java - Spring Data @CreatedDate annotation doesn't work for me

Question

I am working on project where I use Spring Data. I wanted to fill in creationTime field using @CreatedDate annotation instead using method with @PreUpdate or @PrePersist annotation (doing it this way it works perfectly). When I do it with @CreatedDate it just leaves this field blank. I use postgresql database. Documentation is not very helpful.

Do you have any idea how can I fix it? Thank you!

import org.springframework.data.annotation.CreatedDate;
@Entity
@Table(name = "software")
public class Software implements Serializable {

    // ...

    @Column(name = "creation_time")
    @CreatedDate
    private Date creationTime;
    //...
}

My applicationContext:

<jpa:repositories base-package="path.to.dao"/>


<context:component-scan base-package="path.to.dao"/>
<context:property-placeholder location="classpath:application.properties"/>


<bean id="dataSource" class="org.springframework.jdbc.datasource.DriverManagerDataSource">
    <property name="driverClassName" value="${db.driver}"/>
    <property name="url" value="${db.url}"/>
    <property name="username" value="${db.username}"/>
    <property name="password" value="${db.password}"/>
</bean>

<bean id="entityManagerFactory" class="org.springframework.orm.jpa.LocalContainerEntityManagerFactoryBean">
    <property name="packagesToScan" value="path.to.bean"/>
    <property name="dataSource" ref="dataSource"/>
    <property name="jpaVendorAdapter" ref="jpaAdapter"/>
    <property name="jpaProperties">
        <props>
            <prop key="hibernate.dialect">${hibernate.dialect}</prop>
            <prop key="hibernate.show_sql">${hibernate.show_sql}</prop>
            <prop key="hibernate.format_sql">${hibernate.format_sql}</prop>
            <prop key="hibernate.ejb.naming_strategy">${hibernate.ejb.naming_strategy}</prop>
            <prop key="hibernate.hbm2ddl.auto">${hibernate.hbm2ddl.auto}</prop>
        </props>
    </property>
</bean>

<bean id="jpaAdapter" class="org.springframework.orm.jpa.vendor.HibernateJpaVendorAdapter"/>

<bean id="transactionManager" class="org.springframework.orm.jpa.JpaTransactionManager">
    <property name="entityManagerFactory" ref="entityManagerFactory"/>
</bean>

Answer 1

I may have been in a similar situation where I wanted the Spring Data JPA @CreatedDate annotation to work, but had no need for the user-level auditing that is otherwise described in their documentation.

To get the annotation-based auditing to work, I had to nonetheless add a class to my project that implemented org.springframework.data.domain.AuditorAware. This is odd because you don't actually seem to use the value returned from the getCurrentAuditor() method that you'll be implementing; mine just returns null.

public class NullAuditorBean implements AuditorAware {

    @Override
    public Object getCurrentAuditor() {
        return null;
    }
}

I then needed to reference my "null object" AuditorAware implementation in an entry in my applicationContext to activate the JPA auditing. I had to make sure I did this before the line that specifies the jpa:repositories. This looks something like:

<bean id="auditorBean" class="your.package.subbed.here.NullAuditorBean"/>
<jpa:auditing auditor-aware-ref="auditorBean"/>

I also had to add an orm.xml file, and needed to formally reference it as a property of my entityManagerFactory bean, like so:

<property name="mappingResources">
    <value>META-INF/orm.xml</value>
</property>

Make sure this META-INF/orm.xml entry is stored with your compile output (mine is in my WAR under WEB-INF/classes.

That orm.xml file, for the record, contained some boilerplate, which can be found in the answer to this related question.

It was a fair amount of work when I got this working. You may prefer your previous working solution!