Using generics in Spring Data JPA repositories

I have a number of simple object types that need to be persisted to a database. I am using Spring JPA to manage this persistence. For each object type I need to build the following:

import org.springframework.data.jpa.repository.JpaRepository;

public interface FacilityRepository extends JpaRepository<Facility, Long> {
}


public interface FacilityService {
    public Facility create(Facility facility);
}

@Service
public class FacilityServiceImpl implements FacilityService {

    @Resource
    private FacilityRepository countryRepository;

    @Transactional
    public Facility create(Facility facility) {
        Facility created = facility;
        return facilityRepository.save(created);
    }
}

It occurred to me that it may be possible to replace the multiple classes for each object type with three generics based classes, thus saving a lot of boilerplate coding. I am not exactly sure how to go about it and in fact if it is a good idea?

Solution 1:

First of all, I know we're raising the bar here quite a bit but this is already tremendously less code than you had to write without the help of Spring Data JPA.

Second, I think you don't need the service class in the first place, if all you do is forward a call to the repository. We recommend using services in front of the repositories if you have business logic that needs orchestration of different repositories within a transaction or has other business logic to encapsulate.

Generally speaking, you can of course do something like this:

interface ProductRepository<T extends Product> extends CrudRepository<T, Long> {

    @Query("select p from #{#entityName} p where ?1 member of p.categories")
    Iterable<T> findByCategory(String category);

    Iterable<T> findByName(String name);
}

This will allow you to use the repository on the client side like this:

class MyClient {

  @Autowired
  public MyClient(ProductRepository<Car> carRepository, 
                  ProductRepository<Wine> wineRepository) { … }
}

and it will work as expected. However there are a few things to notice:

This only works if the domain classes use single table inheritance. The only information about the domain class we can get at bootstrap time is that it will be Product objects. So for methods like findAll() and even findByName(…) the relevant queries will start with select p from Product p where…. This is due to the fact that the reflection lookup will never ever be able to produce Wine or Car unless you create a dedicated repository interface for it to capture the concrete type information.

Generally speaking, we recommend creating repository interfaces per aggregate root. This means you don't have a repo for every domain class per se. Even more important, a 1:1 abstraction of a service over a repository is completely missing the point as well. If you build services, you don't build one for every repository (a monkey could do that, and we're no monkeys, are we? ;). A service is exposing a higher level API, is much more use-case drive and usually orchestrates calls to multiple repositories.

Also, if you build services on top of repositories, you usually want to enforce the clients to use the service instead of the repository (a classical example here is that a service for user management also triggers password generation and encryption, so that by no means it would be a good idea to let developers use the repository directly as they'd effectively work around the encryption). So you usually want to be selective about who can persist which domain objects to not create dependencies all over the place.

Summary

Yes, you can build generic repositories and use them with multiple domain types but there are quite strict technical limitations. Still, from an architectural point of view, the scenario you describe above shouldn't even pop up as this means you're facing a design smell anyway.

Solution 2:

This is very possible! I am probably very late to the party. But this will certainly help someone in the future. Here is a complete solution that works like a charm!

Create BaseEntity class for your entities as follows:

@MappedSuperclass
public class AbstractBaseEntity implements Serializable{

    @Id @GeneratedValue
    private Long id;
    @Version
    private int version;
    private LocalDateTime createdAt;
    private LocalDateTime updatedAt;

    public AbstractBaseEntity() {
        this.createdAt = LocalDateTime.now();
        this.updatedAt = LocalDateTime.now();
    }

    // getters and setters      
}

Create a generic JPA Repository interface for your DAO persistence as follows: NB. Remember to put the @NoRepositoryBean so that JPA will not try to find an implementation for the repository!

