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How do I make JPA entity field truly write-only

I have a case where I'm persisting a large jsonb field into a PostGres table, but do not want to read it when I fetch the entity; if I do fetch it, my service goes OOM. A better design might be to separate this into a 1 to 1 table, but I can't do that at this time.
To plead that this is not a duplicate question, here's some of my research:
I'm not able to mark the column LAZY since I have a simple column not a join`
JPA/Hibernate write only field with no read
I tried the empty setter in this suggestion, which makes sense - but it still appears to read the column and I OOM: https://www.zizka.ch/pages/programming/java/hibernate/hibernate-write-only.html
I also tried omitting the setter altogether in my #Data class: Omitting one Setter/Getter in Lombok
So, I can not see the field, but I can't seem to keep it from being read into memory in the background. It seems like there must be some simple setting in JPA or Hibernate to exclude a column from read. Before I go try to make a complex repository hierarchy just to see if it works, I thought I would ask here in case I get lucky.
Thanks in advance!

Lazy loading attributes
Hibernate can load attribute lazily, but you need to enable byte code enhancements:
First you need to set the property hibernate.enhancer.enableLazyInitialization to true
Then you can annotate the field with #Basic( fetch = FetchType.LAZY ).
Here's the example from the documentation:
#Entity
public class Customer {
#Id
private Integer id;
private String name;
#Basic( fetch = FetchType.LAZY )
private UUID accountsPayableXrefId;
#Lob
#Basic( fetch = FetchType.LAZY )
#LazyGroup( "lobs" )
private Blob image;
//Getters and setters are omitted for brevity
}
You can also enable this feature via the Hibernate ORM gradle plugin
Named Native queries
You could also decide to not map it and save/read it with a named native query. It seems a good trade off for a single attribute - it will just require an additional query to save the json.
Example:
#Entity
#Table(name = "MyEntity_table")
#NamedNativeQuery(
name = "write_json",
query = "update MyEntity_table set json_column = :json where id = :id")
#NamedNativeQuery(
name = "read_json",
query = "select json_column from MyEntity_table where id = :id")
class MyEntity {
....
}
Long id = ...
String jsonString = ...
session.createNamedQuery( "write_json" )
.setParameter( "id", id )
.setParameter( "json", jsonString )
.executeUpdate();
jsonString = (String)session.createNamedQuery( "read_json" )
.setParameter( "id", id )
.getSingleResult();
In this case, schema generation is not going to create the column, so you will need to add it manually (not a big deal, considering that there are better tools to update the schema in production).
MappedSuperclass
You can also have two entities extending the same superclass (this way you don't have to copy the attributes). They have to update the same table:
#MappedSuperclass
class MyEntity {
#Id
Long id;
String name
...
}
#Entity
#Table(name = "MyEntity_table")
class MyEntityWriter extends MyEntity {
String json
}
#Entity
#Table(name = "MyEntity_table")
class MyEntityReader extends MyEntity {
// No field is necessary here
}
Now you can use MyEntityWriter for saving all the values and MyEntityReader for loading only the values you need.
I think you will have some problems with schema generation if you try to create the tables because only one of the two will be created:
If MyEntityWriter is the first table created, then no problem
If MyEntityWriter is the second table created, the query will fail because the table already exist and the additional column won't be created.
I haven't tested this solution though, there might be something I haven't thought about.

Does FetchType.LAZY fetch anything in list or it's empty

Let's say i have a association as ,
class Department{
......
#OneToMany(fetch = FetchType.LAZY)
private List<Employee> employees;
}
Now when i fetch Department, will it fetch anything in employees list or will it be completely empty.
Will identifiers for employee object be loaded in list like say i have employee object attributes as below:-
Employee{
id
name
doj
....
}
Lazy object like {
id -> 111
name -> null
doj -> null
}
Now when i initialize employee object or access it's properties using getters, then the object will be loaded from database using id as an identifier...??

Instead of the real collection class (e.g. ArrayList) a different List implementation is injected into your field (PersistentList). Depending on the calls on that collection and the lazy strategy it will do different things:
In case lazy="lazy" the call to any of the collections methods would get the collection fully loaded
If lazy="extra", then calls to some functions would trigger SQL without loading the collection. E.g. list.size() would trigger select count.... While getting the 1st element would select only that element. This may be suitable for large collections. Note, that this behaviour may also depend on the collection type - unordered collections will load all elements anyway.

