Spring MVC + Hibernate: Update one column?

[laura mccord]

I'm trying to update one column of a table using hibernate but I can not prevent the operation from overriding the entire table record. I have tried different options based on searches I've done on google and I just don't know what I'm missing. Can someone help me?

This is what I have so far:

Here is a snippet of my hibernate config file for the "detail" table:

 <class name="Detail" table="detail" dynamic-update="true">

        <cache usage="read-write"/>

       <id name="id" column="id" type="long">
            <generator class="native"/>
        </id>
        
        <property name="summary" type="string" column="summary"/>
	<property name="research" type="string" column="research"/>
        <property name="specialty" type="string" column="specialty"/>
       		
	<many-to-one name="parent" column="pid" lazy="proxy"/>
    </class>

Here is a snippet of my jsp form:

<form:form commandName="detail" method="post" action="${actionUrl}">
<table width="100%" cellpadding="3">
		<tr>
			<td valign="top" width="20%">
				<b>${column}</b>
			</td>
			<td>
					<form:textarea id="mceEditor" path="${column}" cssStyle="width:100%;"/>		
			</td>
		</tr>
		
</table>

<form:hidden path="id"/>
<form:hidden path="parent"/>

<button type="submit" >Edit Details</button>

</form:form>

Here is the snippet of my Controller that processes the form:

@RequestMapping(params="action=editDetail")
	public void actionAddDetailForm(
			ActionRequest request,
			ActionResponse response,
			@ModelAttribute("detail") Detail detail,
			BindingResult result,
			SessionStatus status
		) {
			
			new DetailValidator().validate(detail, result);
			if(result.hasErrors()){
				response.setRenderParameter("action", "editDetail");
				System.out.println(result.getAllErrors().size());
	            for(int i=0; i<result.getAllErrors().size(); i++)
	            {
	                System.out.println("\n\n" + result.getAllErrors().get(i));
	            }
				return;
			}
			
			if(!result.hasErrors()){
				if(!detail.hasId()){					
					profileStore.addOrSaveDetail(detail);
				}else{
					profileStore.mergeDetail(detail);
				}
				status.setComplete();
				response.setRenderParameter("profileId", detail.getParent().getId().toString());
				response.setRenderParameter("action", "detail");
			}
	}

So when I test the form it hits the mergeDetail method since the record already exists....

public void mergeDetail(Detail detail) {
		try {
			log.debug("Merging detail: [detailId: "+detail.getId().toString()+"]");
			getHibernateTemplate().merge(detail);
			getHibernateTemplate().flush();
		} catch (HibernateException ex) {
			throw convertHibernateAccessException(ex);
		}
	}

I understand that I could probably just pass the column I'm interested in changing instead of the entire Detail object. However, I'm doing this dynamically in which the jsp form where I define the "path" is not really hardcoded with the "summary" column. Instead I'm actually passing a variable in it's place so I don't have a handful of jsp forms, I can just use the same form and just change the path value.

Any suggestions?

Thank you.

[Mark Spritzler]

This is actually unrelated to Spring.

Basically, you have a detached object, and when you merge it back into Hibernate, Hibernate doesn't know what you changed, so it has to assume it is all changed. That is why the dynamic-update isn't working as you expected.

To see what I mean, write a test that creates a Session, loads one record. Change one property of your class, then flush and notice that the update statement only has the changed field.
In another test method. Load one record in a Session. Close the session. Change one property of your class, create a new Session then merge the object into that session then flush and now the update statement will have all the fields.

The only way to not have this is to manually write your update statement as SQL and run that through the Session object. (There is an obscure byte code instrumentation for something else, that will add an update flag to your object, but even that will include all the fields)

Mark

[laura mccord]

The way I worked around this was to created an array of the Objects elements and pass them to the form and add the <form:hidden> as needed to retain the data.

It's a really kludgy way of doing it but I spent most of my day trying to figure this out in a more eloquent way without finding anything that matches my scenario.

In the jsp form I did something like this...

<portlet:actionURL var="actionUrl">
	<portlet:param name="action" value="editDetail"/>
	<portlet:param name="profileId" value="${detail.parent.id}"/>
	<portlet:param name="section" value="${section}"/>
</portlet:actionURL>

<form:form commandName="detail" method="post" action="${actionUrl}">
<table width="100%" cellpadding="3">
		<tr>
			<td valign="top" width="20%">
				<b>${section}</b>
			</td>
			<td>
					<form:textarea cssClass="form-input-field mceEditor" path="${section}" rows="5" cols="30" cssStyle="width:100%;"/>		
			</td>
		</tr>
		
</table>

<c:forEach var="item" items="${elements}">
	<c:if test="${item != section}">
		<form:hidden path="${item}"/>
	</c:if>
</c:forEach>

<button type="submit" class="form-button">Edit Details</button>

</form:form>