@NoRepositoryBean
public interface AbstractBaseRepository<T extends AbstractBaseEntity, ID extends Serializable>
extends JpaRepository<T, ID>{
    
}

Create a Base Service class that uses the above base JPA repository. This is the one that other service interfaces in your domain will simply extend as follows:

public interface AbstractBaseService<T extends AbstractBaseEntity, ID extends Serializable>{
    public abstract T save(T entity);
    public abstract List<T> findAll(); // you might want a generic Collection if u prefer

    public abstract Optional<T> findById(ID entityId);
    public abstract T update(T entity);
    public abstract T updateById(T entity, ID entityId);   
    public abstract void delete(T entity);
    public abstract void deleteById(ID entityId);
    // other methods u might need to be generic
    
}

Then create an abstract implementation for the base JPA repository & the basic CRUD methods will also be provided their implementations as in the following:

@Service
@Transactional
public abstract class AbstractBaseRepositoryImpl<T extends AbstractBaseEntity, ID extends Serializable>
        implements AbstractBaseService<T, ID>{
    
    private AbstractBaseRepository<T, ID> abstractBaseRepository;
    
    @Autowired
    public AbstractBaseRepositoryImpl(AbstractBaseRepository<T, ID> abstractBaseRepository) {
        this.abstractBaseRepository = abstractBaseRepository;
    }
    
    @Override
    public T save(T entity) {
        return (T) abstractBaseRepository.save(entity);
    }

    @Override
    public List<T> findAll() {
        return abstractBaseRepository.findAll();
    }

    @Override
    public Optional<T> findById(ID entityId) {
        return abstractBaseRepository.findById(entityId);
    }

    @Override
    public T update(T entity) {
        return (T) abstractBaseRepository.save(entity);
    }

    @Override
    public T updateById(T entity, ID entityId) {
        Optional<T> optional = abstractBaseRepository.findById(entityId);
        if(optional.isPresent()){
            return (T) abstractBaseRepository.save(entity);
        }else{
            return null;
        }
    }

    @Override
    public void delete(T entity) {
        abstractBaseRepository.delete(entity);
    }

    @Override
    public void deleteById(ID entityId) {
        abstractBaseRepository.deleteById(entityId);
    }

}

How to use the above abstract entity, service, repository, and implementation:

Example here will be a MyDomain entity. Create a domain entity that extends the AbstractBaseEntity as follows: NB. ID, createdAt, updatedAt, version, etc will be automatically be included in the MyDomain entity from the AbstractBaseEntity

@Entity
public class MyDomain extends AbstractBaseEntity{

    private String attribute1;
    private String attribute2;
    // getters and setters
}

Then create a repository for the MyDomain entity that extends the AbstractBaseRepository as follows:

@Repository
public interface MyDomainRepository extends AbstractBaseRepository<MyDomain, Long>{

}

Also, Create a service interface for the MyDomain entity as follows:

public interface MyDomainService extends AbstractBaseService<MyDomain, Long>{

}

Then provide an implementation for the MyDomain entity that extends the AbstractBaseRepositoryImpl implementation as follows:

@Service
@Transactional
public class MyDomainServiceImpl extends AbstractBaseRepositoryImpl<MyDomain, Long> 
        implements MyDomainService{
    private MyDomainRepository myDomainRepository;

    public MyDomainServiceImpl(MyDomainRepository myDomainRepository) {
        super(myDomainRepository);
    }
    // other specialized methods from the MyDomainService interface

}
Now use your `MyDomainService` service in your controller as follows: 

@RestController // or @Controller
@CrossOrigin
@RequestMapping(value = "/")
public class MyDomainController {
    
    private final MyDomainService myDomainService;

    @Autowired
    public MyDomainController(MyDomainService myDomainService) {
        this.myDomainService = myDomainService;
    }
   
    @GetMapping
    public List<MyDomain> getMyDomains(){
        return myDomainService.findAll();
    }   
    // other controller methods

}

NB. Make sure that the AbstractBaseRepository is annotated with @NoRepositoryBean so that JPA does not try to find an implementation for the bean. Also the AbstractBaseServiceImpl must be marked abstract, otherwise JPA will try to autowire all the children daos of the AbstractBaseRepository in the constructor of the class leading to a NoUniqueBeanDefinitionException since more than 1 daos (repository) will be injected when the bean is created! Now your service, repository, and implementations are more reusable. We all hate boilerplate!

Hope this helps someone.