The difference between annotating fields and methods in JPA (Hibernate)? - java

Are there any statements in JPA spec or official docs about certain JPA implementations which describe the behavior when we annotate entity's methods and when we annotate entity's fields?
Just a few hours ago I met an ugly problem: I use JPA (via Hibernate, but without anything Hybernate-specific in java code) with MS SQL Server. And I put all annotations on entities' fields (I preferred this style until this day).
When I looked at the DB I found that all table columns which should be foreing keys and which should contain some integers (ids) in fact had varbinary(255, null) type and contained hashes of something (I don't know what was that but it looked as a typical MD5 hash).
The most frustrated thing is that the app worked correctly. But occasionally (on updates) I got MS SQL exception which stated that I tried to insert too long values and data cannot be truncated.
Eventually (as an experiment) I removed all annotations from entities fields and put all of them on methods. I recreated DB and all tables contained perfect FK column. And those columns stored integers (ids, like 1, 3 ,4 ...).
So, can somebody explain what was that?
I've found this SO thread and it's accepted answer says that the preferred way is to put annotations on fields. At least for my concrete case I can say that it's not true.

JPA allows for two types of access to the data of a persistent class. Field access which means that it maps the instance variables (fields) to columns in the database and Property access which means that is uses the getters to determine the property names that will be mapped to the db. What access type it will be used is decided by where you put the #Id annotation (on the id field or the getId() method).

From experience, I do the following.
I put the entity details at the top of the entity class definition, (schema, row constraints, etc) for instance....
#Entity
#Table(name="MY_TABLE", schema = "MY_SCHEMA", uniqueConstraints = #UniqueConstraint(columnNames = "CONSTRAINT1"))
For the fields defined, I do not put the annotations on the field declarations, but rather on the getter methods for those fields
#Column(name = "MY_COL", table="MY_TABLE", nullable = false, length = 35)
public String getMyCol() {
return this.myCol;
}
public void setMyCol(String myCol) {
this.myCol = myCol;
}

Related

Mapping derived columns to POJOs with RecordMapper in JOOQ

i have a table tickets where i insert ticket and have a field createdBy which stores the UserId Integer of the creator of that record. During fetching I join with users table and concat firstname and last name and my DTO has field createdBy of the concatenated name of creator. How can i map the derived field? this is my reference https://www.jooq.org/doc/3.13/manual/sql-execution/fetching/pojos/ and I cant seem to find such a scenario provided
the issue is not the join. the issue is mapping the string createdBy derived after the join whereas in the record class generated by jooq is an Integer because in the database table i store the userId.
List<MyTickets> mytickets = create.select(....FIELDS).from(TICKETS_).fetch().into(MyTickets.class);
#Override
public Field<Integer> field9() {
return Tickets.TICKETS_.CREATEDBY;
}
In my answer, I will assume that your computed column is going to be called CREATED_BY_NAME, not CREATED_BY, which is a name that's already taken, and to avoid confusion.
If this is something you do frequently, you have a few options that could be interesting to you:
Use views to generate this alternative CREATED_BY_NAME column. A lot of databases can insert into / update views as well, so you won't have a big penalty in using views to replace your tables. To your client logic, the origin of this column will be transparent. If you want to work with UpdatableRecord, you will have to tell jOOQ's code generator what the view's underlying primary key is using the synthetic primary key flag.
Similar to the above views, you could use computed columns on your tables, using the GENERATED ALWAYS AS ... syntax (or whatever your dialect uses for the syntax). Not all dialects support this, but it is a nice feature that turns tables into views without the extra view object.
If you want to keep computing this column manually in your jOOQ code, you could either write your own DTO / POJO objects, or extend the code generator with a custom code section, where you generate the relevant attribute / getter / setter. This approach only works for mutable POJOs, as you cannot modify the constructor of an immutable POJO.
You can also specify a base class for all of your affected POJOs and inject that base class using a generator strategy (programmatic or configurative). The base class could then implement all the getters / setters for columns like CREATED_BY_NAME.
You can also use structural typing instead. You don't have to map all the columns into your POJO. You could also map some columns into your generated POJO (excluding CREATED_BY_NAME) and map the CREATED_BY_NAME column separately. Just keep a reference to your jOOQ Result and/or Record, and perform several map / intoXYZ() calls on it.

How does Hibernate work with normalized databases?

