JPA & Ebean ORM: Empty collection is not empty - orm

I've started switching over a project from hand-written JDBC ORM code to Ebeans. So far it's been great; Ebeans is light and easy to use.
However, I have run into a crippling issue: when retrieving a one-to-many list which should be empty there is actually one element in it. This element looks to be some kind of proxy object which has all null fields, so it breaks code which loops through the collection.
I've included abbreviated definitions here:
#Entity
class Store {
...
#OneToMany(mappedBy="store",cascade=CascadeType.ALL,fetch=FetchType.LAZY)
List<StoreAlbum> storeAlbums = new LinkedList<StoreAlbum>();
}
#Entity
class StoreAlbum {
...
#ManyToOne(optional=false,fetch=FetchType.EAGER)
#JoinColumn(name="store_id",nullable=false)
Store store;
}
The ... are where all the standard getters and setters are. The retrieval code looks like this:
Store s = server.find(Store.class)
.where()
.eq("store_id",4)
.findUnique();
Assert.assertEquals("Sprint",s.getStoreName());
Assert.assertEquals(0, s.getStoreAlbums().size());
The database is known to contain a 'store' row for "Sprint", and the 'store_album' table does not contain any rows for that store.
The JUnit test fails on the second assertion. It finds a list with 1 element in it, which is some kind of broken StoreAlbum object. The debugger shows the object as being of the type "com.lwm.catalogfeed.domain.StoreAlbum$$EntityBean$test#1a5e68a" with null values for all the fields which are declared as nullable=false (and optional=false).
Am I missing something here?

Thought I'd post an update on this... I ended up giving up on EBeans and instead switched the implementation over to use MyBatis. MyBatis is fantastic; the manual is easy to read and thorough. MyBatis does what you expect it to do. I got it up and running in no time.
EBeans didn't appear to detect that the join for the associated collection resulted in a bunch of null ids, but MyBatis handled this scenario cleanly.

I ran into the same issue and was able to solve it by adding an identity column to the secondary table (StoreAlbum). I did not investigate the cause but I suppose Ebean needs a primary key on the table in these kind of situations.

Related

Sulu: Entity has no field or association error

I'm following Sulu example here: https://github.com/sulu/sulu-workshop/
trying to set translations for custom entity type.
My entity file has getter for field "home_team" defined like:
/**
* #Serializer\VirtualProperty(name="home_team")
*/
public function getHomeTeam(): ?string
{
$translation = $this->getTranslation($this->locale);
if (!$translation) {
return null;
}
return $translation->getHomeTeam();
}
So field is not actually part of that entity, but of it's translation entity since it suppose to be translatable.
When I try to create new object of that entity type it works well. I can see in database that field values are stored well and I don't get any error.
But on overview page instead of list of all objects I get error:
[Semantical Error] line 0, col 73 near 'home_team AS': Error: Class App\Entity\MatchEvent has no field or association named home_team
Any idea what could be wrong here?
If you wanna see the translation in the listView you have to create a real translationEntity, like in the workshop project. In this post it is already explained, how to translate a custom entity correctly.
If you have already created your translationEntity you have to configure the relation of the translation to your main entity via a join. Here is an example in the workshop for this configuration.
Sulu uses optimised queries to create the list-object directly from the database. So the entity itself does not get hydrated or serialised for performance reasons. Thus your virtualProperty is never executed.

