Spring JPA: Locking parent row when inserting one to many child record - spring

Question

We have two tables that have a one to many relationship. When we insert multiple records into the child table across multiple threads (more specifically across multiple REST web requests) we are running into lost update issues due to a race condition.
What we need to be able to do is have JPA recognize that the entity has been updated elsewhere prior to inserting the child record. I've tried using the #Version annotation approach but that doesn't seem to do the trick as the update/insert (I guess...) is happening on another table. I tried adding a version timestamp column on the parent table that is updated on every update but that didn't seem to do the trick either.
I think what I actually need to do is get a reference to the EntityManager directly so that I can issue a lock() command on the record prior to calling save(). I'm just too new to Spring to know if
A) that is indeed the correct approach,
B) if there is a better/easier way to do what we are trying to accomplish, and
C) how to actually do that.
Also, I am aware of the #OneToMany annotation but that didn't seem to do anything.
I've truncated the code below for brevity and I also created a trimmed down version of the code that demonstrates the problem and will hopefully make it easier to see what I am trying to do. In the test if you change the thread pool number to 1 you can see the test pass.
Engagement class:
#Entity
public class Engagement implements Serializable {
#Id
#GeneratedValue(strategy = GenerationType.IDENTITY)
#Column(name = "id")
private Long id;
#ElementCollection(fetch = EAGER)
private List<String> assignedUsers;
#Version
private Long version;
private LocalDateTime updatedOn;
public Long getId() {
return id;
}
public void setId(Long id) {
this.id = id;
}
public Long getVersion(){return version;}
public void setVersion(Long version){this.version = version;}
public LocalDateTime getUpdatedOn(){
return updatedOn;
}
public void setUpdatedOn(LocalDateTime updatedOn) {
this.updatedOn = updatedOn;
}
public List<String> getAssignedUsers() {
return assignedUsers;
}
public void setAssignedUsers(List<String> assignedUsers) {
this.assignedUsers = assignedUsers;
}
public Engagement() {
}
}
User class:
public final class User {
private final String name;
private final String email;
private final String userId;
private final List<Engagement> engagements;
#ConstructorProperties({"roles", "name", "email", "userId", "engagements"})
User(String name, String email, String userId, List<Engagement> engagements) {
this.name = name;
this.email = email;
this.userId = userId;
this.engagements = engagements;
}
public static User.UserBuilder builder() {
return new User.UserBuilder();
}
public String getName() {
return this.name;
}
public String getEmail() {
return this.email;
}
public String getUserId() {
return this.userId;
}
public List<Engagement> getEngagements() {
return this.engagements;
}
public static final class UserBuilder {
private String name;
private String email;
private String userId;
private List<Engagement> engagements;
UserBuilder() {
}
public User.UserBuilder name(String name) {
this.name = name;
return this;
}
public User.UserBuilder email(String email) {
this.email = email;
return this;
}
public User.UserBuilder userId(String userId) {
this.userId = userId;
return this;
}
public User.UserBuilder engagements(List<Engagement> engagements) {
this.engagements = engagements;
return this;
}
public User build() {
return new User(this.name, this.email, this.userId, this.engagements);
}
public String toString() {
return "User.UserBuilder(name=" + this.name + ", email=" + this.email + ", userId=" + this.userId + ", engagements=" + this.engagements + ")";
}
}
}
Thread test:
#RunWith(SpringJUnit4ClassRunner.class)
#SpringBootTest
public class EngagementTest {
#Mock
UsersAuthService usersService;
#Autowired
EngagementsRepository engagementsRepository;
UsersAuthService authService;
#Before
public void init() {
MockitoAnnotations.initMocks(this);
authService = new UsersAuthServiceImpl(usersService, engagementsRepository);
}
#Test
public void addingMultipleUsersAtOnceSucceeds() throws InterruptedException {
Long engagementId = 1L;
String userId1 = "user1";
String userId2 = "user2";
String userId3 = "user3";
String userId4 = "user4";
String userId5 = "user5";
String auth = "asdf";
User adminUser = User.builder()
.userId("adminUser")
.email("user#user.com")
.name("Admin User")
.build();
Engagement engagement = new Engagement();
engagement.setAssignedUsers(new ArrayList<>());
engagement.getAssignedUsers().add(adminUser.getUserId());
engagementsRepository.save(engagement);
ExecutorService executorService = Executors.newFixedThreadPool(5);//change this to 1 to see the test pass
List<Callable<Engagement>> callableList = Arrays.asList(
addUserThread(engagementId, userId1, auth, adminUser),
addUserThread(engagementId, userId2, auth, adminUser),
addUserThread(engagementId, userId3, auth, adminUser),
addUserThread(engagementId, userId4, auth, adminUser),
addUserThread(engagementId, userId5, auth, adminUser));
executorService.invokeAll(callableList);
Engagement after = engagementsRepository.findById(engagementId);
assertEquals(6, after.getAssignedUsers().size());
}
private Callable<Engagement> addUserThread(Long engagementId, String userId1, String auth, User adminUser) {
return () -> authService.addUserTo(engagementId, userId1, auth, adminUser);
}
}

Answer 1

What's happening here is that you submit the callbacks for execution but never actually wait for their completion before checking the result. You need to use the List<Future<Engagement>> to actually wait for the results to complete before proceeding.
Something like this would do the trick:
executorService.invokeAll(callableList).forEach(it -> {
try {
it.get(500, TimeUnit.MILLISECONDS);
} catch (InterruptedException | ExecutionException | TimeoutException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
});
Note that this is not a proper way to deal with the exception case but it causes the code to wait for completion. If you have that in place you see the threads properly rejecting some of the updates with an ObjectOptimisticLockingFailureException:
java.util.concurrent.ExecutionException: org.springframework.orm.ObjectOptimisticLockingFailureException: Object of class [com.example.racecondition.engagement.Engagement] with identifier [1]: optimistic locking failed; nested exception is org.hibernate.StaleObjectStateException: Row was updated or deleted by another transaction (or unsaved-value mapping was incorrect) : [com.example.racecondition.engagement.Engagement#1]
at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.report(FutureTask.java:122)
at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.get(FutureTask.java:206)
at com.example.racecondition.EngagementTest.lambda$0(EngagementTest.java:68)
at java.util.ArrayList.forEach(ArrayList.java:1257)
at com.example.racecondition.EngagementTest.addingMultipleUsersAtOnceSucceeds(EngagementTest.java:66)
What's weird about the test case beyond that is that UsersAuthServiceImpl carries an #Transactional but the test case manually instantiates that class, so that there's no transactional proxy in place already. This causes the calls to findById(…) and save(…) from within addToUser(…) to run in two transactions. Tweaking that doesn't change the output though.

Answer 2

I think what I actually need to do is get a reference to the EntityManager directly so that I can issue a lock() command on the record prior to calling save(). I'm just too new to Spring to know if
A) that is indeed the correct approach,
If I understand you correctly you want to basically force a version increment on an entity so that if multiple threads do that one fails.
You can indeed achieve that by locking the entity in question using LockModeType.PESSIMISTIC_FORCE_INCREMENT or LockModeType.OPTIMISTIC_FORCE_INCREMENT.
B) if there is a better/easier way to do what we are trying to accomplish, and
C) how to actually do that.
With Spring Data probably the best way to do that is using the #Lock annotation on the method you use to load the entity.