Passing parent id reference when creating child object through REST api - spring-boot

Question

I am using spring boot (version - 2.1.1). I have a one to many database model exposed for CRUD operations through rest api's. The model looks as below. How do I configure the POST /departments api (that creates a department object) to accept just the organization id in the input json body?
#PostMapping
public Long createDepartment(#RequestBody Department Department) {
Department d = departmentService.save(Department);
return d.getId();
}
Note - I do not want to allow creating organization object when creating a department.
Model object mapping
#Entity
#Table(name="ORGANIZATIONS")
public class Organization{
#Id
#GeneratedValue
Private long id;
#Column(unique=true)
Private String name;
#OneToMany(mappedBy = "organization", fetch = FetchType.EAGER)
private List<Department> departments;
}
#Entity
#Table(name="DEPARTMENTS")
Public class Department{
#Id
#GeneratedValue
Private long id;
#Column(unique=true)
Private String name;
#ManyToOne(fetch = FetchType.EAGER)
private Organization organization;
}
Thanks!

Answer 1

The easiest and most sane way in my opinion is to utilize the DTO (Data Transfer Object) pattern.
Create a class that represent the model you want to get as your input:
public class CreateDepartmentRequest {
private long id;
// getters and setters
}
Then use it in your controller:
#PostMapping
public Long createDepartment(#RequestBody CreateDepartmentRequest request) {
Department d = new Department();
d.setId(request.getId());
Department d = departmentService.save(d);
return d.getId();
}
Side note, its better to ALWAYS return JSON through REST API (unless you use some other format across your APIs) so you can also utilize the same pattern as I mentioned above to return a proper model as a result of the POST operation or a simple Map if you don't want to create to many models.