Lazy fetch type, Hibernate won’t load the relationships for that particular object instance.
FetchType.LAZY = Doesn’t load the relationships unless explicitly “asked for” via getters
FetchType.EAGER = Loads ALL relationships
In your case It won't load Employee List from database unless you explicitly fire query for it, Because you have set fetch type ( fetch = FetchType.LAZY ). If fetch type was ( fetch = FetchType.EAGER ) then It would explicitly fire a select query for Employee list. In that object you would get all employee property eg name, doj.
the object will be loaded from database using id as an identifier...??
Department{
#OneToMany(fetch = FetchType.EAGER,,mappedBy = "department")
private List<Employee> employees;
}
In Emplooyee.... You need to mapped it by reference of department object.
eg:
Employee{
// Reference of department.
#ManyToOne(fetch = FetchType.EAGER)
#JoinColumn(name = "departmentid", nullable = false)
private Department department;
}
This way it will become bidirectional. now Hibernate will fire query by reference (id in native sql) .
If you want to be loaded lazily the set Fetch mode FetchType.LAZY in both mapping....

In your case until you explicitly access Department.employees (through a getter or any other means) It will not load the Employee entities. There will be a Proxy for this. It will be initialized once at the first call to access this employees collection.

How Lazy Loading Works in Hibernate
The simplest way that Hibernate can apply lazy load behavior upon your entities and associations is by providing a proxy implementation of them. Hibernate intercepts calls to the entity by substituting a proxy for it derived from the entity’s class. Where the requested information is missing, it will be loaded from the database before control is ceded to the parent entity’s implementation.
Please note that when the association is represented as a collection class, then a wrapper (essentially a proxy for the collection, rather than for the entities that it contains) is created and substituted for the original collection. When you access this collection proxy then what you get inside returned proxy collection are not proxy entities; rather they are actual entities. You need not to put much pressure on understanding this concept because on runtime it hardly matters.
Please refer this for more information:
http://howtodoinjava.com/hibernate/lazy-loading-in-hibernate/
Also enable hibernate.sql.show=true so that you can see what queries are being fired when you are trying to fetch the collections.

JPA: How do I avoid loading an object simply so I can store its ID in the database?

This question is so simple, you can probably just read the code
This is a very simple performance question. In the code example below, I wish to set the Owner on my Cat object. I have the ownerId, but the cats method for requires an Owner object, not a Long. Eg: setOwner(Owner owner)
#Autowired OwnerRepository ownerRepository;
#Autowired CatRepository catRepository;
Long ownerId = 21;
Cat cat = new Cat("Jake");
cat.setOwner(ownerRepository.findById(ownerId)); // What a waste of time
catRepository.save(cat)
I'm using the ownerId to load an Owner object, so I can call the setter on the Cat which is simply going to pull out the id, and save the Cat record with an owner_id. So essentially I'm loading an owner for nothing.
What is the correct pattern for this?

First of all, you should pay attention to your method to load an Owner entity.
If you're using an Hibernate Session :
// will return the persistent instance and never returns an uninitialized instance
session.get(Owner.class, id);
// might return a proxied instance that is initialized on-demand
session.load(Owner.class, id);
If you're using EntityManager :
// will return the persistent instance and never returns an uninitialized instance
em.find(Owner.class, id);
// might return a proxied instance that is initialized on-demand
em.getReference(Owner.class, id);
So, you should lazy load the Owner entity to avoid some hits to the cache nor the database.
By the way, I would suggest to inverse your relation between Owner and Cat.
For example :
Owner owner = ownerRepository.load(Owner.class, id);
owner.addCat(myCat);

Victor's answer is correct (+1 from me), but requires going through the EntityManager or Hibernate session. Assuming the repositories you have autowired are JPA repositories from Spring Data and you would prefer to go through them, use the JpaRepository#getOne method. It calls EntityManager#getReference, so it does the same thing, returning a proxy to the entity.
I do not think the relationship necessarily needs to be reversed here, which mapping to use depends on the situation. In many cases many-to-one is preferred.

