How do I find entity by their ID in JPA?

In this example you will learn how to find an entity object by its ID using JPA. To find entity by their ID, we use the EntityManager.find() method and pass the entity class and the entity ID as the parameters.

In the code snippet below the EntityManager required by the ArtistDaoImpl will be passed from the main program when the DAO is instantiated. The process of finding the Artist entity is defined in the findById() method in the DAO class. You must pass the ID of the entity to this method.

The findById() method call the EntityManager.find() method to find the entity. If no entity was found, where the artist == null a javax.persistence.EntityNotFoundException will be thrown.

package org.kodejava.jpa.dao.impl;

import org.kodejava.jpa.dao.ArtistDao;
import org.kodejava.jpa.entity.Artist;

import javax.persistence.EntityManager;
import javax.persistence.EntityNotFoundException;
import javax.persistence.Query;
import java.util.List;

public class ArtistDaoImpl implements ArtistDao {
    private final EntityManager manager;

    public ArtistDaoImpl(EntityManager manager) {
        this.manager = manager;
    }

    /**
     * Find Artist based on the entity id.
     *
     * @param artistId the artist id.
     * @return Artist.
     * @throws EntityNotFoundException when no artist is found.
     */
    public Artist findById(Long artistId) {
        Artist artist = manager.find(Artist.class, artistId);
        if (artist == null) {
            throw new EntityNotFoundException("Can't find Artist for ID "
                    + artistId);
        }
        return artist;
    }

    @Override
    public void save(Artist artist) {
        manager.getTransaction().begin();
        manager.persist(artist);
        manager.getTransaction().commit();
    }

    @Override
    @SuppressWarnings(value = "unchecked")
    public List<Artist> getArtists() {
        Query query = manager.createQuery("select a from Artist a", Artist.class);
        return query.getResultList();
    }
}

To run the DAO class we create a main program in the code snippet below. The steps are creating the EntityManagerFactory configured in your persistence.xml file. Create the EntityManager using the factory object. Create the DAO and pass the EntityManager to it. And finally call the findById() method of the DAO class.

package org.kodejava.jpa;

import org.kodejava.jpa.dao.ArtistDao;
import org.kodejava.jpa.dao.impl.ArtistDaoImpl;
import org.kodejava.jpa.entity.Artist;

import javax.persistence.EntityManager;
import javax.persistence.EntityManagerFactory;
import javax.persistence.EntityNotFoundException;
import javax.persistence.Persistence;

public class FindEntityByIdDemo {
    public static final String PERSISTENCE_UNIT_NAME = "music";

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        EntityManagerFactory factory =
                Persistence.createEntityManagerFactory(PERSISTENCE_UNIT_NAME);
        EntityManager em = factory.createEntityManager();

        ArtistDao dao = new ArtistDaoImpl(em);

        // Find an artist with ID = 1 from the database. The entity is
        // exists in the database.
        Artist artist = dao.findById(1L);
        System.out.println("Artist = " + artist);

        try {
            // Find an entity that is not exists in the database will
            // throw an exception.
            artist = dao.findById(100L);
            System.out.println("Artist = " + artist);
        } catch (EntityNotFoundException e) {
            System.out.println(e.getMessage());
        }
    }
}

Maven Dependencies

<dependencies>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>javax.persistence</groupId>
        <artifactId>javax.persistence-api</artifactId>
        <version>2.2</version>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.hibernate</groupId>
        <artifactId>hibernate-core</artifactId>
        <version>5.6.9.Final</version>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>com.mysql</groupId>
        <artifactId>mysql-connector-j</artifactId>
        <version>8.1.0</version>
    </dependency>
</dependencies>

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How do I persist entity to database in JPA?

In this example you are going to learn how to persist or save an entity object to database table using JPA. We are going to create a data access object (DAO) for persisting an Artist entity.

We create a class called ArtistDaoImpl with a constructor that accept an EntityManager parameter. We provide a couple methods in this DAO such as the save() and getArtist() methods. These methods are for persisting the entity and retrieve a collection of entities from the database.

