Spring annotation based configuration change - spring

I have a spring MVC (3.1) web app using Hibernate that is all working correctly - today, I have tried to move the configuration completely over to annotation based config (only using xml for the security stuff that isnt yet supported by Spring in code config).
After some tuning I got the app starting with no errors and the home page loads correctly - however I am seeing some different behaviour with the Hibernate sessions - namely, I am getting the following error when loading a page that actually touches Hibernate entities:
org.hibernate.LazyInitializationException: failed to lazily initialize a collection of role: com.tmm.web.domain.Profile.connections, no session or session was closed
This is happening in the following scenario:
a request hits my #Controller and it loads the user Profile object
In the same method call (so we are not talking detached entities etc here) it tries to call profile.getConnections()
Profile.connections do not actually explicitly state a fetchtype, so should default to eager load (is my understanding?), but either way, the getConnections() call is directly after the loading of the profile - so would have thought even if it was being loaded lazily, it could easily just go back to the DB and load connections on demand.
//#Controller Code
Account viewedUser = accountService.loadAccountByUserName(userName);
model.put("viewedUserConnections", viewedUser.getUserProfile().getConnections());
//Profile Entity
#OneToMany(mappedBy = "user", cascade = CascadeType.ALL)
private List connections = new ArrayList();
Now, I know about lazy loading etc, so it's not a question about that - like i mentioned all the Hibernate stuff was working correctly - so really my question is, what Spring configuration might affect this behaviour?
I can post my before and after xml vs annotation config, but am hoping that someone can point me in the direction of some config that I might have missed in switching.

Your assumptions are mainly wrong:
In the same method call (so we are not talking detached entities etc here)
The method is a method of the controller. In typical Spring applications, controllers are not transactional, but services are. So, unless you configured an "open session in view" filter or interceptor, the session is closed when the transactional service method returns, and the controller thus always uses detached entities
Profile.connections do not actually explicitly state a fetchtype, so should default to eager load
No. XxxToMany associations are lazy by default.
If the same code worked before the transition, my guess is that you had an open session in view filter or interceptor, and that you forgot it when migrating to annotations.

Related

What can cause a LazyInitatializationException whereas Spring Open In View is enabled?

I am analysing a "classic" Hibernate error :
org.hibernate.LazyInitializationException : could not initialize proxy – no Session.
I am wondering how it could happen whereas the Spring Open In View mode is enabled?
If you have any documentation or knowledge on a possible reason, please share.
Thanks
Here are some feebacks on my context, and an example of what could cause LazyInitializationException event if Spring Open In View is enabled.
Context
My application is a REST API server developed with Spring Boot 2.5.3.
Spring Open In View is kept enabled by default.
A lot of Services are annotated with #Transactional methods.
Spring-data is used, and Entitymanager too, to create some native queries.
The error
One REST API request, that generates a lot requests to the database (both selections and insertions), fails with LazyInitializationException.
Debugging
By setting a breakpoint when LazyInitializationException is thrown, I discovered that the exception is thrown in org.hibernate.proxy.AbstractLazyInitializer#initialize, because the session is null. Then I discovered that the session is set to null, when the method EntityManager.clear is called. For any reason I don't know, this method was explicitely called in the code.
Fixing
So I just removed the call to EntityManager.clear, and the request works. I'm still wondering why previous developers wanted to clear the EntityManager, probably because they were confused with the transaction management.
Conclusion
Even in Spring Open In View is enabled, and as a result, event if a Hibernate Session is opened, calling EntityManager.clear unset the session to the entities loaded before. Then trying to access a Lazy Loaded field on those entities throws LazyInitializationException.
I hope this will help someone.
Here is the documentation from the latest hibernate version.
As you can see
Indicates an attempt to access not-yet-fetched data outside of a
session context. For example, when an uninitialized proxy or
collection is accessed after the session was closed.
Most probably somewhere you read some entity and then outside of a transaction you try to read some collection which was by default lazy loaded. So then another request needs to be done to database, but since you are out of transaction you receive this exception.
This usually occurs in case you load an entity without the annotation #Transactional or some other configuration to load it inside a transaction and then you give this to your controller to be returned to the user. Then the controller will use jackson or some other library to convert the entity object into a json and will try to read any field. At this point trying to read any lazy loaded collections from the entity, will result in this exception since the read will be outside of a transaction.