Probably not what you were looking for, but nothing in your question implies that you have to solve this with JPA. Some things are just much much simpler with plain old SQL:
INSERT INTO cat (name, owner_id) VALUES ('Jake', 21)

If you are using Hibernate you can do this:
Long ownerId = 21;
Cat cat = new Cat("Jake");
Owner owner = new Owner();
owner.setId(ownerId);
cat.setOwner(owner);
catRepository.save(cat)
It's not standard JPA, but, if you are not willing to migrate to other JPA provider, it's the best from a performance perspective.
Update
As Nathan pointed out, you need to make sure the Owner is not already associated (in which case you can get a NonUniqueObjectException since the Persistence Context can have at most one entity associated in the 1st level cache).
Using EntityManager.contains(entity) doesn't help in this case, since Hibernate stores the entities in an IdentiyHashMap, where the key is the Object reference itself.
So you should use this method when, for example, you have a use case where you must insert these entities for the first time, or when you need to update them and the Owner hadn't been loaded in the current running Persistence Context (either directly or through JPQL or a Criteria API).
Otherwise, use EntityManager.getReferemce(Class entityClass, Object primaryKey).

One more way (can come handy sometimes in legacy code or db schema):
#Entity
public class Cat {
#Column(name = "OWNER_ID")
private Long ownerId;
#ManyToOne
#JoinColumn(name = "OWNER_ID", insertable = false, updatable = false)
private Owner owner;
}

Efficiently determining the IDs of entities referenced via OneToMany relationship

Let's say I have a Hibernate entity that declares a OneToMany relationship to a different entity:
#Entity
public class SomeEntity {
#OneToMany(fetch = FetchType.LAZY)
private List<OtherEntity> otherEntities = new LinkedList<OtherEntity>();
[...]
}
When mapping SomeEntity to the corresponding DTO, all I need are the IDs that identify OtherEntity as primary key (i.e., I am not actually interested in OtherEntity instances).
Does Hibernate support this pattern, i.e., only retrieving the IDs of entities referenced via a OneToMany relationship?
I cannot influence how SomeEntity is retrieved (i.e., I have an existing SomeEntity instance retrieved within te scope of the current Hibernate session), but let's assume that lazy loading has not yet taken place, so just retrieving the child objects' IDs (rather than the complete objects) would actually yield a performance benefit.

Well, if you only need the entities' ids and you want to be economical about it, when you get those entities from the database you should state in your query that you only want to get the ids of each entry, using projections, something like :
SELECT Entity.id as entity FROM Entity WHERE ...
This will return an array of objects of the same type as Entity's id field type.

You can try obtaining the primary key without accessing the entity itself (without otherEntities.get(0).getId()). To do this you can use the PersistenceUnitUtil class:
PersistenceUnitUtil#getIdentifier(yourEntity)
The PersistenceUnitUtil can be obtained from the EntityManagerFactory. So it could be something like:
EntityManager em = ...
PersistenceUnitUtil = em.getEntityManagerFactory().getPersistenceUnitUtil();
Unfortunately, I'm not aware if this will prevent the entity loading from occuring. However, just accessing the otherEntities collection or even obtaining references to each entity will not make the instance to be loaded; you need to invoke a method on the fetched entity in order to be sure it will be loaded.
You also might consider creating a #NamedQuery and return only the OtherEntity ID's.
HTH!

From hibernate reference, section 2.2.2.1.
http://docs.jboss.org/hibernate/annotations/3.5/reference/en/html/entity.html#entity-mapping-property
Declare your columns as lazy initialized:
#Basic(fetch = FetchType.LAZY)
private String getYourProperty() {
}
You also need to disable proxies for your entity class and byte instrument it. There is an example here:
Making a OneToOne-relation lazy

You can use the below HQL as told in the documentation to establish this.
session.createQuery(select new OtherEntity(oe.id) OtherEntity oe
where oe.parentSomeEntity.someId = :someId).list();//also set someId.
Add a constructor in OtherEntity to set the id also there should be a mapping to SomeEntity in OtherEntity.
This HQL will give you a List<OtherEntity> with only id set in the bean.

Found shared references to a collection org.hibernate.HibernateException

I got this error message:
error: Found shared references to a collection: Person.relatedPersons
When I tried to execute addToRelatedPersons(anotherPerson):
person.addToRelatedPersons(anotherPerson);
anotherPerson.addToRelatedPersons(person);
anotherPerson.save();
person.save();
My domain:
Person {
static hasMany = [relatedPersons:Person];
}
any idea why this happens ?

