Spring Boot Post Request Method not having all Object values - spring

Question

Using Spring Boot, Hibernate JPA and Thymeleaf.
I have an Order database table which currently only holds 1 record. This record has a few columns and some of the columns are not seen on any forms, they are set upon saving the Order, for instance the creation date.
On the GET request below I select the specific Order and all values are returned into the Order object as expected.
This is my GET Request method:
#RequestMapping(value = "/editorder/{orderId}", method = RequestMethod.GET)
public String editOrderGet(Model model, #PathVariable long orderId)
{
Order order = orderService.findById(orderId);
model.addAttribute("order", order);
return "/editorder";
}
This is a small snippit of my edit order html form using Thymeleaf, binding the Order object to the form using th:object as below:
<form role="form" th:action="#{/editorder}" th:object="${order}" method="post">
<input type="hidden" th:field="*{orderId}"/>
<button type="submit" class="btn btn-primary">Update Order</button>
.
.
</form>
And this is my POST Request method:
#RequestMapping(value = "/editorder", method = RequestMethod.POST)
public String editOrderPost(Model model,
#Valid #ModelAttribute("order") Order order, BindingResult bindingResult)
{
//rest of code here
}
As you can see, on the GET request I am adding the Order object to the model.
On the html form, I am binding the Order object to the entire form. Then on the POST request I am getting the Order object.
But on the POST it is seen as a new Order and only contains the fields as specified in the form, it does for instance not contain the creation date as seen in the GET request.
My question is this:
Am I missing something or do I explicitly need to go set each of those fields as hidden fields on my form?

Answer 1

In your GET response you may be returning the whole Order object into the Model, but Thymeleaf when trying to build the actual html from template will pick only the items it needs to build the template. So only the fields that are used in the form are used to build the form in your html page.
So when u resubmit the form to the POST service only those fields that are available in the form is reposted.
If u want these fields to be displayed on the page then add these fields in the Form. Thymeleaf picks them and displays in the form. If you dont want them to be shown in the Page then just ignore them. The Order object which u receive in the POST would not have that fields as they were not available in original form.
U can get them by querying the database, any how you do have the order id saved as the Hidden field.
public String editOrderPost(Model model,
#Valid #ModelAttribute("order") Order order, BindingResult bindingResult){
Order orderFromDB = orderService.findById(order.getId());
// Code to update the orderFromDB from order object
orderService.save(order);
}
This will save the updated fields to the database.
Generally its not a good practice to expose the Entity objects to the API. Try using a DTO/value object. This can have only fields that define your business fields. Also u can use BeanMapper frameworks like dozer/mapstruct/modelmapper to copy from DTO to Entity and vice versa.