GORM 1:N Association Cascades Delete Without belongsTo! - grails-orm

I would like to create a one-to-many association that does not cascade deletes. Reading the Grails Reference it says
The default cascading behaviour is to cascade saves and updates, but not deletes unless a belongsTo is also specified
That isn't the behavior I'm seeing. With the following class implementations I get cascaded updates, saves, and deletes without any belongsTo:
class A {
static hasMany = [bees: B]
}
class B { }
In one Hibernate session I do the following to verify cascade updates work:
def a = new A()
a.save()
def b1 = new B()
a.addToBees(b1)
def b2 = new B()
a.addToBees(b2)
Then, in another Hibernate session, the following code deletes all instances of A and B:
A.list().each { a -> a.delete() }
Is this a bug? Is the documentation wrong? Am I doing something incorrectly? I'm using the Grails console to verify this behavior.

Are you sure that b1 and b2 are committed to the database? I'd have thought a.save at end, rather than on second line might yield the results you were expecting.

Once you save the parent object, the dynamic "addTo" methods automatically save what you add.
The problem actually turned out to be the Grails Console. Once I threw the code in an integration test it worked just fine.

Related

ATK4: Handling many to many relationships in CRUD - Adding subCRUD without breaking Add New

I'm trying to gracefully handle extra many to many relationship data in an ATK4 CRUD object. I can manually add the current entry's linked tables as sub CRUD objects while isEditing(), but in doing so i break the 'Add New' button. Code as follows:
function page_projects($p) {
$crud = $this->add('CRUD');
$crud->setModel('Project', null, array('Title', 'School'));
if($crud->grid){
$crud->grid->addPaginator(10);
$crud->grid->addQuicksearch(array('Title','School'));
}
if($crud->isEditing()){
$vForm = $crud->form;
$keywords = $vForm->add('CRUD');
$keywords->entity_name = 'Keyword';
$keywords->setModel(
$crud->model->load($crud->id)->
ref("mProjectKeywords"));
//Other snipped m:m rels
}
}
The issue is simply that $crud->id is not populated (and shouldn't be) when generating a new entry, which means i can't spawn new sub cruds. A workaround is to use:
if($crud->isEditing() && !is_null($crud->id)) {
when checking isEditing(), but this simply stops the sub CRUDS from being instantiated to avoid having load() throw an exception. I've tried looking at loadAny() and tryLoad() and neither do what i want in a many to many context: load a record if one exists, generate a new one otherwise.
Does anyone know a better way of handling this, and if there's not already one in the framework then what's the best angle for attacking this problem?
In this case that's normal behavior because you simply can't create mProjectKeywords record in database table before you INSERT referenced records in parent tables (Project and Keywords).
I do something like if($crud->isEditing() && !is_null($crud->id)) in my projects too.
That means you first have to save (insert) new record in Project and only then sub-CRUD shows up and you can add referenced records in Project edit form (which reloads automatically after you save new project).

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.

