generic classes. Google for "Hibernate java GetByProperty" and you see what I mean.

update Patient set last_name = :new_last , first_name = :new_first where patient.id = some(select doctor_id from Doctor as doctor where clinic_id = 22 and city = abc_city)

There is a significant difference between executing update with select and actually fetching the records to the client, updating them and posting them back:
UPDATE x SET a=:a WHERE b in (SELECT ...)
works in the database, no data is transferred to the client.
list=CreateCriteria().add(Restriction).list();
brings all the records to be updated to the client, updates them, then posts them back to the database, probably with one UPDATE per record.
Using UPDATE is much, much faster than using criteria (think thousands of times).

Since the question title can be interpreted generally as "How to use nested selects in hibernate", and the HQL syntax restricts nested selects only to be in the select- and the where-clause, I would like to add here the possibility to use native SQL as well. In Oracle - for instance - you may also use a nested select in the from-clause.
Following query with two nested inner selects cannot be expressed by HQL:
select ext, count(ext)
from (
select substr(s, nullif( instr(s,'.', -1) +1, 1) ) as ext
from (
select b.FILE_NAME as s from ATTACHMENT_B b
union select att.FILE_NAME as s from ATTACHEMENT_FOR_MAIL att
)
)
GROUP BY ext
order by ext;
(which counts, BTW, the occurences of each distinct file name extension in two different tables).
You can use such an sql string as native sql like this:
#Autowired
private SessionFactory sessionFactory;
String sql = ...
SQLQuery qry = sessionFactory.getCurrentSession().createSQLQuery(sql);
// provide an appropriate ResultTransformer
return qry.list();