12.6 Modeling JDBC operations as Java objects

The org.springframework.jdbc.object package contains classes that allow you to access the database in a more object-oriented manner. As an example, you can execute queries and get the results back as a list containing business objects with the relational column data mapped to the properties of the business object. You can also execute stored procedures and run update, delete, and insert statements.

[Note]Note

Many Spring developers believe that the various RDBMS operation classes described below (with the exception of the StoredProcedure class) can often be replaced with straight JdbcTemplate calls. Often it is simpler to write a DAO method that simply calls a method on a JdbcTemplate directly (as opposed to encapsulating a query as a full-blown class).

However, if you are getting measurable value from using the RDBMS operation classes, continue using these classes.

12.6.1 SqlQuery

SqlQuery is a reusable, threadsafe class that encapsulates an SQL query. Subclasses must implement the newRowMapper(..) method to provide a RowMapper instance that can create one object per row obtained from iterating over the ResultSet that is created during the execution of the query. The SqlQuery class is rarely used directly because the MappingSqlQuery subclass provides a much more convenient implementation for mapping rows to Java classes. Other implementations that extend SqlQuery are MappingSqlQueryWithParameters and UpdatableSqlQuery.

12.6.2 MappingSqlQuery

MappingSqlQuery is a reusable query in which concrete subclasses must implement the abstract mapRow(..) method to convert each row of the supplied ResultSet into an object of the type specified. The following example shows a custom query that maps the data from the t_actor relation to an instance of the Actor class.

public class ActorMappingQuery extends MappingSqlQuery<Actor> {

    public ActorMappingQuery(DataSource ds) {
        super(ds, "select id, first_name, last_name from t_actor where id = ?");
        super.declareParameter(new SqlParameter("id", Types.INTEGER));
        compile();
    }

    @Override
    protected Actor mapRow(ResultSet rs, int rowNumber) throws SQLException {
        Actor actor = new Actor();
        actor.setId(rs.getLong("id"));
        actor.setFirstName(rs.getString("first_name"));
        actor.setLastName(rs.getString("last_name"));
        return actor;
    }

}

The class extends MappingSqlQuery parameterized with the Actor type. The constructor for this customer query takes the DataSource as the only parameter. In this constructor you call the constructor on the superclass with the DataSource and the SQL that should be executed to retrieve the rows for this query. This SQL will be used to create a PreparedStatement so it may contain place holders for any parameters to be passed in during execution.You must declare each parameter using the declareParameter method passing in an SqlParameter. The SqlParameter takes a name and the JDBC type as defined in java.sql.Types. After you define all parameters, you call the compile() method so the statement can be prepared and later executed. This class is thread-safe after it is compiled, so as long as these instances are created when the DAO is initialized they can be kept as instance variables and be reused.

private ActorMappingQuery actorMappingQuery;

@Autowired
public void setDataSource(DataSource dataSource) {
    this.actorMappingQuery = new ActorMappingQuery(dataSource);
}

public Customer getCustomer(Long id) {
    return actorMappingQuery.findObject(id);
}

The method in this example retrieves the customer with the id that is passed in as the only parameter. Since we only want one object returned we simply call the convenience method findObject with the id as parameter. If we instead had a query the returned a list of objects and took additional parameters then we would use one of the execute methods that takes an array of parameter values passed in as varargs.

public List<Actor> searchForActors(int age, String namePattern) {
    List<Actor> actors = actorSearchMappingQuery.execute(age, namePattern);
    return actors;
}

12.6.3 SqlUpdate

The SqlUpdate class encapsulates an SQL update. Like a query, an update object is reusable, and like all RdbmsOperation classes, an update can have parameters and is defined in SQL. This class provides a number of update(..) methods analogous to the execute(..) methods of query objects. The SQLUpdate class is concrete. It can be subclassed, for example, to add a custom update method, as in the following snippet where it's simply called execute. However, you don't have to subclass the SqlUpdate class since it can easily be parameterized by setting SQL and declaring parameters.

import java.sql.Types;

import javax.sql.DataSource;

import org.springframework.jdbc.core.SqlParameter;
import org.springframework.jdbc.object.SqlUpdate;

public class UpdateCreditRating extends SqlUpdate {

    public UpdateCreditRating(DataSource ds) {
        setDataSource(ds);
        setSql("update customer set credit_rating = ? where id = ?");
        declareParameter(new SqlParameter("creditRating", Types.NUMERIC));
        declareParameter(new SqlParameter("id", Types.NUMERIC));
        compile();
    }

    /**
     * @param id for the Customer to be updated
     * @param rating the new value for credit rating
     * @return number of rows updated
     */
    public int execute(int id, int rating) {
        return update(rating, id);
    }
}

12.6.4 StoredProcedure

The StoredProcedure class is a superclass for object abstractions of RDBMS stored procedures. This class is abstract, and its various execute(..) methods have protected access, preventing use other than through a subclass that offers tighter typing.

The inherited sql property will be the name of the stored procedure in the RDBMS.

To define a parameter for the StoredProcedure class, you use an SqlParameter or one of its subclasses. You must specify the parameter name and SQL type in the constructor like in the following code snippet. The SQL type is specified using the java.sql.Types constants.

   new SqlParameter("in_id", Types.NUMERIC),
   new SqlOutParameter("out_first_name", Types.VARCHAR),

The first line with the SqlParameter declares an IN parameter. IN parameters can be used for both stored procedure calls and for queries using the SqlQuery and its subclasses covered in the following section.

The second line with the SqlOutParameter declares an out parameter to be used in the stored procedure call. There is also an SqlInOutParameter for InOut parameters, parameters that provide an in value to the procedure and that also return a value.

