I have a class called Profile that stores information about the user that is specific to the application. This data probably should have been stored in sf_guard_user_profile, but it wasn't designed that way at the time, and it's too late to modify now.
The problem is that in admin generated modules with filters, Doctrine_Core::getTable("profile") gets called and then a separate query on sf_guard_user_profile is performed for every row in profile.
I am looking for way to override the "default" table method in Profile to add a join to sf_guard_user_profile. I have created custom table methods, and that works fine. However, I would rather find a way to force the join in all cases instead of using a specific table_method. This would save me from having to add the table method to every filter throughout the application.
I thought that I might be able to override getInstance() in the ProfileTable class. However, this has no effect. I've also tried overriding findAll() in ProfileTable, which also does not work.
Is there a "default" table method that is used whenever a table method isn't directly specified?
I hope this makes sense.
Thanks!
-Steve
You should rather try overriding the createQuery() method of the Profile table. This method is called whenever a query is made by the table class so this should do the trick.
Related
I'm having a few tables on SQL Server, which have similar structure - int Id and string Value.
This tables linked to main table via foreign key, so I'm wrote a bit of logic for mapping a string values to id's in models in MVC Razor. This feature requires that models used as dictionary implement simple IKeyValue interface with Id and Value, but after updating model from database I can loose interface implementation from models and must write it again.
Any way to automate this?
Are you modifying the auto-generated file? If so, you should not do this, for the exact reason you describe in your question -- it will get overwritten.
All of the classes in the generated file should be partial. You can take advantage of this by creating another class (in a different file, but in the same project), make sure it has the same declaration (and namespace), and have it implement the interface. This way the class will implement the interface, but will not be overwritten the next time you refresh the schema from the database.
I'm curious what the difference is between overriding a table's modifiedField method versus overriding the update method.
In our case, we are working on switching the field datatype on a table. Since we cannot just change the data type of the field, we make a second field, and copy the information from the first into the second. Eventually, we update all the UI elements (forms and reports namely) to point to the new field, and then remove the old field. To help with copying the information from one field to another, we have been overriding the update method on the table to copy the value from the first field to the second.
I know this would probably be easier to maintain using the modifiedField method, but I'm curious if there are any significant differences (performance, missed updates, etc) by using the update method instead.
The main difference is that the code in modifiedField method is executed without writing into the Database. This way you can change the value of field2, but if a user close the form without saving the record then no updates will be in the DB. While using an update method you certainly write the changes.
I have an entity with several fields, but on one view i want to only edit one of the fields. for example... I have a user entity, user has, id, name, address, username, pwd, and so on. on one of the views i want to be able to change the pwd(and only the pwd). so the view only knows of the id and sends the pwd. I want to update my entity without loading the rest of the fields(there are many many more) and changing the one pwd field and then saving them ALL back to the database. has anyone tried this. or know where i can look. all help is greatly appreciated.
Thx in advance.
PS
i should have given more detail. im using hibernate, roo is creating my entities. I agree that each view should have its own entity, problem is, im only building controllers, everything was done before. we were finders from the service layer, but we wanted to use some other finders, they seemed to not be accessible through the service layer, the decision was made to blow away the service layer and just interact with the entities directly (through the finders), the UserService.update(user) is no longer an option. i have recently found a User.persist() and a User.merge(), does the merge update all the fields on the object or only the ones that are not null, or if i want one to now be null how would it know the difference?
Which technologies except Spring are you using?
First of all have separate DTOs for every view, stripped only to what's needed. One DTO for id+password, another for address data, etc. Remember that DTOs can inherit from each other, so you can avoid duplication. And never pass business/ORM entities directly to view. It is too risky, leaks in some frameworks might allow users to modify fields which you haven't intended.
After the DTO comes back from the view (most web frameworks work like this) simply load the whole entity and fill only the fields that are present in the DTO.
But it seems like it's the persistence that is troubling you. Assuming you are using Hibernate, you can take advantage of dynamic-update setting:
dynamic-update (optional - defaults to false): specifies that UPDATE SQL should be generated at runtime and can contain only those columns whose values have changed.
In this case you are still loading the whole entity into memory, but Hibernate will generate as small UPDATE as possible, including only modified (dirty) fields.
Another approach is to have separate entities for each use-case/view. So you'll have an entity with only id and password, entity with only address data, etc. All of them are mapped to the same table, but to different subset of columns. This easily becomes a mess and should be treated as a last resort.
See the hibernate reference here
For persist()
persist() makes a transient instance persistent. However, it does not guarantee that the
identifier value will be assigned to the persistent instance immediately, the assignment
might happen at flush time. persist() also guarantees that it will not execute an INSERT
statement if it is called outside of transaction boundaries. This is useful in long-running
conversations with an extended Session/persistence context.
