From the community documentation:
hibernate.hbm2ddl.auto Automatically validates or exports schema DDL to the database when the SessionFactory is created. With create-drop, the database schema will be dropped when the SessionFactory is closed explicitly.
e.g. validate | update | create | create-drop
So the list of possible options are,
- validate: validate the schema, makes no changes to the database.
- update: update the schema.
- create: creates the schema, destroying previous data.
- create-drop: drop the schema when the SessionFactory is closed explicitly, typically when the application is stopped.
- none: does nothing with the schema, makes no changes to the database
These options seem intended to be developers tools and not to facilitate any production level databases, you may want to have a look at the following question; Hibernate: hbm2ddl.auto=update in production?
JsonIgnoreProperties [2017 Update]:
You can now use JsonIgnoreProperties to suppress serialization of properties (during serialization), or ignore processing of JSON properties read (during deserialization). If this is not what you're looking for, please keep reading below.
(Thanks to As Zammel AlaaEddine for pointing this out).
JsonManagedReference and JsonBackReference
Since Jackson 1.6 you can use two annotations to solve the infinite recursion problem without ignoring the getters/setters during serialization: @JsonManagedReference
and @JsonBackReference
.
Explanation
For Jackson to work well, one of the two sides of the relationship should not be serialized, in order to avoid the infite loop that causes your stackoverflow error.
So, Jackson takes the forward part of the reference (your Set<BodyStat> bodyStats
in Trainee class), and converts it in a json-like storage format; this is the so-called marshalling process. Then, Jackson looks for the back part of the reference (i.e. Trainee trainee
in BodyStat class) and leaves it as it is, not serializing it. This part of the relationship will be re-constructed during the deserialization (unmarshalling) of the forward reference.
You can change your code like this (I skip the useless parts):
Business Object 1:
@Entity
@Table(name = "ta_trainee", uniqueConstraints = {@UniqueConstraint(columnNames = {"id"})})
public class Trainee extends BusinessObject {
@OneToMany(mappedBy = "trainee", fetch = FetchType.EAGER, cascade = CascadeType.ALL)
@Column(nullable = true)
@JsonManagedReference
private Set<BodyStat> bodyStats;
Business Object 2:
@Entity
@Table(name = "ta_bodystat", uniqueConstraints = {@UniqueConstraint(columnNames = {"id"})})
public class BodyStat extends BusinessObject {
@ManyToOne(fetch = FetchType.EAGER, cascade = CascadeType.ALL)
@JoinColumn(name="trainee_fk")
@JsonBackReference
private Trainee trainee;
Now it all should work properly.
If you want more informations, I wrote an article about Json and Jackson Stackoverflow issues on Keenformatics, my blog.
EDIT:
Another useful annotation you could check is @JsonIdentityInfo: using it, everytime Jackson serializes your object, it will add an ID (or another attribute of your choose) to it, so that it won't entirely "scan" it again everytime. This can be useful when you've got a chain loop between more interrelated objects (for example: Order -> OrderLine -> User -> Order and over again).
In this case you've got to be careful, since you could need to read your object's attributes more than once (for example in a products list with more products that share the same seller), and this annotation prevents you to do so. I suggest to always take a look at firebug logs to check the Json response and see what's going on in your code.
Sources:
Best Answer
@NotNull
is a JSR 303 Bean Validation annotation. It has nothing to do with database constraints itself. As Hibernate is the reference implementation of JSR 303, however, it intelligently picks up on these constraints and translates them into database constraints for you, so you get two for the price of one.@Column(nullable = false)
is the JPA way of declaring a column to be not-null. I.e. the former is intended for validation and the latter for indicating database schema details. You're just getting some extra (and welcome!) help from Hibernate on the validation annotations.