Spring Repository issue - spring

Question

I seem to be baffled on how JPA Repositories are suppose to work.
In a nut-shell
#Entity
public class User extends AbstractEntity {
protected final static String FK_NAME = "USER_ID";
#Column(nullable = false)
private String firstName;
#OneToMany(cascade = ALL, fetch = FetchType.LAZY, orphanRemoval = true)
#JoinColumn(name = "userId")
private List<Detail> details = new ArrayList<Detail>();
}
#Entity
public class Detail extends AbstractEntity {
Long userId;
String hello;
}
#Repository
public interface UserRepository extends CrudRepository<User, Long> {
User findByFirstName(#Param("firstName") String firstName);
}
And here is the only controller in the app:
#RestController
public class Home {
#Autowired
UserRepository userRepository;
#Autowired
DetailsRepository loanRepository;
#RequestMapping(value = "")
public HttpEntity home() {
User user = userRepository.findByFirstName("John");
if (user == null) {
user = new User();
user.setFirstName("John");
}
Detail detail = new Detail();
detail.setHello("Hello Msh");
user.getDetails().add(detail);
userRepository.save(user);
return new ResponseEntity("hi", HttpStatus.OK);
}
}
Below a screenshot from debugging session where the app just started and the get request to home() method creates new user, new detail, adds detail to user.
Below example - when the user is saved, the detail entity gets updated
Now on the next request, the old user John is found and has been added a new instance of detail.
The old user has been saved but now the newly created detail does not get updated outside.
How come this only works first time ?

Answer 1

Basically theres so much fail going on so that I would advise you to go a step backwards. If youre wana go the short path of getting a solution for exactly this problem continue reading ;)
First part related to the answer of Jaiwo99:
As I can see in the gradle view of intellij, your using Spring Boot. So it is necessary to place #EnableTransactionManagement on top of your configuration class. Otherwise the #Transacion annotation does not have any effect.
Second part your JPA/Hibernate model mapping. Theres so much bad practise on the net that it is no wonder that most beginners have troubles starting with it.
A correct version could look like (not tested)
#Entity
public class User extends AbstractEntity {
#Column(nullable = false)
private String firstName;
#OneToMany(cascade = ALL, fetch = FetchType.LAZY, orphanRemoval = true, mappedBy="user")
private List<Detail> details = new ArrayList<Detail>();
public void addDetail(Detail detail) {
details.add(detail);
detail.setUser(user);
}
}
#Entity
public class Detail extends AbstractEntity {
#ManyToOne
private User user;
private String hello;
public void setUser(User user){
this.user = user;
}
}
Some general advice related to creating a model mapping:
avoid bi-directional mappings whenever possible
cascade is a decision made on the service level and not at the model level and can have huge drawbacks. So for beginners avoid it.
I have no idea why people like to put JoinColumn, JoinTable and whatever join annotation on top of fields. The only reason to do this is when you have a legacy db (my opinion). When you do not like the names created by your jpa provider, provide a different naming strategy.
I would provide a custom name for the user class, because this is in some databases a reserved word.

Answer 2

Very simple, the first time you saved a new entity outside of hibernate session, the second time, the user object you got is a detached object, by default hibernate will not consider it is changed in this case.
*solution *
Move this logic to another service class, which annotated with #transactional
Or
Annotate your controller with transactional
Or
Override equals and hashCode method on user class may also help