Preliminary Info
I'm currently trying to integrate Hibernate with my team at work. We primarily do Java web development, creating webapps that provide data to clients. Our old approach involves calling stored procedures with JDBC (on top of Oracle boxes) and storing their results in beans. However, I've heard a lot about the benefits of integrating Hibernate into a development environment like ours so I'm attempting to move away from our old habits. Note: I'm using the Hibernate JPA annotation approach due to simplicity for team adoption's sake.
Specific Problem
The specific issue I'm having currently is using Hibernate with normalized tables. We have a lot of schemas structured like so:
StateCodes (integer state_code, varchar state_name)
Businesses (integer business_id, varchar business_name, integer state_code)
I want to be able to have a single #Entity that has all of the "Businesses" fields, except instead of "state_code" it has "state_name". To my understanding, Hibernate treats #Entity classes as tables. The #OneToMany, #OneToOne, #ManyToOne annotations create relationships between entities, but this is a very simplistic, dictionary-like lookup and I feel like it doesn't apply here (or might be overkill).
One approach I've seen is
#Formula("(select state_name from StateCodes where Businesses.state_code = state_code)")
private String stateCode;
But, given Hibernate's perk of "avoiding writing raw SQL", this seems like bad practice. Not to mention, I'm extremely confused about how Hibernate will then treat this field. Does it get saved on a save operation? It's just defined as a query, not a column, after all.
So what is the best way to accomplish this?
I do not see any reason not use the standard JPA mappings in this case. Short of creating a database view and mapping an entity to that (or using the non-JPA compliant #Formula) then you will have to map as below.
Unless you are providing a means for the State to be changed then you do not need to expose the State entity to the outside world: JPA providers do not need getters/setters to be present.. Neither do you need to Map a State to Businesses:
#Entity
#Table(name = "Businesses")
public class Business{
//define id and other fields
#ManyToOne
#JoinColumn(name = "state_code")
private State state;
public String getStateName(){
return state.getName();
}
}
#Entity
#Table(name="StateCodes")
public class State{
//define id and other fields.
#Column(name = "state_name")
private String stateName;
public String getStateName(){
return stateName;
}
}

How to inject custom object ids into JPA entities

I am using JPA 2 for an enterprise application, and my DBA's just hit me with a twist.
They want me to use the group's centralized object ID generator for all my tables. This means rather than using table values or a sequence table, I will need to call a web service to get a batch of ~50 ids.
Then, as I persist any new object, I would need to inject this id first, and save that to the table.
So how would I manipulate the #Id column of an entity to handle this.
Is it as simple as setting a key before I persist? I suspect that would throw some sort of unmanaged entity with ID set error.
Update:
The better method is to actually specify a Sequence strategy on Generated fields and specify a custom Sequence class.
JPA will then call this class's nextId() method every time it inserts a new object.
This method allows full graphs to be persisted without intervening on each entity manually.
Figured it out. Amazingly complex ;) - just remove the GeneratedValue annotation from the key field.
It is intended for Native Ids like SSN or email, but works regardless of source.
#Entity
public class Client{
#Id
#Column(name="CLNT_ID")
private long key;
#Column(name="CLNT_NUM")
private String clientNumber;
...
}

Adding a constraint to a JPA or Hibernate entity column using annotations

I want to have a column for an entity which only accepts one of an enumerated set of values. For example let's say I have a POJO/entity class "Pet" with a String column "petType". I want petType to only allow one of three values: "cat", "dog", or "gorilla". How would I go about annotating the getPetType() method in order to have a database level constraint created which enforces this?
I am allowing Hibernate to create or update my database table at application start up via the Hibernate property "hbm2ddlauto" being set to "update".
I have tried using a parameterized user type in association with the #Type annotation but this doesn't appear to provide any sort of constraint on the database column itself. There doesn't appear to be a way of specifying this sort of constraint in the #Column annotation short of using some SQL with the columnDefinition element, and I'm hesitant to go this route since it seems that whatever I use there will not be cross platform/database independent (important to me since I run my code in production on Oracle but I do testing locally using HSQLDB and Derby). Maybe what I want to do just can't be done simply using annotations.
Thanks in advance for any insight you can give me on this topic.
Create a enum of type PetType and defined you mapping as
#Enumerated(EnumType.STRING)
That way, strings are stored in the database and your java enum type only accept the 3 values you specify.