Hibernate shows this error when you attempt to persist more than one entity instance sharing the same collection reference (i.e. the collection identity in contrast with collection equality).
Note that it means the same collection, not collection element - in other words relatedPersons on both person and anotherPerson must be the same. Perhaps you're resetting that collection after entities are loaded? Or you've initialized both references with the same collection instance?

I had the same problem. In my case, the issue was that someone used BeanUtils to copy the properties of one entity to another, so we ended up having two entities referencing the same collection.
Given that I spent some time investigating this issue, I would recommend the following checklist:
Look for scenarios like entity1.setCollection(entity2.getCollection()) and getCollection returns the internal reference to the collection (if getCollection() returns a new instance of the collection, then you don't need to worry).
Look if clone() has been implemented correctly.
Look for BeanUtils.copyProperties(entity1, entity2).

Explanation on practice. If you try to save your object, e.g.:
Set<Folder> folders = message.getFolders();
folders.remove(inputFolder);
folders.add(trashFolder);
message.setFiles(folders);
MESSAGESDAO.getMessageDAO().save(message);
you don't need to set updated object to a parent object:
message.setFiles(folders);
Simple save your parent object like:
Set<Folder> folders = message.getFolders();
folders.remove(inputFolder);
folders.add(trashFolder);
// Not set updated object here
MESSAGESDAO.getMessageDAO().save(message);

Reading online the cause of this error can be also an hibernate bug, as workaround that it seems to work, it is to put a:
session.clear()
You must to put the clear after getting data and before commit and close, see example:
//getting data
SrReq sr = (SrReq) crit.uniqueResult();
SrSalesDetailDTO dt=SrSalesDetailMapper.INSTANCE.map(sr);
//CLEAR
session.clear();
//close session
session.getTransaction().commit();
session.close();
return dt;
I use this solution for select to database, for update or insert i don't know if this solution can work or can cause problems.
My problem is equal at 100% of this: http://www.progtown.com/topic128073-hibernate-many-to-many-on-two-tables.html

I have experienced a great example of reproducing such a problem.
Maybe my experience will help someone one day.
Short version
Check that your #Embedded Id of container has no possible collisions.
Long version
When Hibernate instantiates collection wrapper, it searches for already instantiated collection by CollectionKey in internal Map.
For Entity with #Embedded id, CollectionKey wraps EmbeddedComponentType and uses #Embedded Id properties for equality checks and hashCode calculation.
So if you have two entities with equal #Embedded Ids, Hibernate will instantiate and put new collection by the first key and will find same collection for the second key.
So two entities with same #Embedded Id will be populated with same collection.
Example
Suppose you have Account entity which has lazy set of loans.
And Account has #Embedded Id consists of several parts(columns).
#Entity
#Table(schema = "SOME", name = "ACCOUNT")
public class Account {
#OneToMany(fetch = FetchType.LAZY, mappedBy = "account")
private Set<Loan> loans;
#Embedded
private AccountId accountId;
...
}
#Embeddable
public class AccountId {
#Column(name = "X")
private Long x;
#Column(name = "BRANCH")
private String branchId;
#Column(name = "Z")
private String z;
...
}
Then suppose that Account has additional property mapped by #Embedded Id but has relation to other entity Branch.
#ManyToOne(fetch = FetchType.EAGER)
#JoinColumn(name = "BRANCH")
#MapsId("accountId.branchId")
#NotFound(action = NotFoundAction.IGNORE)//Look at this!
private Branch branch;
It could happen that you have no FK for Account to Brunch relation id DB so Account.BRANCH column can have any value not presented in Branch table.
According to #NotFound(action = NotFoundAction.IGNORE) if value is not present in related table, Hibernate will load null value for the property.
If X and Y columns of two Accounts are same(which is fine), but BRANCH is different and not presented in Branch table, hibernate will load null for both and Embedded Ids will be equal.
So two CollectionKey objects will be equal and will have same hashCode for different Accounts.
result = {CollectionKey#34809} "CollectionKey[Account.loans#Account#43deab74]"
role = "Account.loans"
key = {Account#26451}
keyType = {EmbeddedComponentType#21355}
factory = {SessionFactoryImpl#21356}
hashCode = 1187125168
entityMode = {EntityMode#17415} "pojo"
result = {CollectionKey#35653} "CollectionKey[Account.loans#Account#33470aa]"
role = "Account.loans"
key = {Account#35225}
keyType = {EmbeddedComponentType#21355}
factory = {SessionFactoryImpl#21356}
hashCode = 1187125168
entityMode = {EntityMode#17415} "pojo"
Because of this, Hibernate will load same PesistentSet for two entities.