Trying to update entities from a disconnected entity

Ok, each and every time I get into this situation, I struggle back and forth until I find a way to solve it (and that is usually not the way I would have liked to solve it).
What I'm talking about is disconnected entities in EF that should update existing entities in the database.
I'll give an example of my problem here (this example is the last time I got into this problem that caused me to write this question).
I have a WCF service that uses Entity Framework as well. The other program that have added a service reference to my service have gotten proxy versions of the Entities as normal.
The case is that the consumer of the service now construct a object of this proxy class, and call the method UpdateEntity on the WCF service. This entity has a foreign key to another type of entities, and the primary key of the entity I want to link this new entity to is also sent as a parameter to this method. In this case, I want the entity with the same primary key in the database to be updated. It seems simple enough right?
My method looks something like this now:
public bool ChangeEntity(MyEntity entity, int otherTableForignKey)
{
//first I verify that the entity to update exist in the system
var entitytochange = entityContext.MyEntities.FirstOrDefault(e => e.Name == entity.Name);
if (systemtochange == null) return false;
try
{
entity.ForignEntity = entityContext.ForeignEntities.FirstOrDefault(f => f.Key == otherTableForignKey);
//code for updating the entity should go here, but I'm nor sure what
entityContext.SaveChanges();
return true;
}
catch (Exception exc)
{
return false;
}
}
I tried many different combinations of ApplyCurrentValues, Attach, setting ObjectState to Modified and so on, but I get either the error message that I can't add a new entity with the same key as an existing entity, that the object state of the new object can't be Added and so on.
So my question is: What is the best way to do this without writing code that looks like a big hack.
The only way I got this working now was to just set the properties of entitytochange manually with the properties of entity, but it is a bad solution since any added properties to MyEntity will break the code if I don't remember to add code in this method as well, and it seems there really should be another way that is better.
EDIT
When I put entityContext.MyEntities.ApplyCurrentValues(entity); where my comment is put above, I get the following exception on this line:
The existing object in the ObjectContext is in the Added state. Changes can only be applied when the existing object is in an unchanged or modified state.
However, if I remove this line above entity.ForignEntity = entityContext.ForeignEntities.FirstOrDefault(f => f.Key == otherTableForignKey); then the ApplyCurrentValues works without any problems.
Why would me setting the ForeignEntity of the object set it to Added state? So it seems that setting a Property on the Detached entity, attaches it to the context with a state of added?

How do I wrap an EF 4.1 DbContext in a repository?

All,
I have a requirement to hide my EF implementation behind a Repository. My simple question: Is there a way to execute a 'find' across both a DbSet AND the DbSet.Local without having to deal with them both.
For example - I have standard repository implementation with Add/Update/Remove/FindById. I break the generic pattern by adding a FindByName method (for demo purposes only :). This gives me the following code:
Client App:
ProductCategoryRepository categoryRepository = new ProductCategoryRepository();
categoryRepository.Add(new ProductCategory { Name = "N" });
var category1 = categoryRepository.FindByName("N");
Implementation
public ProductCategory FindByName(string s)
{
// Assume name is unique for demo
return _legoContext.Categories.Where(c => c.Name == s).SingleOrDefault();
}
In this example, category1 is null.
However, if I implement the FindByName method as:
public ProductCategory FindByName(string s)
{
var t = _legoContext.Categories.Local.Where(c => c.Name == s).SingleOrDefault();
if (t == null)
{
t = _legoContext.Categories.Where(c => c.Name == s).SingleOrDefault();
}
return t;
}
In this case, I get what I expect when querying against both a new entry and one that is only in the database. But this presents a few issues that I am confused over:
1) I would assume (as a user of the repository) that cat2 below is not found. But it is found, and the great part is that cat2.Name is "Goober".
ProductCategoryRepository categoryRepository = new ProductCategoryRepository();
var cat = categoryRepository.FindByName("Technic");
cat.Name = "Goober";
var cat2 = categoryRepository.FindByName("Technic");
2) I would like to return a generic IQueryable from my repository.
It just seems like a lot of work to wrap the calls to the DbSet in a repository. Typically, this means that I've screwed something up. I'd appreciate any insight.
With older versions of EF you had very complicated situations that could arise quite fast due to the required references. In this version I would recomend not exposing IQueryable but ICollections or ILists. This will contain EF in your repository and create a good seperation.
Edit: furthermore, by sending back ICollection IEnumerable or IList you are restraining and controlling the queries being sent to the database. This will also allow you to fine tune and maintain the system with greater ease. By exposing IQueriable, you are exposing yourself to side affects which occur when people add more to the query, .Take() or .Where ... .SelectMany, EF will see these additions and will generate sql to reflect these uncontrolled queries. Not confining the queries can result in queries getting executed from the UI and is more complicated tests and maintenance issues in the long run.
since the point of the repository pattern is to be able to swap them out at will. the details of DbSets should be completly hidden.
I think that you're on a good path. The only thing I probaly ask my self is :
Is the context long lived? if not then do not worry about querying Local. An object that has been Inserted / Deleted should only be accessible once it has been comitted.
if this is a long lived context and you need access to deleted and inserted objects then querying the Local is a good idea, but as you've pointed out, you may run into difficulties at some point.

JPA & Ebean ORM: Empty collection is not empty

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.