This page describes an older version of the product. The latest stable version is 16.4.

JPA Entity Id


Various options for mapping the identifier property of your JPA entities are provided.

User-Defined Id

In this case, the Entity’s Id must be set manually in the user code before attempting to persist the entity.

Reminder: GigaSpaces @SpaceId annotation should also be defined on the property defined with JPA’s @Id annotation

Example of user defined Id:

@Entity
public class Car {
  private Long id;

  public Car() {
  }

  //both @Id and @SpaceId should be defined
  @Id
  @SpaceId
  public Long getId() {
    return this.id;
  }

  /* Additional Getters & Setters */

}

Before persisting a Car entity, we have to set its Id property:

// Create a new Car instance
Car car = new Car();
// Set its Id property
car.setId(100);

// Persist
EntityManager em = emf.createEntityManager();
em.getTransaction().begin();

em.persist(car);

em.getTransaction().commit();
em.close();

Auto-Generated Id

An Auto-Generated Id is an Id generated by GigaSpaces. In order to specify that an Id is auto-generated, we’ll use JPA’s @GeneratedValue annotation (Please note that only GenerationType.IDENTITY is supported) and set GigaSpaces @SpaceId’s autoGenerate attribute to true:

@Entity
public class Form {
  // The auto-generated property can only be a String
  private String id;

  public Form() {
  }

  @Id
  @GeneratedValue(strategy = GenerationType.IDENTITY)
  @SpaceId(autoGenerate = true)
  public String getId() {
    return this.id;
  }

  /* Additional Getters & Setters */

}

When persisting a Form entity, we don’t need set its Id property:

// Create a new Car instance
Form form = new Form();

// Persist
EntityManager em = emf.createEntityManager();
em.getTransaction().begin();

em.persist(form);

em.getTransaction().commit();
em.close();

// Print the auto-generated Id
System.out.println(form.getId());
Important

Auto Generated Id Limitations:

  • When using an auto-generated Id, the Id property type must be of type: java.lang.String.
  • An auto-generated Id can only be set on an owner entity if its a part of a relation.

Compound Object Id - @EmbeddedId

A compound object Id is an Entity Id which is not a primitive type or a primitive type wrapper. It’s defined using JPA’s @EmbeddedId annotation. Note that the class that uses the compound the Id should adhere to the following requirements:

  1. There should be no @Id annotation when the @EmbeddedId annotation is used.
  2. The @EmbeddedId annotated property’s type should have an @Embeddable annotation & implement Serializable.
Note

The Compound ID class must implement a toString method that return a unique String for each ID.

Lets examine the following example:

// This class will be used as an EmbeddedId
@Embeddable
public class ComplexObjectId implements Serilizable {
  private static final long serialVersionUID = 1L;
  private Integer number;
  private String text;

  public ComplexObjectId() {
  }

  public ComplexObjectId(Integer number, String text) {
    this.number = number;
    this.text = text;
  }

  // An Embeddable class which is used as an EmbeddedId should implement
  // toString() having a unique returned value.
  @Override
  public String toString() {
    return number.toString() + text;
  }

}

// An entity with an EmbeddedId
@Entity
public class MyObject {
  private ComplexObjectId id;

  public MyObject() {
  }

  @EmbeddedId
  @SpaceId
  public ComplexObjectId getId() {
    return this.id;
  }

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

  /* Additional Getters & Setters */

}

Usage example:

ComplexObjectId id = new ComplexObjectId(100, "1234");
MyObject myObject = new MyObject();
myObject.setId(id);

// Persist
EntityManager em = emf.createEntityManager();
em.getTransaction().begin();
em.persist(myObject);
em.getTransaction().commit();
em.close();

// Find
em = emf.createEntityManager();
myObject = (MyObject) em.find(MyObject.class, id);
em.close();

Limitations

@GeneratedValue

Only GenerationType.IDENTITY is supported for the GeneratedValue.strategy() attribute.

Multi Value Ids

Setting an @Id/@EmbeddedId annotation for more than one property is not supported hence the @IdClass annotation is not supported.