Persisting a List of Integers with JPA?

Question

We have a pojo that needs to have a list of integers. As an example, I've created a Message pojo and would like to associate a list of groupIds (these ids need to be queried and displayed in the UI). So ideally, we would like to be able to do something like this:

Message msg = em.find(Message.class, 101);
List<Integer> groupIds = msg.getGroupIds();

I was under the impression that this would require only one pojo with JPA, but according to the discussion here, I need to create a second pojo because JPA works in terms of objects instead of primitive types.

From that discussion I've tried the following example code, but I get the error openjpa-1.2.3-SNAPSHOT-r422266:907835 fatal user error: org.apache.openjpa.util.MetaDataException: The type of field "pojo.Group.messageId" isn't supported by declared persistence strategy "ManyToOne". Please choose a different strategy.

DDL:

CREATE TABLE "APP"."MESSAGE" (
  "MESSAGE_ID" INTEGER NOT NULL GENERATED ALWAYS AS IDENTITY (START WITH 1, INCREMENT BY 1),
  "AUTHOR" CHAR(20) NOT NULL
 );

ALTER TABLE "APP"."MESSAGE" ADD CONSTRAINT "MESSAGE_PK" PRIMARY KEY ("MESSAGE_ID");

CREATE TABLE "APP"."GROUP_ASSOC" (
  "GROUP_ID" INTEGER NOT NULL,
  "MESSAGE_ID" INTEGER NOT NULL
 );

ALTER TABLE "APP"."GROUP_ASSOC" ADD CONSTRAINT "GROUP_ASSOC_PK" PRIMARY KEY ("MESSAGE_ID", "GROUP_ID");

ALTER TABLE "APP"."GROUP_ASSOC" ADD CONSTRAINT "GROUP_ASSOC_FK" FOREIGN KEY ("MESSAGE_ID")
 REFERENCES "APP"."MESSAGE" ("MESSAGE_ID");

POJOs:

@Entity
@Table(name = "MESSAGE")
public class Message {
    @Id
    @Column(name = "MESSAGE_ID")
    @GeneratedValue(strategy = GenerationType.IDENTITY)    
    private Long messageId;

    @OneToMany   
    private List<Group> groups = new ArrayList<Group>();

    @Column(name = "AUTHOR")
    private String author;

    // getters/setters ommitted
}    

@Entity
@IdClass(pojo.Group.GroupKey.class)
@Table(name = "GROUP_ASSOC")
public class Group {

 @Id
 @Column(name = "GROUP_ID")
 private Long groupId;

 @Id
 @Column(name = "MESSAGE_ID")
 @ManyToOne
 private Long messageId;

 public static class GroupKey {
  public Long groupId;
  public Long messageId;

  public boolean equals(Object obj) {
   if(obj == this) return true;
            if(!(obj instanceof Group)) return false;
   Group g = (Group) obj;
   return g.getGroupId() == groupId && g.getMessageId() == messageId; 
  }

  public int hashCode() {
            return ((groupId == null) ? 0 : groupId.hashCode())
                ^ ((messageId == null) ? 0 : messageId.hashCode());
  } 
 }

 // getters/setters ommitted 
}

Test Code:

EntityManager em = Persistence.createEntityManagerFactory("JPATest").createEntityManager();
em.getTransaction().begin();

Message msg = new Message();
msg.setAuthor("Paul");
em.persist(msg);
List<Group> groups = new ArrayList<Group>();

Group g1 = new Group();
g1.setMessageId(msg.getMessageId());
Group g2 = new Group();
g2.setMessageId(msg.getMessageId());

msg.setGroups(groups);
em.getTransaction().commit();

This all seems ridiculous -- 3 classes (if you include the GroupKey composite identity class) to model a list of integers -- isn't there a more elegant solution?

Whome Whome · Accepted Answer · 2013-03-27T11:18:39

This is an old topic but things have changed since OpenJPA2, now you can directly persist primitive types or String object. Use ElementCollection annotation to use simple one-to-many linking, no need to intermediate object or link tables. This is how most of us probably create SQL schemas.

@Entity @Table(name="user") @Access(AccessType.FIELD)
public class User {
    @Id @GeneratedValue(strategy=GenerationType.IDENTITY)
    private long id;    // primary key (autogen surrogate)
    private String name;

    // ElementCollection provides simple OneToMany linking.
    // joinColumn.name=foreign key in child table. Column.name=value in child table
    @ElementCollection(fetch=FetchType.LAZY)
    @CollectionTable(name="user_role", joinColumns={@JoinColumn(name="user_id")})
    @Column(name="role")
    private List<String> roles;

    public long getId() { return id; }
    public void setId(long id) { this.id = id; }

    public String getName() { return name; }
    public void setName(String name) { this.name=name; }

    public List<String> getRoles() { return roles; }
    public void setRoles(List<String> roles) { this.roles=roles; }

}
- - -
CREATE TABLE user (
  id bigint NOT NULL auto_increment,
  name varchar(64) NOT NULL default '',
  PRIMARY KEY (id),
  UNIQUE KEY USERNAME (name)
) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8 ;

CREATE TABLE user_role (
  user_id bigint NOT NULL,
  role varchar(64) NOT NULL default '',
  PRIMARY KEY (user_id, role)
) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8 ;

Persisting a List of Integers with JPA?

3 Answers