For merge
if there is a persistent instance with the same identifier currently associated with the session, copy the state of the given object onto the persistent instance
if there is no persistent instance currently associated with the session, try to load it from the database, or create a new persistent instance
the persistent instance is returned
the given instance does not become associated with the session, it remains detached
persist() and merge() has nothing to do with the fact that the columns are modified or not .Use dynamic-update as #Tomasz Nurkiewicz has suggested for saving only the modified columns .Use dynamic-insert for inserting not null columns .
Some JPA providers such as EclipseLink support fetch groups. So you can load a partial instance and update it.
See,
http://wiki.eclipse.org/EclipseLink/Examples/JPA/AttributeGroup
I trying to use Grails Scaffolding to throw a quick CRUD application together around some legacy database tables. It is an Oracle database, and the primary key value is intended to be populated by Oracle's GUID() function.
Based on this earlier StackOverflow question, I tried specifying "guid" as the Hibernate generator for this column in my Grails domain class:
...
static mapping = {
table name: "OWNER"
version false
columns {
id column: "OWNER_OID", generator: "guid"
name column: "NAME"
...
}
}
...
When I run my Grails app, viewing and even editing records works just fine. However, when I try to create a new record, things blow up with the Oracle error message "ORA-02289: sequence does not exist".
I enabled SQL logging for my datasource, and see Grails/Hibernate trying to execute the following during a save operation:
select hibernate_sequence.nextval from dual
This doesn't look right at all, and doesn't match the generated SQL from that earlier StackOverflow question linked above. Does anyone see something I am missing here, or otherwise know how to make Grails/Hibernate populate a primary key column with Oracle GUID values?
Whew... after another day of wrestling with this, I think I have my arms around the thing. This answer covers a bit more ground than the original question description, but that's because I found yet more problems after getting past the Hibernate generator issue.
Issue #1: Getting an Oracle GUID() value
As covered by Adam Hawkes' answer, the "guid" Hibernate generator is unmaintained and only works for older versions of the Oracle dialect.
However, if you use the Hibernate generator "assigned" (meaning that you want to set primary keys manually rather than have Hibernate auto-generate them), then you can insert values pulled from an Oracle SYS_GUID() call.
Even though Hibernate's newer Oracle dialects don't support "guid" seamlessly, they still understand the SQL necessary to generate these values. If you are inside of a Controller, you can fetch that SQL query with the following:
String guidSQL = grailsApplication.getMainContext().sessionFactory.getDialect().getSelectGUIDString()
If you are inside of a domain class instead, you can still do this... but you will need to first inject a reference to grailsApplication. You probably want to do this in a Controller, though... more on this below.
If you're curious, the actual String returned here (for Oracle) is:
select rawtohex(sys_guid()) from dual
You can execute this SQL and fetch the generated ID value like this:
String guid = grailsApplication.getMainContext().sessionFactory.currentSession.createSQLQuery(guidSQL).list().get(0)
Issue #2: Actually using this value in a Grails domain object
To actually use this GUID value in your Grails domain class, you need to use the Hibernate generator "assigned". As mentioned earlier, this declares that you want to set your own ID's manually, rather than letting Grails/GORM/Hibernate generate them automatically. Compare this modified code snippet to the one in my original question above:
...
static mapping = {
table name: "OWNER"
version false
id column: "OWNER_OID", generator: "assigned"
name column: "NAME"
...
}
...
In my domain class, I changed "guid" to "assigned". I also found that I needed to eliminate the "columns {}" grouping block, and move all my column information up a level (weird).
Now, in whichever Controller is creating these domain objects... generate a GUID as described above, and plug it into the object's "id" field. In a Controller generated automatically by Grails Scaffolding, the function will be "save()":
def save() {
def ownerInstance = new Owner(params)
String guidSQL = grailsApplication.getMainContext().sessionFactory.getDialect().getSelectGUIDString()
ownerInstance.id = grailsApplication.getMainContext().sessionFactory.currentSession.createSQLQuery(guidSQL).list().get(0)
if (!ownerInstance.save(flush: true, insert: true)) {
render(view: "create", model: [ownerInstance: ownerInstance])
return
}
flash.message = message(code: 'default.created.message', args: [message(code: 'owner.label', default: 'Owner'), ownerInstance.id])
redirect(action: "show", id: ownerInstance.id)
}
You might think to try putting this logic directly inside the domain object, in a "beforeInsert()" function. That would definitely be cleaner and more elegant, but there are some known bugs with Grails that prevent ID's from being set in "beforeInsert()" properly. Sadly, you'll have to keep this logic at the Controller level.
Issue #3: Make Grails/GORM/Hibernate store this properly
The plain truth is that Grails is primarily intended for virgin-new applications, and its support for legacy databases is pretty spotty (in fairness, though, it's a bit less spotty than other "dynamic" frameworks I've tried). Even if you use the "assigned" generator, Grails sometimes gets confused when it goes to persist the domain object.