To persist object to database we call the EntityManager.persist() method with the entity object to be saved as the parameter. We also have to begin and commit the transaction before and after we call the persist() method. Here is the code for our DAO and its implementation.

package org.kodejava.jpa.dao;

import org.kodejava.jpa.entity.Artist;

import java.util.List;

public interface ArtistDao {
    Artist findById(Long id);

    void save(Artist artist);

    List<Artist> getArtists();
}
package org.kodejava.jpa.dao.impl;

import org.kodejava.jpa.dao.ArtistDao;
import org.kodejava.jpa.entity.Artist;

import javax.persistence.EntityManager;
import javax.persistence.Query;
import java.util.List;

public class ArtistDaoImpl implements ArtistDao {
    private final EntityManager manager;

    public ArtistDaoImpl(EntityManager manager) {
        this.manager = manager;
    }

    @Override
    public Artist findById(Long id) {
        return manager.find(Artist.class, id);
    }

    @Override
    public void save(Artist artist) {
        manager.getTransaction().begin();
        manager.persist(artist);
        manager.getTransaction().commit();
    }

    @Override
    @SuppressWarnings(value = "unchecked")
    public List<Artist> getArtists() {
        Query query = manager.createQuery("select a from Artist a", Artist.class);
        return query.getResultList();
    }
}

To demonstrate the DAO we create a simple program as you can see below. The program start by creating the EntityManagerFactory configured by the persistence unit defined in the persistence.xml file. From the factory object we create the EntityManager object which will be passed to the ArtistDaoImpl.

After create an instance of the ArtistDao we insert some artist record to database by calling the dao.save() method. To check that the data successfully stored in the database we call the dao.getArtists() to read the data back from the database and print it out to the screen.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<persistence xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
             xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/persistence http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/persistence/persistence_2_0.xsd"
             version="2.0" xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/persistence">

    <persistence-unit name="music" transaction-type="RESOURCE_LOCAL">
        <class>org.kodejava.jpa.entity.Artist</class>
        <properties>
            <property name="javax.persistence.jdbc.driver" value="com.mysql.cj.jdbc.Driver" />
            <property name="javax.persistence.jdbc.url" value="jdbc:mysql://localhost/musicdb" />
            <property name="javax.persistence.jdbc.user" value="music" />
            <property name="javax.persistence.jdbc.password" value="s3cr*t" />
            <property name="hibernate.dialect" value="org.hibernate.dialect.MySQLDialect" />
            <property name="hibernate.show_sql" value="true" />
            <property name="hibernate.format_sql" value="true" />
            <property name="hibernate.hbm2ddl.auto" value="update" />
        </properties>
    </persistence-unit>

</persistence>
package org.kodejava.jpa;

import org.kodejava.jpa.dao.ArtistDao;
import org.kodejava.jpa.dao.impl.ArtistDaoImpl;
import org.kodejava.jpa.entity.Artist;

import javax.persistence.EntityManager;
import javax.persistence.EntityManagerFactory;
import javax.persistence.Persistence;
import java.util.List;

public class EntityPersistDemo {
    public static final String PERSISTENCE_UNIT_NAME = "music";

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        EntityManagerFactory factory =
                Persistence.createEntityManagerFactory(PERSISTENCE_UNIT_NAME);
        EntityManager manager = factory.createEntityManager();

        String[] artistNames = {"Bryan Adams", "Mr. Big", "Metallica"};

        ArtistDao dao = new ArtistDaoImpl(manager);

        for (String name : artistNames) {
            Artist artist = new Artist();
            artist.setName(name);
            dao.save(artist);
        }

        List<Artist> artistList = dao.getArtists();
        for (Artist artist : artistList) {
            System.out.println("artist = " + artist);
        }
    }
}

Maven Dependencies

<dependencies>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>javax.persistence</groupId>
        <artifactId>javax.persistence-api</artifactId>
        <version>2.2</version>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.hibernate</groupId>
        <artifactId>hibernate-core</artifactId>
        <version>5.6.9.Final</version>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>com.mysql</groupId>
        <artifactId>mysql-connector-j</artifactId>
        <version>8.1.0</version>
    </dependency>
</dependencies>

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How do I create JPA EntityManagerFactory?

