Syntax coloring

sábado, 2 de fevereiro de 2013

The beauty of Querydsl: calling database functions

It's a common pattern to have a self-referencing table, in order to model an hierarchy tree. Now, sorting results by hierarchy, is an entirely different subject. Some databases, like Oracle, has the start with / connect by clauses. But to bring that to the JPA world is another different story. And imagine that with the über ugly JPA 2 criteria queries. I was already using Querydsl with JPA (using EclipseLink), and it allowed a very clean solution.

First, I brought database functions to the rescue, and wrote a function which receives an entity id, a table name, the name column and the parent id column. So, the function can be reused on any type of entity. As the DB is Postgres, here comes the code:

create or replace function name_hierarchy
    (p_id bigint, 
     p_table varchar, 
     p_name_col varchar, 
     p_parent_id_col varchar)
    returns varchar
    as $$
        declare
            sql text;
            current_id bigint;
            v_name varchar;
            v_parent_id bigint;
            path varchar[];
        begin
            current_id := p_id;
            while current_id is not null loop
                sql := 'select id, ' 
                     || p_name_col || ', ' 
                     || p_parent_id_col
                     || ' from ' || p_table 
                     || ' where id = ' || current_id;
                execute sql into current_id, v_name, v_parent_id;
                path := array_prepend(v_name, path);
                current_id := v_parent_id;
            end loop;
            return array_to_string(path, ' > ');
        end;
    $$ language plpgsql
    stable;

Then, I needed to create a Querydsl operator to represent the function. It contains a name and the argument types.

public class CustomOperators {
    public static final Operator<String>
        NAME_HIERARCHY = new OperatorImpl<String>(
            "name_hierarchy", 
            Long.class, String.class, String.class, String.class);
}

There was also a custom Querydsl templates class to actually convert that operator into JPQL code (note that EclipseLink uses FUNC('name', args...) to invoke native database functions):

    public static class CustomTemplates
        extends EclipseLinkTemplates {

        private static final CustomTemplates INSTANCE = 
            new CustomTemplates();

        public static CustomTemplates getInstance() {
            return INSTANCE;
        }

        private CustomTemplates() {
            add(CustomOperators.NAME_HIERARCHY, 
                "FUNC('name_hierarchy', {0}, {1}, {2}, {3})");
        }
    }

As the example entity is Configuration, the final plumbing needed is a method annotated with @QueryDelegate(Configuration.class), so the extension method can be created in any class:

    @QueryDelegate(Configuration.class)
    public static StringExpression 
        nameHierarchy(EntityPath<Configuration> configuration) {
        NumberPath<Long> id = (NumberPath<Long>)
            FieldUtils.readField(configuration, "id");
        return StringOperation.create(
            CustomOperators.NAME_HIERARCHY, 
            id,
            StringTemplate.create("'configurations'"),
            StringTemplate.create("'name'"),
            StringTemplate.create("'parent_id'"));
    }

Finally, I can use the nameHierarchy method anywhere on queries, like:

QConfiguration c = QConfiguration.configuration;
List<Configuration> configs = new JPAQuery()
    .from(c)
    .orderBy(c.nameHierarchy.asc())
    .list(c);

Looks like that nameHierarchy method was always there, doesn't it? And the same idea can be reused on any other function, seamlessly blending them on the query metamodel. Now try to make something similar with JPA's criteria api!

3 comentários:

Anônimo disse...

Howdy just wanted to give you a quick heads up. The text in your content seem to
be running off the screen in Chrome. I'm not sure if this is a
format issue or something to do with browser compatibility
but I figured I'd post to let you know. The style and design look great though!

Hope you get the problem fixed soon. Cheers

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Anônimo disse...

Postgres offers recursive common table expressions (which are SQL standard) to efficiently retrieve a hierarchy. There is no need to use a slow row-by-row loop. Using that inside the function should be much more efficient.

http://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/static/queries-with.html

Unknown disse...

Of course recursive common table would be better, but in this case, there aren't so many records, anyway. Also, how do you easily integrate it with JPA?
The point of this post, however, is to exemplify calling db functions in general, and hierarchical sorts is just an example.
Thanks for the comment, anyway.