How are fields set on an entity by Spring Data MongoDB? - mongodb

I have a MongoRepository class
public interface UserRepository extends MongoRepository<User, Long> {
User findById(Long id);
}
and my Entity pojo looks like this
#Document(collection = "user")
class User {
Long id;
String name;
Department department;
…
}
When I call the findBy method, a User object is returned. I want to know how does Spring Data MongoDB converts DBObject to Java object. I was under the impression that Spring Data MongoDB uses some sort of mapper (Jackson?) under the hood which would call setters/constructors method of the java(Entity) class based on the field names in the class or #Field Annotation. But to my surprise, the setters are never invoked. Only the default constructor is invoked.
Then how does the fields are set? The reason I am asking is if the setters are called, it would give me an option to set some other fields may be.
Thanks

Spring Data defaults to field access as accessor methods can contain additional logic that we don't want to trigger by accident. If that's what you actually want though, you can switch to property access by annotating your class with #AccessType(Type.PROPERTY).

Spring has a entity converter at the subsequent layer below it. It uses reflection to read the type of field, variables and signature. The conversion logic is generic for all data repositories. You can read about the same here
You can also introduce a custom converter be it yours or jackson, an example of it is here

Take a look at MappingMongoConverter class - it has the logic which does all this.

Related

Convert Spring's Order to JPA Order from Pageable

Our frontend is designed to send Pageable object with Spring's Order which contains attribute name.
Sample Entity:
#Entity
#Table
public class Foo {
private String userName;
#Embedded
private Bar bar;
}
#Embeddable
public class Bar {
private String value;
}
We receive pageable with order in repository and parse JPA's Order from that pageable object like this:
pageable.getSort().get().forEach(springOrder ->
jpaOrders.add(getBuilder().asc(root.get(springOrder .getProperty())))
);
We need do it this way because we are building queries via criteria api.
When we receive in repository attribute of Foo, everything is fine, e.g. "userName". But when we receive attribute of embeddable entity, e.g. "bar.value" we got exception
Unable to locate Attribute with the the given name [bar.value] on this ManagedType
Can you tell me how to create JPA's Order object from attribute which define attribute of embeddable entities? Thank you in advice
For these property paths you will have to create joins and apply the Order using the proper join alias and the last part of the property path.
For more details, I'd recommend looking into the code of Spring Data JPA.
Find all references to the Order class and start reading some code.
Have you tried using org.springframework.data.jpa.repository.query.QueryUtils#toOrders ?

Possible to ignore #TextIndexed on fields with Spring Data MongoDB?

I have class along the lines of:
public class Person {
#TextIndexed
String name;
List<Person> contacts;
// getters and setters
...
}
The #TextIndexed allows me to search people by name. However, after I recently added a list of contacts I discovered that their names will also be added to the text index. Is there a way around this other than having a separate class - identical to Person but without the #TextIndexed annotations? Perhaps an annotation that will serialize the field but not utilize its indexes?
I am not aware of such an annotation, but one possible way to go about this would be to use polymorphism. For example, an abstract Person class that is extended by both versions (indexed and non-indexed). Then only annotate the name attribute inside the class where you want it indexed.

Is there a way to fetch an #Embedded field lazily?

I'm having some trouble trying to figure out how to set up a class that has an #Embedded field that must be fetched lazily. I tried to annotate the field with #Basic(fetch = FetchType.LAZY), but it causes the persistence API to treat the field as a basic type that implements Serializable, so it maps the field to a BYTEA field in the database (postgresql). I tested it on Derby too, and the same happens.
I also tried to annotate the fields of the #Embeddable class individually with #Basic(fetch = FetchType.LAZY) instead of annotating the #Embedded field of the entity that has it. The generated schema is correct in this case, but the fields are fetched eagerly when I load instances of the entity.
My understanding is that the #Basic annotation is used on basic fields/properties only, so the first case is expected. But why the fields of the #Embeddable class are fetched eagerly even if they are annotated with #Basic(fetch = FetchType.LAZY)? Also, I know that the fetch strategy can be specified by the #Basic and relationship annotations, but is there any other way to specify that fields should be fetched lazily? I'm using EclipseLink 2.6, but let me know if the behaviour is different for other versions of EclipseLink or for another provider.
Directly you cant, because of how #Embedded objects work, but by setting attributes in the object it should work.
#Basic(fetch=FetchType.LAZY)
Remember that lazy should be use only on collections or big objects, and that setting fetch type on lazy is only a clue for provider, it doesn't mean that it will always fetch it lazy rather than eager.

Spring Data JPA finder for dynamic fields as Map

My requirement is to have few custom fields in the domain objects. These fields may vary as per the clients.
We are using Spring Data JPA to execute finders. Spring data implicitly provides finders for static fields of the domain and can also handle finders for the fields in the object graph.
I want to know if there is a way to find data on the custom fields? Can someone suggest me a strategy to achieve the same. Below is the sample of my domain class.
public class Employee{
private String name;
private String age;
private Map customeFields; (May vary as per client)
}
I was thinking of overriding QueryLookupStrategy and create my CustomJpaQuery on lines of PartTreeJpaQuery to achieve it. Is there any better approach? Does spring data jpa provides an easy mechanism to override query creation mechanism?
If you are using hibernate (not sure about other JPA implementations) you may add methods with #Query annotations like this:
#Query("select e from Employee as e where e.customeFields[:key] = :value")
List<Employee> findSomeHow(#Param("key") String key, #Param("value") String value)

Persisting a list of an interface type with JPA2

I suspect there's no perfect solution to this problem so least worst solution are more than welcome.
I'm implementing a dashboard using PrimeFaces and I would like to persist the model backing it (using JPA2). I've written my own implementation of DashboardModel and DashboardColumn with the necessary annotations and other fields I need. The model is shown below:
#Entity
public class DashboardSettings implements DashboardModel, Serializable{
#Id
private long id;
#OrderColumn( name="COLUMN_ORDER" )
private List<DashboardColumn> columns;
...a few other fields...
public DashboardSettings() {}
#Override
public void addColumn(DashboardColumn column) {
this.columns.add(column);
}
#Override
public List<DashboardColumn> getColumns() {
return columns;
}
...snip...
}
The problem is the columns field. I would like this field to be persisted into it's own table but because DashboardColumn is an interface (and from a third party so can't be changed) the field currently gets stored in a blob. If I change the type of the columns field to my own implementation (DashboardColumnSettings) which is marked with #Entity the addColumn method would cease to work correctly - it would have to do a type check and cast.
The type check and cast is not the end of the world as this code will only be consumed by our development team but it is a trip hazard. Is there any way to have the columns field persisted while at the same time leaving it as a DashboardColumn?
You can try to use targetEntity attribute, though I'm note sure it would be better than explicit cast:
#OrderColumn( name="COLUMN_ORDER" )
#OneToMany(targetEntity = DashboardColumnSettings.class)
private List<DashboardColumn> columns;
Depends on the JPA implementation (you don't mention which one); the JPA spec doesn't define support for interface fields, nor for Collections of interfaces. DataNucleus JPA certainly allows it, primarily because we support it for JDO also, being something that is part of the JDO spec.