Nhibernate QueryOver don't get latest database changes

I am trying get a record updated from database with QueryOver.
My code initially creates an entity and saves in database, then the same record is updated on database externally( from other program, manually or the same program running in other machine), and when I call queryOver filtering by the field changed, the query gets the record but without latest changes.
This is my code:
//create the entity and save in database
MyEntity myEntity = CreateDummyEntity();
myEntity.Name = "new_name";
MyService.SaveEntity(myEntity);
// now the entity is updated externally changing the name property with the
// "modified_name" value (for example manually in TOAD, SQL Server,etc..)
//get the entity with QueryOver
var result = NhibernateHelper.Session
.QueryOver<MyEntity>()
.Where(param => param.Name == "modified_name")
.List<T>();
The previous statement gets a collection with only one record(good), BUT with the name property established with the old value instead of "modified_name".
How I can fix this behaviour? First Level cache is disturbing me? The same problem occurs with
CreateCriteria<T>();
The session in my NhibernateHelper is not being closed in any moment due application framework requirements, only are created transactions for each commit associated to a session.Save().
If I open a new session to execute the query evidently I get the latest changes from database, but this approach is not allowed by design requirement.
Also I have checked in the NHibernate SQL output that a select with a WHERE clause is being executed (therefore Nhibernate hits the database) but don´t updates the returned object!!!!
UPDATE
Here's the code in SaveEntity after to call session.Save: A call to Commit method is done
public virtual void Commit()
{
try
{
this.session.Flush();
this.transaction.Commit();
}
catch
{
this.transaction.Rollback();
throw;
}
finally
{
this.transaction = this.session.BeginTransaction();
}
}
The SQL generated by NHibernate for SaveEntity:
NHibernate: INSERT INTO MYCOMPANY.MYENTITY (NAME) VALUES (:p0);:p0 = 'new_name'.
The SQL generated by NHibernate for QueryOver:
NHibernate: SELECT this_.NAME as NAME26_0_
FROM MYCOMPANY.MYENTITY this_
WHERE this_.NAME = :p0;:p0 = 'modified_name' [Type: String (0)].
Queries has been modified due to company confidential policies.
Help very appreciated.
As far as I know, you have several options :
have your Session as a IStatelessSession, by calling sessionFactory.OpenStatelesSession() instead of sessionFactory.OpenSession()
perform Session.Evict(myEntity) after persisting an entity in DB
perform Session.Clear() before your QueryOver
set the CacheMode of your Session to Ignore, Put or Refresh before your QueryOver (never tested that)
I guess the choice will depend on the usage you have of your long running sessions ( which, IMHO, seem to bring more problems than solutions )
Calling session.Save(myEntity) does not cause the changes to be persisted to the DB immediately*. These changes are persisted when session.Flush() is called either by the framework itself or by yourself. More information about flushing and when it is invoked can be found on this question and the nhibernate documentation about flushing.
Also performing a query will not cause the first level cache to be hit. This is because the first level cache only works with Get and Load, i.e. session.Get<MyEntity>(1) would hit the first level cache if MyEntity with an id of 1 had already been previously loaded, whereas session.QueryOver<MyEntity>().Where(x => x.id == 1) would not.
Further information about NHibernate's caching functionality can be found in this post by Ayende Rahien.
In summary you have two options:
Use a transaction within the SaveEntity method, i.e.
using (var transaction = Helper.Session.BeginTransaction())
{
Helper.Session.Save(myEntity);
transaction.Commit();
}
Call session.Flush() within the SaveEntity method, i.e.
Helper.Session.Save(myEntity);
Helper.Session.Flush();
The first option is the best in pretty much all scenarios.
*The only exception I know to this rule is when using Identity as the id generator type.
try changing your last query to:
var result = NhibernateHelper.Session
.QueryOver<MyEntity>()
.CacheMode(CacheMode.Refresh)
.Where(param => param.Name == "modified_name")
if that still doesn't work, try add this after the query:
NhibernateHelper.Session.Refresh(result);
After search and search and think and think.... I´ve found the solution.
The fix: It consist in open a new session, call QueryOver<T>() in this session and the data is succesfully refreshed. If you get child collections not initialized you can call HibernateUtil.Initialize(entity) or sets lazy="false" in your mappings. Take special care about lazy="false" in large collections, because you can get a poor performance. To fix this problem(performance problem loading large collections), set lazy="true" in your collection mappings and call the mentioned method HibernateUtil.Initialize(entity) of the affected collection to get child records from database; for example, you can get all records from a table, and if you need access to all child records of a specific entity, call HibernateUtil.Initialize(collection) only for the interested objects.
Note: as #martin ernst says, the update problem can be a bug in hibernate and my solution is only a temporal fix, and must be solved in hibernate.
People here do not want to call Session.Clear() since it is too strong.
On the other hand, Session.Evict() may seem un-applicable when the objects are not known beforehand.
Actually it is still usable.
You need to first retrieve the cached objects using the query, then call Evict() on them. And then again retrieve fresh objects calling the same query again.
This approach is slightly inefficient in case the object was not cached to begin with - since then there would be actually two "fresh" queries - but there seems to be not much to do about that shortcoming...
By the way, Evict() accepts null argument too without exceptions - this is useful in case the queried object is actually not present in the DB.
var cachedObjects = NhibernateHelper.Session
.QueryOver<MyEntity>()
.Where(param => param.Name == "modified_name")
.List<T>();
foreach (var obj in cachedObjects)
NhibernateHelper.Session.Evict(obj);
var freshObjects = NhibernateHelper.Session
.QueryOver<MyEntity>()
.Where(param => param.Name == "modified_name")
.List<T>()
I'm getting something very similar, and have tried debugging NHibernate.
In my scenario, the session creates an object with a couple children in a related collection (cascade:all), and then calls ISession.Flush().
The records are written into the DB, and the session needs to continue without closing. Meanwhile, another two child records are written into the DB and committed.
Once the original session then attempts to re-load the graph using QueryOver with JoinAlias, the SQL statement generated looks perfectly fine, and the rows are being returned correctly, however the collection that should receive these new children is found to have already been initialized within the session (as it should be), and based on that NH decides for some reason to completely ignore the respective rows.
I think NH makes an invalid assumption here that if the collection is already marked "Initialized" it does not need to be re-loaded from the query.
It would be great if someone more familiar with NHibernate internals could chime in on this.

