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How to efficiently compare two objects of same Class and check which are the fields that differ?

I want to write a generic function that accepts two objects of same entity class and compares the fields that are different and returns List of all the changes made to particular fields along with time.
One among the many entity classes would be say Member as follows
public class Member {
String firstName;
String lastName;
String driverLicenseNumber;
Integer age;
LocalDateTime timestamp;
}
In the DB, I have a table called member_audit that gets populated with old data whenever there is a change in member table using triggers (Similarly for other entities).
The List of resource for each of the entity I would be returning is something like
public class MemberAuditsResource {
private String field;
private LocalDateTime on;
private String changeType;
private String oldValue;
private String newValue;
}
I can only think of writing a function for each entity separately like this
private List<MembeAuditsResource> memberCompare(Member obj1, Member obj2) {
//Compare every field in both the objects using if else and populate the resource.
}
And then calling the above function to compare every pair of record in the entity_audit table.
The code would be very large to compare every field and multiplied by different entities.
Is there a better and efficient way?

If you extend the ideas to compare the object graph , it is not a trivial problem. So, the efficient way is not to re-inventing the wheel but use an existing library such as JaVers :
Member oldMember = new Member("foo" ,"chan" ,"AB12" , 21 ,LocalDateTime.now());
Member newMember = new Member("bar" ,"chan" ,"AB12" , 22 ,LocalDateTime.now());
Diff diff = javers.compare(oldMember, newMember);
for(Change change: diff.getChanges()) {
System.out.println(change);
}
Then , you can get something like:
ValueChange{ 'firstName' changed from 'foo' to 'bar' }
ValueChange{ 'age' changed from '21' to '22' }

Convert both object to a Map using JSON objectMapper.convertValue method. Then you can easily compare the keys/values of the two maps and create a list of differences.

Android Realm copyToRealmOrUpdate creates duplicates of nested objects

I have following classes:
public class Note extends RealmObject {
#PrimaryKey
private String id;
private Template template;
// other primitive fields, getters & setters
}
public class Template extends RealmObject {
private String name;
private String color;
// other primitive fields, getters & setters
}
I get my data from backend via Retrofit & Gson, so I have ready-to-use java objects in response.
Let's imagine that backend returns me same three Notes each time I call it.
When I get the list of Note objects, I do the following:
private void fetchNotesAndSave() {
List<Notes> notes = getNotesViaRetrofit();
Realm realm = Realm.getInstance(mContext);
realm.beginTransaction();
realm.copyToRealmOrUpdate(notes);
realm.commitTransaction();
realm.close();
}
After that I call these lines to check count of stored objects:
int notesCount = mRealm.where(Note.class).findAll().size();
int templatesCount = mRealm.where(Template.class).findAll().size();
For the first time:
notesCount == 3;
templatesCount == 3;
That's right. But, if I call the server again, get same notes (same primaryKey ids), and call fetchNotesAndSave() again, I'll get these results:
notesCount == 3;
templatesCount == 6;
Each time I call copyToRealmOrUpdate(), nested objects, that are inside of objects with primaryKey are duplicated - not updated.
Is there any way to change this behaviour?
Please let me know if you need more information. Thanks in advance!

It is because your Template class doesn't have any primary key. In that case these objects are inserted again as there is no guarantee that the referenced template objects safely can be updated, even if they are part of another object that has a primary key.
If you add a #PrimaryKey to your template class it should work as you expect it to.

If you can't provide a PK as suggested, you might want to use the following work around to avoid duplicates.
for (Note note: notes) {
realm.where(Note.class)
.equalTo("id", note.getId())
.findFirst()
.getTemplate()
.deleteFromRealm();
}
realm.copyToRealmOrUpdate(notes);

JPA : Is there any way to run a simple SELECT statement that only access a few columns?

I'm new to JPA so forgive me if my question seems silly.
We have used JPA in our project. I see that every entity object has a direct mapping with a table and each row in the table is an object of that entity type.
But, suppose I only want to access one or two columns of a table, how do i go about doing it ? The reason I'm asking is because of the task i have in hand.
There are two tables. The first table has everything set up with JPA so that each row can be cast into an object type. The first table has a column that is referenced in the second table i.e. say, table A has column CLOTH_ID and Table B has columns CLOTH_ID and CLOTH_DESCRIPTION. CLOTH_ID is used in both Table A and B; But B has the CLOTH_DESCRIPTION columns which corresponds to CLOTH_ID.
I'm displaying Table A in my webpage but I also need to display : CLOTH_DESCRIPTION in my webpage. Is there a JPA oriented way to do this or Am i better off using regular JDBC to extract the CLOTH DESCRIPTION values ?

