Exclude field in JPA Entity Listener - java

I have an entity class in my Enterprise Java application that has an entity listener attached to it:
#Entity
#EntityListeners(ChangeListener.class)
public class MyEntity {
#Id
private long id;
private String name;
private Integer result;
private Boolean dirty;
...
}
However, I would like it so that the entity listener got triggered for all fields except the boolean one. Is there any way exclude a field from triggering the entity listener without making it transient?
I'm using Java EE 5 with Hibernate.

However, it is possible if you implement your own solution. I've had the same need for audit log business requirement, so designed my own AuditField annotation, and applied to the fields to be audit-logged.
Here's the example in one entity bean - Site.
#AuditField(exclude={EntityActionType.DELETE})
#Column(name = "site_code", nullable = false)
private String siteCode;
So, the example indicates the 'siteCode' is a field to audit log, except DELETE action. (EntityActionType is an enum and it contains CRUD operations.)
Also, the EntityListenerhas this part of code.
#PostPersist
public void created(Site pEntity) {
log(pEntity, EntityActionType.CREATE);
}
#PreUpdate
public void updated(Site pEntity) {
log(pEntity, EntityActionType.UPDATE);
}
#PreRemove
public void deleted(Site pEntity) {
log(pEntity, EntityActionType.DELETE);
}
Now what it has to do in log() is, to figure what fields are to audit log and what custom actions are involved optionally.
However, there's another to consider.
If you put the annotation at another entity variable, what fields of the entity have to be logged? (i.e. chained logging)
It's your choice whether what are annotated with #AuditField only in the entity or some other ways. For my case, we decided to log only the entity ID, which is a PK of a DB table. However, I wanted to make it flexible assuming the business can change. So, all the entites must implement auditValue() method, which is coming from a base entity class, and the default implementation (that's overridable) is to return its ID.

There is some kind of mixing of concepts here. EntityListeners are not notified about changes in attribute values - not for single attribute, neither for all attributes.
For reason they are called lifecycle callbacks. They are triggered by following lifecycle events of entity:
persist (pre/post)
load (post)
update(pre/post)
remove (pre/post)
For each one of them there is matching annotation. So answer is that it is not possible to limit this functionality by type of persistent attributes.

Related

Bean validation #ElementCollection and #Version conflict and fails validation

I am facing a very strange issue at the moment.
I have an entity that contains a property that is an element collection.
#ElementCollection(targetClass=Integer.class, fetch = FetchType.EAGER)
#CollectionTable(name="campaign_publisher", joinColumns=#JoinColumn(name="campaign_id"))
#Column(name = "publisher_id")
...
#NotEmpty(message = "campaign.publishers.missing")
public Set<Integer> getPublishers() {
return this.publishers;
}
public Campaign setPublishers(Set<Integer> publisherId) {
this.publishers = publisherId;
return this;
}
This all works fine. The values are validated and saved correct.
I also want this entity to have optimistic concurrency so I applied a #Version annotation as well.
#Version
private Long etag = 0L;
...
public Long getEtag() {
return etag;
}
public void setEtag(Long etag) {
this.etag = etag;
}
By adding the #Version annotation the #NotEmpty validation on my set of publishers always returns invalid.
To try and diagnose this I have tried the following:
Creating a custom validator at the entity level so I can inspect the values in the entity. I found that the Set of values have been replaced with an empty PersistentSet which is causing the validation to always fail.
I created some unit tests for the entity that uses a validator that is retrieved from the validationfactory and this validator seems to work as expected.
I have also tried to change the ElementCollection to a many-to-many relationship and a bi-directional one-to-many but the issue persists.
Right now I am out of ideas. The only thing I have found that works correctly is disabling the hibernate validation and manually calling the validator just before I save my data.
So my questions are:
Has anyone encountered this issue before?
Any advice on what I could try next?
Thank you all for reading!
Short answer: Set the initial value for etag = null.
// this should do the trick
#Version
private Long etag = null;
Longer one : When you are adding a optimistic locking via adding #Version annotation on a field with a default value you are making hibernate/spring-data think that the entity is not a new one (even the id is null). So on initial save instead of persisting entity undelying libraries try to do a merge. And merging transient entity forces hibernate to just one by one copy all the properties from source entity (the ones which you are persisting) to the target one (which is autocreate by hibernate with all the properties set to default values aka nulls) and here comes the problem, as hibernate will just copy the values of associations of FROM_PARENT type or in other words only associations which are hold on entity side but in your case the association is TO_PARENT (a foreign key from child to parent) hibernate will try to postpone association persistance after main entity save, but save will not work as entity will not pass #NotEmpty validation.
First I would suggest to remove the default value initialization for your #Version property. This property is maintained by hibernate, and should be initialized by it.
Second: are you sure that you are validating the fully constructed entity? i.e. you are constructing something, then do something, and for exact persist/flush cycle your entity is in wrong condition.
To clarify this, while you are on a Spring side, I would suggest to introduce service-level validation on your DAO layer. I.e. force the bean validation during initial call to DAO, rather then bean validation of entity during flush (yeap hibernate batches lots of things, and exact validation happens only during flush cycle).
To achieve this: mark your DAO #Validated and make your function arguments beign validated: FancyEntity store(#Valid #NotNull FancyEntity fancyEntity) { fancyEntity = em.persist(fancyEntity); em.flush(); return fancyEntity;}
By making this, you will be sure that you are storing valid entity: the validation would happen before store method is called. This will reveal the place where your entity became invalid: in your service layer, or in bad behaving hibernate layer.
I noticed that you use mixed access: methods and fields. In this case you can try to set #Version on the method:
#Version
public Long getEtag() {
return etag;
}
not on the field.