In this code snippet you will learn how to create JPA EntityManagerFactory. This factory enable you to create the EntityManager which will be used to execute the JPA command to manipulate the database tables.

To create the EntityManagerFactory you need to create to persistence.xml file first. The file is where you configure the JPA. This file must be placed inside the META-INF directory in your program working directory.

Here is an example of the persistence.xml file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<persistence xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
             xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/persistence http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/persistence/persistence_2_0.xsd"
             version="2.0" xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/persistence">

    <persistence-unit name="music" transaction-type="RESOURCE_LOCAL">
        <class>org.kodejava.jpa.entity.Artist</class>
        <class>org.kodejava.jpa.entity.Genre</class>
        <class>org.kodejava.jpa.entity.Label</class>
        <class>org.kodejava.jpa.entity.Record</class>
        <class>org.kodejava.jpa.entity.Review</class>
        <class>org.kodejava.jpa.entity.Reviewer</class>
        <class>org.kodejava.jpa.entity.Track</class>
        <properties>
            <property name="javax.persistence.jdbc.driver" value="com.mysql.cj.jdbc.Driver" />
            <property name="javax.persistence.jdbc.url" value="jdbc:mysql://localhost/musicdb" />
            <property name="javax.persistence.jdbc.user" value="music" />
            <property name="javax.persistence.jdbc.password" value="s3cr*t" />
            <property name="hibernate.dialect" value="org.hibernate.dialect.MySQLDialect" />
            <property name="hibernate.show_sql" value="true" />
            <property name="hibernate.format_sql" value="true" />
            <property name="hibernate.hbm2ddl.auto" value="update" />
        </properties>
    </persistence-unit>

</persistence>

The persistence unit defined in the persistence.xml file contains a set of entities object. We also define some properties related to the database connections including the JDBC driver class, JDBC url, the username and password for opening the connection to database.

After defining the persistence.xml file we’ll create a simple program to create the EntityManagerFactory. To create the factory we can use the javax.persistence.Persistence class createEntityManagerFactory() method and pass the persistence unit name as the parameter. In this example the persistence unit name is music as can be seen in the persistence.xml file.

After we have the factory object created we can then create an EntityManager by calling the createEntityManager() of the factory object. Let’s see the code snippet below.

package org.kodejava.jpa;

import org.kodejava.jpa.entity.Artist;

import javax.persistence.EntityManager;
import javax.persistence.EntityManagerFactory;
import javax.persistence.Persistence;

public class EntityManagerFactoryExample {
    public static final String PERSISTENCE_UNIT_NAME = "music";

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        EntityManagerFactory factory =
                Persistence.createEntityManagerFactory(PERSISTENCE_UNIT_NAME);
        EntityManager manager = factory.createEntityManager();

        // Do something with the entity manager.
        Artist artist = manager.find(Artist.class, 1L);
        System.out.println("artist = " + artist);
    }
}

The Artist entity class definition.

package org.kodejava.jpa.entity;

import javax.persistence.*;
import java.io.Serial;
import java.io.Serializable;
import java.util.Objects;

@Entity
@Table(name = "artist")
public class Artist implements Serializable {
    @Serial
    private static final long serialVersionUID = 1L;

    private Long id;
    private String name;

    @Id
    @GeneratedValue(strategy = GenerationType.IDENTITY)
    public Long getId() {
        return id;
    }

    public void setId(Long id) {
        this.id = id;
    }

    @Column(name = "name", length = 100, nullable = false)
    public String getName() {
        return name;
    }

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

    @Override
    public boolean equals(Object o) {
        if (this == o) return true;
        if (o == null || getClass() != o.getClass()) return false;
        Artist artist = (Artist) o;
        return Objects.equals(id, artist.id) &&
                Objects.equals(name, artist.name);
    }

    @Override
    public int hashCode() {
        return Objects.hash(id, name);
    }

    @Override
    public String toString() {
        return "Artist{" +
                "id=" + id +
                ", name='" + name + '\'' +
                '}';
    }
}

Our project directory structure.

