Hibernate for beginners | Hibernate Tutorial with Example | ORM tool

Hibernate for beginners | Hibernate Tutorial with Example | ORM tool



Hibernate is an Object/ Relational Mapping solution for Java environments. It reduces the development cost by reducing paradigm mismatch between how data is represented in objects versus relational databases.

Hibernate takes care of the mapping from Java classes to database tables and provides data query and retrieval facilities. This tutorial is designed for the beginners of Hibernate and expects you to have some knowledge about Java and SQL. I’m going to use MySQL database and Eclipse IDE in this tutorial.

By following this tutorial you will get the knowledge of;
1. Setup the Development Environment for Hibernate
2. Create POJO Classes
3. Create Mapping Files
4. Hibernate Configuration
5. Create Startup Helper Class
6. Create Test Class to Load and Store Objects

Let's start.

1. Setup the Development Environment for Hibernate

First you need to set up the development environment. Following things are needed if you want to try Hibernate with MySQL using Eclipse IDE.

1. Hibernate distribution bundle – Download
2. MySQL installed in your Computer – Download
3. JDBC driver for MySQL – Download
4. slf4j logging backend – Download
5. Eclipse IDE – Download

1.1 Setup the Database

I'm going to use simple database named "userdata" which has two tables named "users" and "tasks". Figure 1 illustrates the structure of the database and there "id" column is the Primary Key of both tables and it is set to AUTO_INCREMENT.

1.2 Create New Project

In this tutorial I’m going to show how to Retrieve, Add, Delete and Update data in a MySQL database. There I’ll create simple Java Project and you can use this tutorial to create web applications too.

First create new project in Eclipse using appropriate name, I’ll give "MyFirstHibernateApp".


You need to manually account for all the needed dependencies, so let’s create new folder called "lib" inside the "MyFirstHibernateApp" by right clicking on it as shown in following Figure 3.

Now copy following files into that folder.
1. hibernate3.jar (Can be found in distribution bundle)
2. All artifacts in the lib/required directory in distribution bundle
3. All artifacts in the lib/jpa directory in distribution bundle
4. All files from either the lib/bytecode/cglib or lib/bytecode/javassist directory
5. One of the slf4j logging (I'll use slf4j-simple-1.6.1.jar found inside slf4j-1.6.1.zip)
6. mysql-connector-java-5.1.15-bin.jar (JDBC driver for MySQL )

Then you can configure the built path. To do that, right click on project "MyFirstHibernateApp" in Package Explorer and select Build Path --> Configure Build Path... Then go to Libraries tab and browse lib folder you created earlier. Then add external jars by selecting all jar files that you copied to lib folder in one of previous step. (Check Figure 4).


Now you will be able to see the referenced libraries as follow (Figure 5).


2. Create POJO Classes

Next, I'll create two classes that represent the user and task we want to store in the database. Those are simple JavaBean classes with some properties which uses standard JavaBean naming conventions for property getter and setter methods and private visibility for the fields.

To create new class right click on "MyFirstHibernateApp" and select New --> Class. Then give appropriate package name, I’ll give "com.hib" as figure 6. You can generate getter and setters easily by selecting variable declaration and selecting Source --> Generate Getters and Setters…


User Class
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package com.hib;

public class User {
 private Integer id;
 private String firstName;
 private String lastName;
  
 public Integer getId() {
  return id;
 }
 public void setId(Integer id) {
  this.id = id;
 }
 public String getFirstName() {
  return firstName;
 }
 public void setFirstName(String firstName) {
  this.firstName = firstName;
 }
 public String getLastName() {
  return lastName;
 }
 public void setLastName(String lastName) {
  this.lastName = lastName;
 }
}
Task Class
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package com.hib;

public class Task {

 private Integer id;
 private Integer userID;
 private String title;
 private String description;
  
 public Integer getId() {
  return id;
 }
 public void setId(Integer id) {
  this.id = id;
 }
 public Integer getUserID() {
  return userID;
 }
 public void setUserID(Integer userID) {
  this.userID = userID;
 }
 public String getTitle() {
  return title;
 }
 public void setTitle(String title) {
  this.title = title;
 }
 public String getDescription() {
  return description;
 }
 public void setDescription(String description) {
  this.description = description;
 }
}
The id property holds a unique identifier value for a particular user and task. All persistent entity classes will need such an identifier property if you want to use the full feature set of Hibernate.

3. Create Mapping Files

Hibernate needs to know how to load and store objects of the persistent class. This is where the Hibernate mapping file comes into play. The mapping file tells Hibernate what table in the database it has to access, and what columns in that table it should use.

