Introduction To Spring JPA Data Features

This post is a quick introduction to Spring JPA Data's (SJD) features. This Spring module is built on top of the Spring Data Commons module, which is a prerequisite read in order to understand this post.

Features

This module offers several features:

• JpaRepository<T, ID extends Serializable> - This interface extends the CrudRepository and PageAndSortingRepository interfaces of the Spring Data Commons module. It offers a couple of extra flush, find all and delete operations. See here for an operational example.
• JPA Query Methods - This is a powerful mechanism allowing Spring to create queries from method names in classes/interfaces implementing Repository. For example: List<Invoice> findByStartDateAfter(Date date); is automatically translated into select i from Invoice i where u.startDate > ?1.
• @Query - Queries can be associated to methods in Repository classes/interfaces. For example, a method can be annotated with @Query("select i from Invoice i where u.startDate > ?1")
• @Modifying - This annotation can be used in combination with @Query to indicate that the corresponding query will perform modifications. Hence, any outdated entities are cleared first.
• @Lock - This annotation is used to set the lock mode type (none, optimistic, pessimistic, etc...) for a given @Query.
• JpaSpecificationExecutor and Specification - This interface adds a couple find and count of methods to repository classes/interfaces. All, have a Specification  parameter, which add predicates (i.e., where clauses) to corresponding queries.
• Auditable, AbstractPersistable and AbstractAuaditable - The Auditable interface allows one to track modifications made to an entity (creation, last modification...). The AbstractPersistable and AbstractAuditable are abstract class facilities avoiding the boilerplate code.
• MergingPersistenceUnitManager - If a developer decides to modularize his/her application, he/she may still want to use a unique persistence unit, even though they are declared in separate XML file. The MergingPersistenceUnitManager solves this issue.

At last, to enable JPA repositories, the:

    @EnableJpaRepositories("com.my.repositories")

should be set on a Java @Configuration class.

More Spring related posts here.