├─ pom.xml
└─ src
   └─ main
      ├─ java
      │  └─ org
      │     └─ kodejava
      │        └─ jpa
      │           ├─ EntityManagerFactoryExample.java
      │           └─ entity
      │              ├─ Artist.java
      │              ├─ Genre.java
      │              ├─ Label.java
      │              ├─ Record.java
      │              ├─ Review.java
      │              ├─ Reviewer.java
      │              └─ Track.java
      └─ resources
         └─ META-INF
            └─ persistence.xml

Maven Dependencies

<dependencies>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>javax.persistence</groupId>
        <artifactId>javax.persistence-api</artifactId>
        <version>2.2</version>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.hibernate</groupId>
        <artifactId>hibernate-core</artifactId>
        <version>5.6.9.Final</version>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>com.mysql</groupId>
        <artifactId>mysql-connector-j</artifactId>
        <version>8.1.0</version>
    </dependency>
</dependencies>

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How do I create entity object in JPA?

This example show you a simple example of an entity object used for mapping database table into Java object. The entity is a Plain Old Java Object (POJO). The JPA specification doesn’t mandate the class to extends or implements other class or interfaces.

A class which going to be persisted in a database must be annotated with the javax.persistence.Entity annotation (@Entity). As you can see in the Record class below.

By default, the mapped table name equals to the class name. But if your table name is different to your class name you can use the @Table annotation. Set the table name using the name attribute of this annotation. This annotation is also located in the javax.persistence package.

package org.kodejava.jpa.entity;

import javax.persistence.*;
import java.io.Serializable;

@Entity
@Table(name = "record")
public class Record implements Serializable {
}

In JPA metadata can be added either in the class fields or using the getters or setters methods. Choose one option because you cannot mix both of them in the same entity object. Here we will annotate the getters of the class.

To define the primary key of the entity we use the @Id annotation. The @GeneratedValue annotation is used to define how the primary key of the entity should be generated. For example in this example the strategy is defined as GenerationType.IDENTITY. In MySQL database this is implemented as an auto-increment column.

@Id
@GeneratedValue(strategy = GenerationType.IDENTITY)
public Long getId() {
    return id;
}

public void setId(Long id) {
    this.id = id;
}

The fields of the entity by default will be persisted into corresponding fields in the database table. If you don’t want the entity fields to be persisted you must add the @Transient annotation to it. If your entity field name is different with table field you can use the @Column annotation to define the column name and other attributes of the column such as the length, the uniqueness of the field and the not-null attribute.

To define relationship between entity object you can use annotation such as @OneToOne, @OneToMany, @ManyToOne and @ManyToMany. This annotation represent the relationship between database tables in the Java objects.

@Column(nullable = false, length = 50)
public String getTitle() {
    return title;
}

@Column(name = "release_date")
public Date getReleaseDate() {
    return releaseDate;
}

@ManyToOne
@JoinColumn(nullable = false)
public Artist getArtist() {
    return artist;
}

Below is the complete class for the Record entity. This will hold information about music record. This entity has relationship with other entity such the Artist and Label entity.

package org.kodejava.jpa.entity;

import javax.persistence.*;
import java.io.Serial;
import java.io.Serializable;
import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.Date;
import java.util.List;
import java.util.Objects;

@Entity
@Table(name = "record")
public class Record implements Serializable {
    @Serial
    private static final long serialVersionUID = 1L;

    private Long id;
    private String title;
    private Date releaseDate;
    private Artist artist;
    private Label label;

    private List<Track> trackList = new ArrayList<>();

    public Record() {
    }

    @Id
    @GeneratedValue(strategy = GenerationType.IDENTITY)
    public Long getId() {
        return id;
    }

    @Column(nullable = false, length = 50)
    public String getTitle() {
        return title;
    }