Right click on the "src" folder and select New --> File and paste following code there. Save it as user.hbm.xml.
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<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE hibernate-mapping PUBLIC
"-//Hibernate/Hibernate Mapping DTD 3.0//EN"

<hibernate-mapping>
 <class name="com.hib.User" table="users" >
  <id name="id" type="int" column="id" >
   <generator class="native"/>
  </id>

  <property name="firstName">
   <column name="first_name" />
  </property>
  <property name="lastName">
   <column name="last_name"/>
  </property>
 </class>
</hibernate-mapping>
Tasks.java should also have a mapping file, so create another file and paste following code. Save it as task.hbm.xml
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<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE hibernate-mapping PUBLIC
"-//Hibernate/Hibernate Mapping DTD 3.0//EN"

<hibernate-mapping>
 <class name="com.hib.Task" table="tasks">
  <id name="id" type="int" column="id" >
   <generator class="native"/>
  </id>

  <property name="userID">
   <column name="user_id" />
  </property> 
  <property name="title">
   <column name="title" />
  </property>
  <property name="description">
   <column name="description"/>
  </property>
 </class>
</hibernate-mapping>
In the above mapping file you can see the mapping of the unique identifier property to the tables primary key. As we do not want to care about handling this identifier, we configure Hibernate's identifier generation strategy for a surrogate primary key column by giving class="native". If it is not AUTO_INCREMENT one we should use class="assign".

The id element is the declaration of the identifier property. The name="id" mapping attribute declares the name of the JavaBean property and tells Hibernate to use the getId() and setId() methods to access the property. The column attribute tells Hibernate which column of the "users" and "tasks" tables holds the primary key value. Similar to the id element, the name attribute of the property element tells Hibernate which getter and setter methods to use.

4. Hibernate Configuration

Now you have the persistent class and its mapping file in place. Let’s configure Hibernate.

Right click on the "src" folder and select New --> File and paste following code there. Save it as hibernate.cfg.xml. Here you have to give the username and password according to your MySQL account. In my case username is root and there is no password.
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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE hibernate-configuration PUBLIC
 "-//Hibernate/Hibernate Configuration DTD 3.0//EN"
<hibernate-configuration>
 <session-factory>
  <!-- Database connection settings -->
  <property name="connection.driver_class">com.mysql.jdbc.Driver</property>
  <property name="connection.url">jdbc:mysql://localhost/userdata</property>
  <property name="connection.username">root</property>
  <property name="connection.password"></property>
   
  <!-- JDBC connection pool (use the built-in) -->
  <property name="connection.pool_size">1</property>
   
  <!-- SQL dialect -->
  <property name="dialect">org.hibernate.dialect.MySQLDialect</property>
   
  <!-- Enable Hibernate's automatic session context management -->
  <property name="current_session_context_class">thread</property>

  <!-- Disable the second-level cache -->
  <property name="cache.provider_class">org.hibernate.cache.NoCacheProvider</property>
   
  <!-- Echo all executed SQL to stdout -->
  <property name="show_sql">true</property>
   
  <!-- Drop and re-create the database schema on startup -->
  <property name="hbm2ddl.auto">update</property>
   
  <!-- Mapping files -->
  <mapping resource="user.hbm.xml"/>
  <mapping resource="task.hbm.xml"/>
   
 </session-factory>
</hibernate-configuration>
5. Create Startup Helper Class

You have to startup Hibernate by creating a global org.hibernate.SessionFactory object and storing it somewhere for easy access in your application code. A org.hibernate.SessionFactory is used to obtain org.hibernate.Session instances. A org.hibernate.Session represents a single-threaded unit of work. The org.hibernate.SessionFactory is a thread-safe global object that is instantiated once. We will create a HibernateUtil helper class that takes care of startup and makes accessing the org.hibernate.SessionFactory more convenient.

To create new class right click on "com.hib" package and select New --> Class and give Name as HibernateUtil.java and paste the following code in class file.
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package com.hib;

import org.hibernate.SessionFactory;
import org.hibernate.cfg.Configuration;

public class HibernateUtil {
 private static final SessionFactory sessionFactory = buildSessionFactory();
 private static SessionFactory buildSessionFactory() {
  try {
   // Create the SessionFactory from hibernate.cfg.xml
   return new Configuration().configure().buildSessionFactory();
  }
  catch (Throwable ex) {
   // Make sure you log the exception, as it might be swallowed
   System.err.println("Initial SessionFactory creation failed." + ex);
   throw new ExceptionInInitializerError(ex);
  }
 }
 public static SessionFactory getSessionFactory() {
  return sessionFactory;
 }
}
6. Create Test Class to Load and Store Objects

Now it’s time to do some real work using Hibernate. Following test class illustrate how we can Add, Retrieve, Update and Delete data in a MySQL database.