For in parameters, in addition to the name and the SQL type, you can specify a scale for numeric data or a type name for custom database types. For out parameters you can provide a RowMapper to handle mapping of rows returned from a REF cursor. Another option is to specify an SqlReturnType that enables you to define customized handling of the return values.

Here is an example of a simple DAO that uses a StoredProcedure to call a function, sysdate(),which comes with any Oracle database. To use the stored procedure functionality you have to create a class that extends StoredProcedure. In this example, the StoredProcedure class is an inner class, but if you need to reuse the StoredProcedure you declare it as a top-level class. This example has no input parameters, but an output parameter is declared as a date type using the class SqlOutParameter. The execute() method executes the procedure and extracts the returned date from the results Map. The results Map has an entry for each declared output parameter, in this case only one, using the parameter name as the key.

import java.sql.Types;
import java.util.Date;
import java.util.HashMap;
import java.util.Map;

import javax.sql.DataSource;

import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Autowired;
import org.springframework.jdbc.core.SqlOutParameter;
import org.springframework.jdbc.object.StoredProcedure;

public class StoredProcedureDao {

    private GetSysdateProcedure getSysdate;
    
    @Autowired
    public void init(DataSource dataSource) {
        this.getSysdate = new GetSysdateProcedure(dataSource);
    }
    
    public Date getSysdate() {
        return getSysdate.execute();
    }

    private class GetSysdateProcedure extends StoredProcedure {
        
        private static final String SQL = "sysdate";

        public GetSysdateProcedure(DataSource dataSource) {
            setDataSource(dataSource);
            setFunction(true);
            setSql(SQL);
            declareParameter(new SqlOutParameter("date", Types.DATE));
            compile();
        }

        public Date execute() {
            // the 'sysdate' sproc has no input parameters, so an empty Map is supplied...
            Map<String, Object> results = execute(new HashMap<String, Object>());
            Date sysdate = (Date) results.get("date");
            return sysdate;    
        }
    }

}

The following example of a StoredProcedure has two output parameters (in this case, Oracle REF cursors).

import oracle.jdbc.OracleTypes;
import org.springframework.jdbc.core.SqlOutParameter;
import org.springframework.jdbc.object.StoredProcedure;

import javax.sql.DataSource;
import java.util.HashMap;
import java.util.Map;

public class TitlesAndGenresStoredProcedure extends StoredProcedure {

    private static final String SPROC_NAME = "AllTitlesAndGenres";

    public TitlesAndGenresStoredProcedure(DataSource dataSource) {
        super(dataSource, SPROC_NAME);
        declareParameter(new SqlOutParameter("titles", OracleTypes.CURSOR, new TitleMapper()));
        declareParameter(new SqlOutParameter("genres", OracleTypes.CURSOR, new GenreMapper()));
        compile();
    }

    public Map<String, Object> execute() {
        // again, this sproc has no input parameters, so an empty Map is supplied
        return super.execute(new HashMap<String, Object>());
    }
}

Notice how the overloaded variants of the declareParameter(..) method that have been used in the TitlesAndGenresStoredProcedure constructor are passed RowMapper implementation instances; this is a very convenient and powerful way to reuse existing functionality. The code for the two RowMapper implementations is provided below.

The TitleMapper class maps a ResultSet to a Title domain object for each row in the supplied ResultSet:

import org.springframework.jdbc.core.RowMapper;

import java.sql.ResultSet;
import java.sql.SQLException;

import com.foo.domain.Title;

public final class TitleMapper implements RowMapper<Title> {
    
    public Title mapRow(ResultSet rs, int rowNum) throws SQLException {
        Title title = new Title();
        title.setId(rs.getLong("id"));
        title.setName(rs.getString("name"));
        return title;
    }
}

The GenreMapper class maps a ResultSet to a Genre domain object for each row in the supplied ResultSet.

import org.springframework.jdbc.core.RowMapper;

import java.sql.ResultSet;
import java.sql.SQLException;

import com.foo.domain.Genre;

public final class GenreMapper implements RowMapper<Genre> {
    
    public Genre mapRow(ResultSet rs, int rowNum) throws SQLException {
        return new Genre(rs.getString("name"));
    }
}

To pass parameters to a stored procedure that has one or more input parameters in its definition in the RDBMS, you can code a strongly typed execute(..) method that would delegate to the superclass' untyped execute(Map parameters) method (which has protected access); for example:

import oracle.jdbc.OracleTypes;
import org.springframework.jdbc.core.SqlOutParameter;
import org.springframework.jdbc.core.SqlParameter;
import org.springframework.jdbc.object.StoredProcedure;

import javax.sql.DataSource;

import java.sql.Types;
import java.util.Date;
import java.util.HashMap;
import java.util.Map;

public class TitlesAfterDateStoredProcedure extends StoredProcedure {

    private static final String SPROC_NAME = "TitlesAfterDate";
    private static final String CUTOFF_DATE_PARAM = "cutoffDate";

    public TitlesAfterDateStoredProcedure(DataSource dataSource) {
        super(dataSource, SPROC_NAME);
        declareParameter(new SqlParameter(CUTOFF_DATE_PARAM, Types.DATE);
        declareParameter(new SqlOutParameter("titles", OracleTypes.CURSOR, new TitleMapper()));
        compile();
    }

    public Map<String, Object> execute(Date cutoffDate) {
        Map<String, Object> inputs = new HashMap<String, Object>();
        inputs.put(CUTOFF_DATE_PARAM, cutoffDate);
        return super.execute(inputs);
    }
}