Struts 2 tomcat request/session contamination

I am using Struts 2 v 2.3.16.3 with tomcat 6.
A user will click on an action which finds an object by id and the page displays it. I have encountered a sporadic bug where the user will all of a sudden get the id of another lookup from another user on another machine. So effectively they are both calling the same action but passing different id to the request, but both end up viewing the same id.
This is obviously disastrous, and the data is totally corrupted as both users think they are editing a different record. Any ideas how make sure session/request activity is kept secure to each session?
I am also using spring and am using the #Transactional annotation in my Service layer, which returns the objects from the DAO. Is there something I need to do with this annotation to make it secure for each session ?
I am using org.springframework.orm.hibernate3.HibernateTransactionManager
Classic Thread-UnSafe problem.
Since you nominated Spring, my first guess is that you have not specified the right scope for your action beans in Spring xml configuration.
Be sure you are using scope="prototype" because otherwise the default scope of Spring is Singleton, and you don't want a single(ton) instance of an Action, that would not be ThreadLocal (and hence ThreadSafe) anymore.
If it is not that, it could be something on an Interceptor (that, differently from an action, is not Thread Safe), or you are using something static (in your Business / DAO layer, or in the Action itself) that should be not.

Stateless session bean maintaining state

I deployed a web application on the localhost GlassFish server. This application takes order information from user and stores it in a List type variable in a Stateless Session Bean.The list object is created in the constructor.
I open the order page and add multiple orders in it. When I open the show orders page in different tabs and different browsers, it displays all the order information bean correctly, as though the state is maintained in a Stateless Bean!
I think this behavior is wrong as each browser/tab should create different session with the server and new order information should be shown for each browser/tab. How can this behavior be explained?
Your use case is precisely what a stateful session bean is for, if you want your List object to be maintained across method invocations, and if you want each session to be assigned its own bean.
Stateless session beans are pooled and made available to any session. But your instance fields are not guaranteed to be cleared, so you can't depend on them being cleared. The behavior that you are seeing is not unexpected. Even if you were successful in creating separate sessions in multiple tabs, those sessions could very well have been (and apparently were) assigned the same session bean. That's because the associated method invocations occurred at different points in time. Now if the associated method invocations occurred simultaneously instead, then the platform would have assigned a different stateless bean to each invocation (session). In that case, you'd see different behavior.
See also;
conversational state of session beans
and
Stateless and Stateful Enterprise Java Beans
Never let what you can't do get in the way of what you can do.
Problem: Stateful Session Bean was not maintaining separate state per client. In the example I tried, I input orders from the JSP page, which were stored in a List in a Stateful Session Bean. When I called the same URL from a different browser (i.e. a different session), the list of orders input in the previous session were visible. The same EJB was getting referenced in both sessions. (Verified by sysouts)
It's like saying, the shopping cart of some other user was directly visible to me as if they were my orders!!
Solution: Used an HttpSessionListener and got the dependency of the Stateful EJB through JNDI, in sessionCreated(HttpSessionEvent se) method. Next, added the stateful EJB in an HttpSession and accessed the EJB through session in servlet.
Suggestions for using JNDI, instead of DI, for Stateful Session Bean and Adding EJB to HttpSession are given in the answer above. Don't know if it is the proper way to go, but it works!!

How to access lazy hibernate collections from jsp foreach in spring?

I need to do forEach over lazy collection in jsp from spring controller. But this invocation crashes because session was closed in controller. I solve this by loding collection via:
Hibernate.initialize(obj.getCollection())
Is it possible to tune mvc to have hibernate session inside jsp?
Thanx
But this invocation crashes because session was closed in controller
I assume by crash you mean that you caused a LazyInitializationException by accessing a mapped collection after the session was closed.
Tuning mvc to have Hibernate session inside you JSP essentially means that you want to hold the session open for the duration of your HTTP request. This means that at render time you can still load the data you require.
You can achieve this using the open session in view pattern. In Spring this is implemented using the OpenSessionInViewFilter. See this answer for more detail on setting it up.
The alternative as you have already demonstrated it to load the data that you require within the transaction which loaded the parent. This is why Hibernate supports lazy loading. Sometimes you will need to load child entities and collections but sometimes you don't. By mapping it as lazy you can choose depending on the specific interaction.