Safe embedded entity with objectify

I have two entities.
#Entity
public class Recipe {
#Id
private Long id;
private List<Step> steps;
}
#Entity
public class Step {
#Id
private Long id;
private String instruction;
}
And the following Clound Endpoint
#ApiMethod(
name = "insert",
path = "recipe",
httpMethod = ApiMethod.HttpMethod.POST)
public Recipe insert(Recipe recipe) {
ofy().save().entities(recipe.getSteps()).now(); //superfluous?
ofy().save().entity(recipe).now();
logger.info("Created Recipe with ID: " + recipe.getId());
return ofy().load().entity(recipe).now();
}
I'm wondering how do I skip the step where I have to save the emebedded entity first. The Id of neither entity is set. I want objectify to automatically create those. But if don't save the embedded entity I get an exception.
com.googlecode.objectify.SaveException: Error saving com.devmoon.meadule.backend.entities.Recipe#59e4ff19: You cannot create a Key for an object with a null #Id. Object was com.devmoon.meadule.backend.entities.Step#589a3afb
Since my object structure will get a lot more complex, I need to find a way to skip this manual step.
I presume you are trying to create real embedded objects, not separate objects stored in the datastore and linked. Your extra save() is actually saving separate entities. You don't want that.
You have two options:
Don't give your embedded object an id. Don't give it #Entity and don't give it an id field (or at least eliminate #Id). It's just a POJO. 90% of the time, this is what people want with embedded objects.
Allocate the id yourself with the allocator, typically in your (non-default) constructor.
Assuming you want a true embedded entity with a real key, #2 is probably what you should use. Keep in mind that this key is somewhat whimsical since you can't actually load it; only the container object can be looked up in the datastore.
I suggest going one step further and never use automatic id generation for any entities ever. Always use the allocator in the (non-default) constructor of your entities. This ensures that entities always have a valid, stable id. If you always allocate the id before a transaction start, it fixes duplicate entities that can be created when a transaction gets retried. Populating null ids is just a bad idea all around and really should not have been added to GAE.
The concept of the embedded is that the embedded content is persisted inside the main entity.
Is this the behaviour you are trying to configure?
The default behaviour of a Collection (List) of #Entity annoted class is to refer them instead of embed them. As you current configuration, the List<Step> variable does not have any annotation to override the default configuration, which is a different entity related to another one.
The error you are getting is because Objectify, when it saves the recipe entity, is trying to get the key of each step to create the relationship (and save them in the recipe entity), but if the entity step is not saved yet on the datastore, does not have a key
If you are trying to persist the steps inside the recipe entity, you need to setup objectify like this
#Entity
public class Recipe {
#Id
private Long id;
private List<Step> steps;
}
public class Step {
private Long id;
private String instruction;
}
As you can see, I removed the #Id annotation (an embedded Entity does not require an ID because is inside another entity) and the #Entity from the Step class. With this configuration, Objectify save the step entities inside the recipe entity
Source: https://code.google.com/p/objectify-appengine/wiki/Entities#Embedded_Object_Native_Representation