I assume you have the following setup:
#Entity
#Table(name="A")
class A {
#ManyToOne
#JoinColumn(name="CLOTH_ID")
private B cloth;
//...
}
#Entity
#Table(name="B")
class B {
#Id
#Column(name="CLOTH_ID")
private int id;
#Column(name="CLOTH_DESCRIPTION")
private String description;
//...
}
If you don't... you're doing it wrong (i.e. it is not idiomatic JPA usage). You have the following options:
Simply fetch A
In this case #ManyToOne relationship will be fetched eagerly by default as well. Then simply call in Java:
a.getCloth().getDescription()
Prefer this approach as it is the simplest and most idiomatic unless the number of columns in B is huge.
Use JPA query with custom columns:
SELECT a, a.b.description
FROM A a
WHERE a.id = :id
In this case the query returns List<Object[]>, where Object[] actually contains two elements: A and String.
Same as above but with custom DTO:
class Adto {
private final A a;
private final String description;
public Adto(A a, String description) {
this.a = a;
this.description = description;
}
}
And slightly modified query:
SELECT new Adto(a, a.b.description)
FROM A a
WHERE a.id = :id

Need to know if each field has changed, how should I model this in Hibernate

So I have a class with three fields that maps to a table using hibernate
Class Widget
{
String field1;
String field2;
String field3;
}
On application startup a number of instances these widgets will be added to the database from an external files, but when I exit the application I need to know which (if any) of these fields have been changed by the user since the application was started, so the changes can be saved back to the files. I also need to store the original value for logging purposes.
I can't work whether I need a status field in the table or whether there is already a way of doing this using Hibernate/Database.
EDIT:A good solution to the program was given below . however the main reason I am using Hibernate is to reduce memory consumption so storing the original values when changed is not a good solution for me , I want everthing stored in the database. So I have create this new question How do I store a copy of each entity I add to database in Hibernate

Given an entity like the following you can track changes on one of it's field (while preserving its original value too).
#Entity
#Table(schema = "test", name = "test")
public final class Test {
private static final int ORIGINAL = 0;
private static final int CURRENT = 1;
private Integer id;
// holds the original and current state of the field
private final AtomicReferenceArray<String> field = new AtomicReferenceArray<>(2);
#Id
public Integer getId() {
return id;
}
public void setId(Integer id) {
this.id = id;
}
#Transient
public String getOriginalField() {
return field.get(ORIGINAL);
}
#Basic
public String getField() {
return field.get(CURRENT);
}
public void setField(String field) {
this.field.compareAndSet(ORIGINAL, null, field);
this.field.set(CURRENT, field);
}
#PreUpdate
public void preUpdate() {
System.out.format("Original: %s, New: %s\n", getOriginalField(), getField());
}
...
}
If there is a single row in a database like this:
id: 1
field: a
version: 2011-12-02 11:24:00
before the field gets updated (say, from a to b) you'll get the following output.
Original: d, New: b
The original value gets preserved even if the the entity is updated multiple times and both state can be accessed through the corresponding getters (getField and getOriginalField—you can get more creative than me in the naming :).
This way, you can spare yourself from creating version columns in your database and also can hide the implementation details from clients.
Instead of an AtomicReferenceArray you could use arrays, lists, etc, to track all changes like this way.
The #PreUpdate isn't necessary of course, but this way you can be notified of changes in the entity's state and atomically save the updated fields into file. There more annotations like these: see the documentation for javax.persistence for other annotation types.

If you are using MySql then you can get table's last update time from information_schema database like
SELECT UPDATE_TIME FROM `information_schema`.`tables`
WHERE TABLE_SCHEMA = 'dbName' AND TABLE_NAME = 'tableName'
Or else simple solution will be to add a column for update time stamp. By this you can even monitor which particular row has been updated.

If you need to synchronize with files as soon as you save into database, You can use the Hibernate event mechanism to intercept any save to database and save it to file, here's a sample doing that.

Best practice for storing global data in J2EE App using Hibernate

I'm looking for the best solution to store Java EE application's global data using Hibernate. It will consist of key value pairs. Example:
projectStarted = "10-11-11"
developerNumber = 3
teamLeader = "John"
As you see, all of this entries have different types.
For now I see two options:
1) Create GlobalData entity. Each field of it will be represented as unique column in the table and will contain unique setting. This way I have no problems with type casting, but I would like to avoid it in case where there will be big amount of settings.
2) Create Setting entity. Each of it will contain two fields: key(Primary key) and value and will be represented as unique record in the table. This is preferable solution, but It's seems to me that I will get a lot of type casting, because settings can be any type.
So basically, I'm looking for the way to implement second solution without getting a lot of troubles from different types. Can anybody help me?
Thanks.
Edit 1.
Yeah, thanks Christian. Just got similar idea.
What if I will have Settings entity, which will be like:
#Entity
#Table(name = "settings")
public class Setting {
#Column
private String key;
#Column
private String value;
#Column
private String converterClassFullName; //example by.lugovsky.MyConverter
//Getters, setters
}
And GlobalData class.
public class GlobalData {
private Date projectStarted;
private int developerNumber;
private String teamLeader;
Set<Setting> settings;
//Getters and setters for all, except settings.
}
So basically my idea is to convert Setting entity before persisting/updating/ etc. I can do this in my DAO, but I was wondering, if I could annotate GlobalData class with #Entity annotation as well without creating new table. This way I can set OneToMany annotation to Setting's set and Perform conversions in the internal #PrePersist etc. methods.
Will Hibernate allow me to do this?
Thanks again

You could store a Converter-Class into the db and the let it run through the given converter for a property before using the value. JSF offers Converter API:
public interface Converter{
public Object getAsObject(FacesContext fc, UIComponent component, String value) throws ConverterException;
public String getAsString(FacesContext fc, UIComponent component, Object obj) throws ConverterException;
}
If you have a schema with
name: String
value: String
converter: Class
then you could do something like this:
PropertyEntry pe = // Get from OR-Mapper
Converter c = (Converter) pe.getConverter().newInstance();
Object o = c.getAsObject(null, null, pe.getValue());
// use the object o instead of value
For even more coolness you could also define a field in the class which will not be persisted which you could use to hold the converted value within the object.