EntityManager Lifecycle when using Oracle's Virtual Private Database

I had a few questions all related to the way an entity manager is created and used in an application with respect to Virtual Private Databases, which is a feature in Oracle DB which enables Row Level Security.
In a session bean, we generally have the entity manager as a member, and its generally injected by the container. How is this entity manager managed by the container - I mean, if we want to implement a Virtual Private Database then we have to make sure that the Virtual Private Database-context remains valid for the entire user session, and we do not have to set this context everytime before we fire a query. (to include more verbiage here : a session bean implements a couple of functions and each of these functions uses the same entity manager; now, it should not be the case that we set the Virtual Private Database everytime in each of these functions which do some DB manipulations).
Further to #1, since the entity manager is cached in the session bean, do we need to explicitly close the entity manager in any scenario? (like we do for JDBC connections?)
Also, I was wondering what should be the use case(or design criteria) for using a JTA or a non-JTA datasource. Is the way we create an entity manager dependant on this?
To add w.r.t the requirement on VPD:
It would be nice if the container managed EM can somehow be made to enforce the VPD per user. Note that EM is injected in here, so there should be a mechanism to set the VPD on the connection(and later retrieve the same connection for 'this' user in 'this' session).
Without an injected EM, i think using a reference to EMF and then setting the properties for the EM can be done. Something like :
((org.eclipse.persistence.internal.jpa.EntityManagerImpl)em.getDelegate()).setProperties
It would be an overkill, if the VPD is set everytime before the query is fired, rather the connection should 'maintain' the VPD context during the user's session and later release the connection (after clearing the VPD) back to the pool.
In a session bean, an injected entity manager is container managed and by default transaction scoped.
This means when you call any method on the session bean and a transaction is started, the persistence context of the entity manager starts. When the transaction is committed or rollbacked it ends. There is thus no scenario in which you have to explicitly close the entity manager.
Furthermore, when there already is a transaction in progress, this is joined by default and when there already is a persistence context attached to said transaction it's propagated instead of a new one being created.
Stateful session beans have another option, and that's the extended persistence context. This one is coupled to the scope of the stateful bean instead of to individual transactions. You still don't have to do any closing yourself here.
Then, you can also inject an EntityManagerFactory (using #PersistenceUnit) and then get an entity manager from it: In that case you'll have an application managed entity manager. In this case you'll have to explicitly close it.
JTA datasources (transactional datasources) are by default used with container managed entity managers. The container takes care of everything here. non-JTA datasources are for situations where you need separate connections to a DB, possibly outside any running transaction, on which you can set auto commit mode, commit, rollback, etc your self.
These two different datasource types can be defined in orm.xml for a persistence unit. If you define a persistence unit with a non-JTA datasource, you typically create an entity manager for it using a factory and then manage everything your self.
Update:
Regarding the Virtual Private Database, what you seem to need here is a user specific connection per entity manager, but the normal way of doing things is coupling a persistence unit to a general data source. I guess what could be needed here is a datasource that's aware of the user's context when a connection is requested.
If you completely bypass the container and even largely bypass the JPA abstraction, you could go directly to Hibernate. It has providers that you can register globally like DriverManagerConnectionProvider and DatasourceConnectionProvider. If you provide your own implementations for these with a setter for the actual connection, you can ask these back from a specific entity manager instance just prior to using it, and then set your own connection in it.
It's doable, but needless to say a bit hacky. Hopefully someone else can give a more 'official' answer. Best would of course if Oracle provided an official plug-in for e.g. EclipseLink to support this. This document hints that it does:
TopLink / EclipseLink : Support filtering data through their
#AdditionalCriteria annotation and XML. This allows an arbitrary JPQL
fragment to be appended to all queries for the entity. The fragment
can contain parameters that can be set through persistence unit or
context properties at runtime. Oracle VPD is also supported, include
Oracle proxy authentication and isolated data.
See also How to use EclipseLink JPA with Oracle Proxy Authentication.

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