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Persisting Entities

This document explains how to persist entities using Spring Data JPA, specifically through the CrudRepository.save(…) method which utilizes the JPA EntityManager. It outlines three strategies for entity state detection: version-property and id-property inspection, implementing Persistable, and customizing EntityInformation. Additionally, it provides an example of a base class for entities with manually assigned identifiers that uses a transient flag to indicate new instances.

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4 views2 pages

Persisting Entities

This document explains how to persist entities using Spring Data JPA, specifically through the CrudRepository.save(…) method which utilizes the JPA EntityManager. It outlines three strategies for entity state detection: version-property and id-property inspection, implementing Persistable, and customizing EntityInformation. Additionally, it provides an example of a base class for entities with manually assigned identifiers that uses a transient flag to indicate new instances.

Uploaded by

srikanth.n24007
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Persisting Entities

This section describes how to persist (save) entities with Spring Data JPA.

Saving Entities
Saving an entity can be performed with the CrudRepository.save(…) method. It
persists or merges the given entity by using the underlying JPA EntityManager . If the
entity has not yet been persisted, Spring Data JPA saves the entity with a call to the
entityManager.persist(…) method. Otherwise, it calls the
entityManager.merge(…) method.

Entity State-detection Strategies

Spring Data JPA offers the following strategies to detect whether an entity is new or not:

1. Version-Property and Id-Property inspection (default): By default Spring Data JPA


inspects first if there is a Version-property of non-primitive type. If there is, the entity is
considered new if the value of that property is null . Without such a Version-property
Spring Data JPA inspects the identifier property of the given entity. If the identifier
property is null , then the entity is assumed to be new. Otherwise, it is assumed to be
not new.

2. Implementing Persistable : If an entity implements Persistable , Spring Data JPA


delegates the new detection to the isNew(…) method of the entity. See the JavaDoc
for details.

3. Implementing EntityInformation : You can customize the EntityInformation


abstraction used in the SimpleJpaRepository implementation by creating a
subclass of JpaRepositoryFactory and overriding the
getEntityInformation(…) method accordingly. You then have to register the
custom implementation of JpaRepositoryFactory as a Spring bean. Note that this
should be rarely necessary. See the JavaDoc for details.

Option 1 is not an option for entities that use manually assigned identifiers and no version
attribute as with those the identifier will always be non- null . A common pattern in that
scenario is to use a common base class with a transient flag defaulting to indicate a new
instance and using JPA lifecycle callbacks to flip that flag on persistence operations:

Example 1. A base class for entities with manually assigned identifiers

JAVA
@MappedSuperclass
public abstract class AbstractEntity<ID> implements Persistable<ID> {

@Transient
private boolean isNew = true; 1

@Override
public boolean isNew() {
return isNew; 2

@PrePersist 3

@PostLoad
void markNotNew() {
this.isNew = false;
}

// More code…
}

1 Declare a flag to hold the new state. Transient so that it’s not persisted to the database.

2 Return the flag in the implementation of Persistable.isNew() so that Spring Data


repositories know whether to call EntityManager.persist() or ….merge() .

3 Declare a method using JPA entity callbacks so that the flag is switched to indicate an
existing entity after a repository call to save(…) or an instance creation by the persistence
provider.

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