Adding Hibernate Entity Level Filtering feature to Spring Data JPA Repository

Original Article: http://borislam.blogspot.hk/2012/07/adding-hibernate-entity-level-filter.html

Those who have used data filtering features of hibernate should know that it is very powerful. You could define a set of filtering criteria to an entity class or a collection. Spring data JPA is a very handy library but it does not have fitering features. In this post, I will demonstarte how to add the hibernate filter features at entity level. You can use this features when you are using Hibernate Entity Manager. We can just define annotation in your repositoy interface to enable this features.

 Step 1. Define filter at entity level as usual. Just use hibernate @FilterDef annotation

@Entity
@Table(name = "STUDENT")
@FilterDef(name="filterBySchoolAndClass", parameters={@ParamDef(name="school", type="string"),@ParamDef(name="class", type="integer")})
public class Student extends GenericEntity implements Serializable {
  // add your properties ...
}

 Step2. Define two custom annotations. 

These two annotations are to be used in your repository interfaces. You could apply the hibernate filter defined in step 1 to specific query through these annotations.

@Target(ElementType.TYPE)
@Retention(RetentionPolicy.RUNTIME)
public @interface EntityFilter {
 FilterQuery[] filterQueries() default  {};
}

@Retention(RetentionPolicy.RUNTIME)
public @interface FilterQuery {
 String name()  default "";
 String jpql()  default "";
}

 Step3. Add a method to your Spring data JPA base repository. 

This method will read the annotation you defined (i.e. @FilterQuery) and apply hibernate filter to the query by just simply unwrap the EntityManager. You could specify the parameter in your hibernate filter and also the parameter in you query in this method.

If you do not know how to add custom method to your Spring data JPA base repository, please see my previous article for how to customize your Spring data JPA base repository for detail. You can see in previous article that I intentionally expose the repository interface (i.e. the springDataRepositoryInterface property) in the GenericRepositoryImpl. This small tricks enable me to access the annotation in the repository interface easily.

public List<T> doQueryWithFilter( String filterName, String filterQueryName, Map inFilterParams, Map inQueryParams){
    if (GenericRepository.class.isAssignableFrom(getSpringDataRepositoryInterface())) {
       Annotation entityFilterAnn = getSpringDataRepositoryInterface().getAnnotation(EntityFilter.class);
       if(entityFilterAnn != null){
        EntityFilter entityFilter = (EntityFilter)entityFilterAnn;
        FilterQuery[] filterQuerys  = entityFilter.filterQueries() ;
        for (FilterQuery fQuery : filterQuerys) { 
         if (StringUtils.equals(filterQueryName, fQuery.name())) {
          String jpql = fQuery.jpql();
          Filter filter = em.unwrap(Session.class).enableFilter(filterName);
           
          //set filter parameter
          for (Object key: inFilterParams.keySet()) {
           String filterParamName = key.toString();
           Object filterParamValue = inFilterParams.get(key);
           filter.setParameter(filterParamName, filterParamValue);
                }
           
          //set query parameter
          Query query= em.createQuery(jpql);
          for (Object key: inQueryParams.keySet()) {
           String queryParamName = key.toString();
           Object queryParamValue = inQueryParams.get(key);
           query.setParameter(queryParamName, queryParamValue);
                }
          return query.getResultList();
         }
        }
       }
      }
     }
     return null;
    }
 

 Last Step: example usage

@EntityFilter (
 filterQueries = {
   @FilterQuery(name="query1", 
       jpql="SELECT s FROM Student LEFT JOIN FETCH s.Subject where s.subject = :subject" ),
   @FilterQuery(name="query2", 
       jpql="SELECT s FROM Student LEFT JOIN s.TeacherSubject where s.teacher =  :teacher")       
 }
)
public interface StudentRepository extends GenericRepository<Student, Long> {
}

 

In your service or business class that inject your repository, you could just simply call the doQueryWithFilter() method to enable the filtering function. 

@Service
public class StudentService {
 
 @Inject
 private StudentRepository studentRepository;
 
 public List<Student> searchStudent( String subject, String school, String class) {
    
  List<Student> studentList;
 
  // Prepare parameters for query filter
  HashMap<String, Object> inFilterParams = new HashMap<String, Object>();
  inFilterParams.put("school", "Hong Kong Secondary School");
  inFilterParams.put("class", "S5");
 
  // Prepare parameters for query
  HashMap<String, Object> inParams = new HashMap<String, Object>();
  inParams.put("subject", "Physics");
 
  studentList = studentRepository.doQueryWithFilter(
    "filterBySchoolAndClass", "query1",
    inFilterParams, inParams);
 
  return studentList;
 }
}