    @Column(name = "release_date")
    public Date getReleaseDate() {
        return releaseDate;
    }

    @ManyToOne
    @JoinColumn(nullable = false)
    public Artist getArtist() {
        return artist;
    }

    @ManyToOne
    @JoinColumn(nullable = false)
    public Label getLabel() {
        return label;
    }

    @OneToMany(mappedBy = "record")
    public List<Track> getTrackList() {
        return trackList;
    }

    public void setId(Long id) {
        this.id = id;
    }

    public void setTitle(String title) {
        this.title = title;
    }

    public void setReleaseDate(Date releaseDate) {
        this.releaseDate = releaseDate;
    }

    public void setArtist(Artist artist) {
        this.artist = artist;
    }

    public void setLabel(Label label) {
        this.label = label;
    }

    public void setTrackList(List<Track> trackList) {
        this.trackList = trackList;
    }

    @Override
    public boolean equals(Object o) {
        if (this == o) return true;
        if (o == null || getClass() != o.getClass()) return false;
        Record record = (Record) o;
        return Objects.equals(id, record.id) &&
                Objects.equals(title, record.title) &&
                Objects.equals(releaseDate, record.releaseDate);
    }

    @Override
    public int hashCode() {
        return Objects.hash(id, title, releaseDate);
    }

    @Override
    public String toString() {
        return "Record{" +
                "id=" + id +
                ", title='" + title + '\'' +
                ", releaseDate=" + releaseDate +
                '}';
    }
}

Maven Dependencies

<dependency>
    <groupId>javax.persistence</groupId>
    <artifactId>javax.persistence-api</artifactId>
    <version>2.2</version>
</dependency>

Maven Central

What is JPA (Java Persistence API)?

JPA is a Java specification for object-relational mapping (ORM) in Java. JPA provide a way to map Java objects to database tables. This allows programmers to manipulate database information directly using Java objects instead of executing database SQL queries.

Developer can choose one of many available JPA specification implementation libraries such as Hibernate, Apache OpenJPA and EclipseLink. EclipseLink is the reference implementation of the JPA specification. In the examples that we are going to provide you in this website, Hibernate library will be used as the persistence provider.

In JPA we model our database tables into a Java objects. This Java objects also called as entity objects. The entity represent a table in database. A single row in a database table will be represented in an instance of the entity. This entity objects hold information about the mapping between objects and database tables. This information or metadata can be defined using an annotation or an XML mapping files.

Here is a simple example of entity object and its metadata information.

package org.kodejava.jpa.entity;

import javax.persistence.*;
import java.io.Serial;
import java.io.Serializable;
import java.util.Objects;

@Entity
@Table(name = "genre")
public class Genre implements Serializable {
    @Serial
    private static final long serialVersionUID = 1L;

    private Long id;
    private String name;

    public Genre() {
    }

    @Id
    @GeneratedValue(strategy = GenerationType.IDENTITY)
    public Long getId() {
        return id;
    }

    @Column(nullable = false, length = 50)
    public String getName() {
        return name;
    }

    public void setId(Long id) {
        this.id = id;
    }

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

    @Override
    public boolean equals(Object o) {
        if (this == o) return true;
        if (o == null || getClass() != o.getClass()) return false;
        Genre genre = (Genre) o;
        return Objects.equals(id, genre.id) &&
                Objects.equals(name, genre.name);
    }

    @Override
    public int hashCode() {
        return Objects.hash(id, name);
    }

    @Override
    public String toString() {
        return "Genre{" +
                "id=" + id +
                ", name='" + name + '\'' +
                '}';
    }
}

In the entity above we use annotation such as @Entity, @Table, @Id, @GeneratedValue and @Column. These are some annotations that you can use for object mapping.

Beside manipulating database tables using objects, JPA also provide a SQL-like queries that can be used to create a static or dynamic query statement.

Maven Dependencies

<dependency>
    <groupId>javax.persistence</groupId>
    <artifactId>javax.persistence-api</artifactId>
    <version>2.2</version>
</dependency>

Maven Central