In my case, I was copying and pasting code from my other classes, so I did not notice that the getter code was bad written:
#OneToMany(fetch = FetchType.LAZY, mappedBy = "credito")
public Set getConceptoses() {
return this.letrases;
}
public void setConceptoses(Set conceptoses) {
this.conceptoses = conceptoses;
}
All references conceptoses but if you look at the get says letrases

I too got the same issue, someone used BeanUtils.copyProperties(source, target). Here both source and target, are using the same collection as attribute.
So i just used the deep copy as below..
How to Clone Collection in Java - Deep copy of ArrayList and HashSet

Consider an entity:
public class Foo{
private<user> user;
/* with getters and setters */
}
And consider an Business Logic class:
class Foo1{
List<User> user = new ArrayList<>();
user = foo.getUser();
}
Here the user and foo.getUser() share the same reference. But saving the two references creates a conflict.
The proper usage should be:
class Foo1 {
List<User> user = new ArrayList<>();
user.addAll(foo.getUser);
}
This avoids the conflict.

I faced similar exception in my application. After looking into the stacktrace it was clear that exception was thrown within a FlushEntityEventListener class.
In Hibernate 4.3.7 the MSLocalSessionFactory bean no longer supports the eventListeners property. Hence, one has to explicitly fetch the service registry from individual Hibernate session beans and then set the required custom event listeners.
In the process of adding custom event listeners we need to make sure the corresponding default event listeners are removed from the respective Hibernate session.
If the default event listener is not removed then the case arises of two event listeners registered against same event. In this case while iterating over these listeners, against first listeners any collections in the session will be flagged as reached and while processing the same collection against second listener would throw this Hibernate exception.
So, make sure that when registering custom listeners corresponding default listeners are removed from registry.

My problem was that I had setup an #ManyToOne relationship. Maybe if the answers above don't fix your problem you might want to check the relationship that was mentioned in the error message.

Posting here because it's taken me over 2 weeks to get to the bottom of this, and I still haven't fully resolved it.
There is a chance, that you're also just running into this bug which has been around since 2017 and hasn't been addressed.
I honestly have no clue how to get around this bug. I'm posting here for my sanity and hopefully to shave a couple weeks of your googling. I'd love any input anyone may have, but my particular "answer" to this problem was not listed in any of the above answers.

I had to replace the following collection initilization:
challenge.setGoals(memberChallenge.getGoals());
with
challenge.setGoals(memberChallenge.getGoals()
.stream()
.map(dmo -> {
final ChallengeGoal goal = new ChallengeGoalImpl();
goal.setMemberChallenge(challenge);
goal.setGoalDate(dmo.getGoalDate());
goal.setGoalValue(dmo.getGoalValue());
return goal;
})
.collect(Collectors.toList()));

I changed
#OneToMany( cascade= CascadeType.ALL)
#JoinColumn(
name = "some_id",
referencedColumnName = "some_id"
)
to
#OneToMany(mappedBy = "some_id", cascade= CascadeType.ALL)

You're using pointers(indirectly), so sometimes you're copying the memory address instead of the object/collection you want. Hibernate checks this and throw that error. Here's what can you do:
Don't copy the object/collection;
Initiate a new empty one;
Make a function to copy it's content and call it;
For example:
public Entity copyEntity(Entity e){
Entity copy = new Entity();
e.copy(name);
e.setCollection2(null);
e.setCollection3(copyCollection(e.getCollection3());
return copy;
}

In a one to many and many to one relationship this error will occur. If you attempt to devote same instance from many to one entity to more than one instance from one to many entity.
For example, each person can have many books but each of these books can be owned by only one person if you consider more than one owner for a book this issue is raised.