Persisting third-party classes with no ID's

Say I have the following Java class, which is owned by a vendor so I can't change it:
public class Entry {
private String user;
private String city;
// ...
// About 10 other fields
// ...
// Getters, setters, etc.
}
I would like to persist it to a table, using JPA 2.0 (OpenJPA implementation). I cannot annotate this class (as it is not mine), so I'm using orm.xml to do that.
I'm creating a table containing a column per field, plus another column called ID. Then, I'm creating a sequence for it.
My question is: is it at all possible to tell JPA that the ID that I would like to use for this entity doesn't even exist as a member attribute in the Entry class? How do I go about creating a JPA entity that will allow me to persist instances of this class?
EDIT
I am aware of the strategy of extending the class and adding an ID property it. However, I'm looking for a solution that doesn't involve extending this class, because I need this solution to also be applicable for the case when it's not only one class that I have to persist, but a collection of interlinked classes - none of which has any ID property. In such a scenario, extending doesn't work out.
Eventually, I ended up doing the following:
public class EntryWrapper {
#Id
private long id;
#Embedded
private Entry entry;
}
So, I am indeed wrapping the entity but differently from the way that had been suggested. As the Entry class is vendor-provided, I did all its ORM work in an orm.xml file. When persisting, I persist EntryWrapper.
I don't have much experience with JPA, but I wouldn't extend your base classes, instead I would wrap them:
public class PersistMe<T> {
#Id
private long id;
private T objToWrap;
public(T objToWrap) {
this.objToWrap = objToWrap;
}
}
I can't test it, if it doesn't work let me know so I can delete the answer.

Bean validation Java conditional

Right now I have a class BaseSchedule It is used by 4 classes (composition). I would like to validate in two use classes and not in the others. I am a little stumped on how to do so.
My BaseSchedule looks like the following:
#Embeddable
#DatesStartBeforeEnd(start = "startDateTime", end = "endDateTime")
public class BaseSchedule implements Serializable {
private Date startDateTime;
private Date endDateTime;
}
I would like to check to make sure that the startDateTime and endDateTime are not null when I go to persist the data to my database. Normally I would provide a #NotNull to each of the fields.
public class TimeSlot implements Scheduleable {
#Embedded
private BaseSchedule schedule;
}
But... in the case of my TimeSlotTemplate I do not want validation as I know it will be null.
public class TimeSlotTemplate extends SchedulableClassTemplateEvent {
#Embedded
private BaseSchedule schedule;
}
If you're using Hibernate Validator as your BV provider, one solution might be to use a custom default group sequence provider.
For this to work, your BaseSchedule object would have to know about the "role" it currently has, e.g. by passing an enum with values such as SlotSchedule, TemplateSchedule etc. to its constructor. Depending on the role a group sequence provider could then determine the sequence to validate and return a sequence which does not contain the #NotNull constraints if the role is TemplateSchedule.
Not that this approach requires that you use the default sequence during JPA lifecycle validation.
I think this could be done using the #PrePersist Annotation.
#PrePersist
public void prePersist(){
if(isPerformNullableCheck()){
// check for null values and raise an error if invalid
}
}
in your TimeSlotTemplate, you can set the performNullableCheck property to false...
Another way might be to add a class into the hierarchy.
BaseSchedule contains the properties needed and e.g. ValidatedSchedule (extends BaseSchedule) overrides those and performs the notnull checks. Don't know whether this works or not. Also this would probably not be the best solution for your problem..?

Avoid having JPA to automatically persist objects

Is there any way to avoid having JPA to automatically persist objects?
I need to use a third party API and I have to pull/push from data from/to it. I've got a class responsible to interface the API and I have a method like this:
public User pullUser(int userId) {
Map<String,String> userData = getUserDataFromApi(userId);
return new UserJpa(userId, userData.get("name"));
}
Where the UserJpa class looks like:
#Entity
#Table
public class UserJpa implements User
{
#Id
#Column(name = "id", nullable = false)
private int id;
#Column(name = "name", nullable = false, length = 20)
private String name;
public UserJpa() {
}
public UserJpa(int id, String name) {
this.id = id;
this.name = name;
}
}
When I call the method (e.g. pullUser(1)), the returned user is automatically stored in the database. I don't want this to happen, is there a solution to avoid it? I know a solution could be to create a new class implementing User and return an instance of this class in the pullUser() method, is this a good practice?
Thank you.
Newly create instance of UserJpa is not persisted in pullUser. I assume also that there is not some odd implementation in getUserDataFromApi actually persisting something for same id.
In your case entity manager knows nothing about new instance of UserJPA. Generally entities are persisted via merge/persist calls or as a result of cascaded merge/persist operation. Check for these elsewhere in code base.
The only way in which a new entity gets persisted in JPA is by explicitly calling the EntityManager's persist() or merge() methods. Look in your code for calls to either one of them, that's the point where the persist operation is occurring, and refactor the code to perform the persistence elsewhere.
Generally JPA Objects are managed objects, these objects reflect their changes into the database when the transaction completes and before on a first level cache, obviously these objects need to become managed on the first place.
I really think that a best practice is to use a DTO object to handle the data transfering and then use the entity just for persistence purposes, that way it would be more cohesive and lower coupling, this is no objects with their nose where it shouldnt.
Hope it helps.

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