Extending JPA entity data at runtime

I need to allow client users to extend the data contained by a JPA entity at runtime. In other words I need to add a virtual column to the entity table at runtime. This virtual column will only be applicable to certain data rows and there could possibly be quite a few of these virtual columns. As such I don't want to create an actual additional column in the database, but rather I want to make use of additional entities that represent these virtual columns.
As an example, consider the following situation. I have a Company entity which has a field labelled Owner, which contains a reference to the Owner of the Company. At runtime a client user decides that all Companies that belong to a specific Owner should have the extra field labelled ContactDetails.
My preliminary design uses two additional entities to accomplish this. The first basically represents the virtual column and contains information such as the field name and type of value expected. The other represents the actual data and connects an entity row to a virtual column. For example, the first entity might contain the data "ContactDetails" while the second entity contains say "555-5555."
Is this the right way to go about doing this? Is there a better alternative? Also, what would be the easiest way to automatically load this data when the original entity is loaded? I want my DAO call to return the entity together with its extensions.
EDIT: I changed the example from a field labelled Type which could be a Partner or a Customer to the present version as it was confusing.
Perhaps a simpler alternative could be to add a CLOB column to each Company and store the extensions as an XML. There is a different set of tradeoffs here compared to your solution but as long as the extra data doesn't need to be SQL accessible (no indexes, fkeys and so on) it will probably be simple than what you do now.
It also means that if you have some fancy logic regarding the extra data you would need to implement it differently. For example if you need a list of all possible extension types you would have to maintain it separately. Or if you need searching capabilities (find customer by phone number) you will require lucene or similar solution.
I can elaborate more if you are interested.
EDIT:
To enable searching you would want something like lucene which is a great engine for doing free text search on arbitrary data. There is also hibernate-search which integrates lucene directly with hibernate using annotations and such - I haven't used it but I heard good things about it.
For fetching/writing/accessing data you are basically dealing with XML so any XML technique should apply. The best approach really depends on the actual content and how it is going to be used. I would suggest looking into XPath for data access, and maybe look into defining your own hibernate usertype so that all the access is encapsulated into a class and not just plain String.
I've run into more problems than I hoped I would and as such I decided to dumb down the requirements for my first iteration. I'm currently trying to allow such Extensions only on the entire Company entity, in other words, I'm dropping the whole Owner requirement. So the problem could be rephrased as "How can I add virtual columns (entries in another entity that act like an additional column) to an entity at runtime?"
My current implementation is as follow (irrelevant parts filtered out):
#Entity
class Company {
// The set of Extension definitions, for example "Location"
#Transient
public Set<Extension> getExtensions { .. }
// The actual entry, for example "Atlanta"
#OneToMany(fetch = FetchType.EAGER)
#JoinColumn(name = "companyId")
public Set<ExtensionEntry> getExtensionEntries { .. }
}
#Entity
class Extension {
public String getLabel() { .. }
public ValueType getValueType() { .. } // String, Boolean, Date, etc.
}
#Entity
class ExtensionEntry {
#ManyToOne(fetch = FetchType.EAGER)
#JoinColumn(name = "extensionId")
public Extension getExtension() { .. }
#ManyToOne(fetch = FetchType.LAZY)
#JoinColumn(name = "companyId", insertable = false, updatable = false)
public Company getCompany() { .. }
public String getValueAsString() { .. }
}
The implementation as is allows me to load a Company entity and Hibernate will ensure that all its ExtensionEntries are also loaded and that I can access the Extensions corresponding to those ExtensionEntries. In other words, if I wanted to, for example, display this additional information on a web page, I could access all of the required information as follow:
Company company = findCompany();
for (ExtensionEntry extensionEntry : company.getExtensionEntries()) {
String label = extensionEntry.getExtension().getLabel();
String value = extensionEntry.getValueAsString();
}
There are a number of problems with this, however. Firstly, when using FetchType.EAGER with an #OneToMany, Hibernate uses an outer join and as such will return duplicate Companies (one for each ExtensionEntry). This can be solved by using Criteria.DISTINCT_ROOT_ENTITY, but that in turn will cause errors in my pagination and as such is an unacceptable answer. The alternative is to change the FetchType to LAZY, but that means that I will always "manually" have to load ExtensionEntries. As far as I understand, if, for example, I loaded a List of 100 Companies, I'd have to loop over and query each of those, generating a 100 SQL statements which isn't acceptable performance-wise.
The other problem which I have is that ideally I'd like to load all the Extensions whenever a Company is loaded. With that I mean that I'd like that #Transient getter named getExtensions() to return all the Extensions for any Company. The problem here is that there is no foreign key relation between Company and Extension, as Extension isn't applicable to any single Company instance, but rather to all of them. Currently I can get past that with code like I present below, but this will not work when accessing referenced entities (if for example I have an entity Employee which has a reference to Company, the Company which I retrieve through employee.getCompany() won't have the Extensions loaded):
List<Company> companies = findAllCompanies();
List<Extension> extensions = findAllExtensions();
for (Company company : companies) {
// Extensions are the same for all Companies, but I need them client side
company.setExtensions(extensions);
}
So that's were I'm at currently, and I have no idea how to proceed in order to get past these problems. I'm thinking that my entire design might be flawed, but I'm unsure of how else to try and approach it.
Any and all ideas and suggestions are welcome!
The example with Company, Partner, and Customer is actually good application for polymorphism which is supported by means of inheritance with JPA: you will have one the following 3 strategies to choose from: single table, table per class, and joined. Your description sounds more like joined strategy but not necessarily.
You may also consider just one-to-one( or zero) relationship instead. Then you will need to have such relationship for each value of your virtual column since its values represent different entities. Hence, you'll have a relationship with Partner entity and another relationship with Customer entity and either, both or none can be null.
Use pattern decorator and hide your entity inside decoratorClass bye
Using EAV pattern is IMHO bad choice, because of performance problems and problems with reporting (many joins). Digging for solution I've found something else here: http://www.infoq.com/articles/hibernate-custom-fields

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