Native Query Mapping on the fly openJPA

I am wondering if it is possible to map a named native query on the fly instead of getting back a list of Object[] and then looping through and setting up the object that way. I have a call which I know ill return a massive data set and I want to be able to map it right to my entity. Can I do that or will I have to continue looping through the result set.
Here is what I am doing now...
List<Provider> ObjList = (List<Provider>) emf.createNativeQuery(assembleQuery(organizationIDs, 5)).getResultList();
That is my entity, the List (my entity is the provider). Normally I would just return a List<Object[]>
and then I would loop through that to get back all the objects and set them up as new providers and add them to a list....
//List<Provider> provList = new ArrayList<Provider>();
/*for(Object[] obj: ObjList)
{
provList.add(this.GetProviderFromObj(obj));
}*/
As you can see I commented that section of the code out to try this out. I know you can map named native queries if you put your native query in the entity itself and then call it via createNamedQuery. I would do it that way, but I need to use the IN oracle keyword because I have a list of ID's that I want to check against. It is not just one that is needed. And as we all know, native queruies don't handle the in keyword to well. Any advice?
Sigh, If only the IN keyword was supported well for NamedNativeQueries.
Assuming that Provider is configured as a JPA entity, you should be able to specify the class as the second parameter to your createNativeQuery call. For example:
List<Provider> ObjList = (List<Provider>) emf.createNativeQuery(assembleQuery(organizationIDs, 5), Provider.class).getResultList();
According to the documentation, "At a minimum, your SQL must select the class' primary key columns, discriminator column (if mapped), and version column (also if mapped)."
See the OpenJPA documentation for more details.

EF: How to do effective lazy-loading (not 1+N selects)?

Starting with a List of entities and needing all dependent entities through an association, is there a way to use the corresponding navigation-propertiy to load all child-entities with one db-round-trip? Ie. generate a single WHERE fkId IN (...) statement via navigation property?
More details
I've found these ways to load the children:
Keep the set of parent-entities as IQueriable<T>
Not good since the db will have to find the main set every time and join to get the requested data.
Put the parent-objects into an array or list, then get related data through navigation properties.
var children = parentArray.Select(p => p.Children).Distinct()
This is slow since it will generate a select for every main-entity.
Creates duplicate objects since each set of children is created independetly.
Put the foreign keys from the main entities into an array then filter the entire dependent-ObjectSet
var foreignKeyIds = parentArray.Select(p => p.Id).ToArray();
var children = Children.Where(d => foreignKeyIds.Contains(d.Id))
Linq then generates the desired "WHERE foreignKeyId IN (...)"-clause.
This is fast but only possible for 1:*-relations since linking-tables are mapped away.
Removes the readablity advantage of EF by using Ids after all
The navigation-properties of type EntityCollection<T> are not populated
Eager loading though the .Include()-methods, included for completeness (asking for lazy-loading)
Alledgedly joins everything included together and returns one giant flat result.
Have to decide up front which data to use
It there some way to get the simplicity of 2 with the performance of 3?
You could attach the parent object to your context and get the children when needed.
foreach (T parent in parents) {
_context.Attach(parent);
}
var children = parents.Select(p => p.Children);
Edit: for attaching multiple, just iterate.
I think finding a good answer is not possible or at least not worth the trouble. Instead a micro ORM like Dapper give the big benefit of removing the need to map between sql-columns and object-properties and does it without the need to create a model first. Also one simply writes the desired sql instead of understanding what linq to write to have it generated. IQueryable<T> will be missed though.

Problem with RavenDB 'Hello World' tutorial

I am going through the RavenDB tutorial on the RavenDb.net website.
It was going fine until I got to the code block for creating an index.
This code segment is direct from RavenDB.Net website.
store.DatabaseCommands.PutIndex("OrdersContainingProduct", new IndexDefinition<Order>
{
Map = orders => from order in orders
from line in order.OrderLines
select new { line.ProductId }
});
I get an error on compile: "The non-generic type 'Raven.Database.Indexing.IndexDefinition' cannot be used with type arguments."
If IndexDefinition is non-generic, why is it used as generic in the sample code? Where is the disconnect?
Thank you for your time
Jim
Depending on your using statements you may be referencing the wrong IndexDefinition class (from another Raven assembly). Try adding this to the beginning of your file:
using Raven.Client.Indexes;
You might need to remove other using statements as well. I guess this is one reason why Microsoft recommends using unique names for classes even in the presence of namespaces.