One such problem is that a ".save()" call sometimes tries to do an UPDATE when it should be doing an INSERT. Notice that in the Controller snippet above, I have added "insert: true" as a parameter to the ".save()" call. This tells Grails/GORM/Hibernate explicitly to attempt an INSERT operation rather than an UPDATE one.
All of the stars and planets must be in alignment for this to work right. If your domain class "static mapping {}" block does not set the Hibernate generator to "assigned", and also set "version false", then Grails/GORM/Hibernate will still get confused and try to issue an UPDATE rather than an INSERT.
If you are using auto-generated Grails Scaffolding controllers, then it is safe to use "insert: true" in the Controller's "save()" function, because that function in only called when saving a new object for the first time. When a user edits an existing object, the Controller's "update()" function is used instead. However, if you are doing your own thing in your own custom code somewhere... it will be important to check on whether a domain object is already in the the database before you make a ".save()" call, and only pass the "insert: true" parameter if it really is a first-time insert.
Issue #4: Using natural keys with Grails/GORM/Hibernate
One final note, not having to do with Oracle GUID values, but related to these Grails issues in general. Let's say that in a legacy database (such as the one I've been dealing with), some of your tables use a natural key as their primary key. Say you have an OWNER_TYPE table, containing all the possible "types" of OWNER, and the NAME column is both the human-readable identifier as well as the primary key.
You'll have to do a couple of other things to make this work with Grails Scaffolding. For one thing, the auto-generated Views do not show the ID field on the screen when users are creating new objects. You will have to insert some HTML to the relevant View to add a field for the ID. If you give the field a name of "id", then the auto-generated Controller's "save()" function will receive this value as "params.id".
Secondly, you have to make sure that the auto-generated Controller's "save()" function properly inserts the ID value. When first generated, a "save()" starts off by instantiating a domain object from the CGI parameters passed by the View:
def ownerTypeInstance = new OwnerType.get( params )
However, this does not handle the ID field you added to your View. You will still need to set that manually. If on the View you gave the HTML field a name of "id", then it will be available in "save()" as "params.id":
...
ownerTypeInstance = new OwnerType()
ownerTypeInstance.id = params.id
// Proceed to the ".save()" step, making sure to pass "insert: true"
...
Piece of cake, huh? Perhaps "Issue #5" is figuring out why you put yourself through all this pain, rather than just writing your CRUD interface by hand with Spring Web MVC (or even vanilla JSP's) in the first place! :)
Support for using SYS_GUID() is dependent upon the Oracle dialect that you are using. Looking at the hibernate source on GitHub it appears that the dialect was only setup to use the Oracle-generated guid in Oracle9Dialect.java and Oracle8iDialect.java. Therefore, it won't work with the 9i or 10g dialects.
You should submit a patch to hibernate which will add the required function(s) to enable the same functionality as the other dialects.
Advocation for using blocks with Entity Framework seems to be popular, but this tutorial for MVC show the Object Context for the Entity being created once at the class level. I ran into the latter first, so I had been using it. I am now trying to switch to the using block method to see if it really is faster, but am running into this error on the view:
The ObjectContext instance has been disposed and can no longer be used for operations that require a connection.
The view is trying to access a collection that was created by this:
homeView.UserList = new SelectList((from n in db.Users where n.US_INACTIVE == 0 orderby n.US_FULL_NAME select n).AsEnumerable(), "US_USER_ID", "US_FULL_NAME");
I don't understand why it is still trying to access the object context from the view (when it uses that SelectList) when it should have been populated in the controlled. Even more confusing, is this same problem does not occur for other database-populated data, which appears to make it into the view just fine.
That aside though, what do I need to do to get data from a using block into the view properly? Or, is a using block the wrong way to go for MVC, and should I just keep using once object context for the class?
You probably didn't call .ToList at the end of your expression so you are not eagerly executing any query but only building query expressions. It is only once the view is executed that the query is implicitly executed, but that happens long after your controller life has ended as well as any data contexts.
This being said I consider passing domain models to views as a bad practice. You should be using view models which are classes specifically designed to the requirements of a given view.
Ayende Rahien has a series of blog posts about the issues of view models. The view model that you pass to the view from the controller must contain all the necessary properties eagerly initialized and loaded with data and this independently of the data access technology you are using. And by the way it's not the controller's responsibility to manage your EF data contexts lifetime. That's should be specific to your data access layer (the repository).
Are you using another table in your view that is related to Users? In your current query only the Users table will be populated and accessing data in any related table will throw that error.
homeView.UserList = new SelectList((from n in db.Users.Include("Other Table") where n.US_INACTIVE == 0 orderby n.US_FULL_NAME select n).AsEnumerable(), "US_USER_ID", "US_FULL_NAME");