To create new class right click on "com.hib" package and select New --> Class and give Name as Test.java and paste the following code in class file.
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package com.hib;

import java.util.Iterator;
import java.util.List;
import org.hibernate.Session;
import org.hibernate.Transaction;

public class Test {

 /**
  * @param args
  */
 public static void main(String[] args) {
   
  Test tst = new Test();
   
  /**
   * adding records
   */
  tst.addUser("Saranga", "Rath");
  tst.addUser("Isuru", "Sampath");
  tst.addUser("Saranga", "Jaya");
  tst.addUser("Prasanna", "Milinda");
   
  tst.addTask(1, "Call", "Call Pubudu at 5 PM");
  tst.addTask(1, "Shopping", "Buy some foods for Kity");
  tst.addTask(2, "Email", "Send birthday wish to Pubudu");
  tst.addTask(2, "SMS", "Send message to Dad");
  tst.addTask(2, "Office", "Give a call to Boss");
   
  /**
   *  retrieving data
   */
  tst.getFullName("Saranga");
   
  /**
   * full updating records
   */
  User user = new User();
  user.setId(1);
  user.setFirstName("Saranga");
  user.setLastName("Rathnayake");
  tst.updateUser(user);
   
  /**
   * partial updating records
   */
  tst.updateLastName(3, "Jayamaha");

  /**
   * deleting records
   */
  User user1 = new User();
  user1.setId(4);
  tst.deleteUser(user1);
 }

 private void addUser(String firstName, String lastName) {
   
  Transaction trns = null;
  Session session = HibernateUtil.getSessionFactory().openSession();
  try {
   trns = session.beginTransaction();
    
   User user = new User();
    
   user.setFirstName(firstName);
   user.setLastName(lastName);
    
   session.save(user);
    
   session.getTransaction().commit();
  } catch (RuntimeException e) {
   if(trns != null){
    trns.rollback();
   }
   e.printStackTrace();
  } finally{
   session.flush();
   session.close();
  }
 }

 private void addTask(int userID, String title, String description) {
   
  Transaction trns = null;
  Session session = HibernateUtil.getSessionFactory().openSession();
  try {
   trns = session.beginTransaction();
    
   Task task = new Task();
    
   task.setUserID(userID);
   task.setTitle(title);
   task.setDescription(description);
    
   session.save(task);
    
   session.getTransaction().commit();
  } catch (RuntimeException e) {
   if(trns != null){
    trns.rollback();
   }
   e.printStackTrace();
  } finally{
   session.flush();
   session.close();
  }
 }
  
 private void updateLastName(int id, String lastName) {
  Transaction trns = null;
  Session session = HibernateUtil.getSessionFactory().openSession();
  try {
   trns = session.beginTransaction();
   String hqlUpdate = "update User u set u.lastName = :newLastName where u.id = :oldId";
   int updatedEntities = session.createQuery( hqlUpdate )
   .setString( "newLastName", lastName )
   .setInteger( "oldId", id )
   .executeUpdate();

   trns.commit();
  } catch (RuntimeException e) {
   if(trns != null){
    trns.rollback();
   }
   e.printStackTrace();
  } finally{
   session.flush();
   session.close();
  }
   
 }

 private void updateUser(User user) {
  Transaction trns = null;
  Session session = HibernateUtil.getSessionFactory().openSession();
  try {
   trns = session.beginTransaction();
    
   session.update(user);

   session.getTransaction().commit();
  } catch (RuntimeException e) {
   if(trns != null){
    trns.rollback();
   }
   e.printStackTrace();
  } finally{
   session.flush();
   session.close();
  }
 }

 private void getFullName(String firstName) {
  Transaction trns = null;
  Session session = HibernateUtil.getSessionFactory().openSession();
  try {
   trns = session.beginTransaction();
   List<User> users = session.createQuery("from User as u where u.firstName = :firstName")
   .setString( "firstName", firstName )
   .list();
   for (Iterator<User> iter = users.iterator(); iter.hasNext();) {
    User user = iter.next();
    System.out.println(user.getFirstName() +" " + user.getLastName());
   }
   trns.commit();
  } catch (RuntimeException e) {
   if(trns != null){
    trns.rollback();
   }
   e.printStackTrace();
  } finally{
   session.flush();
   session.close();
  }
 }
  
 private void deleteUser(User user) {
  Transaction trns = null;
  Session session = HibernateUtil.getSessionFactory().openSession();
  try {
   trns = session.beginTransaction();
    
   session.delete(user);

   session.getTransaction().commit();
  } catch (RuntimeException e) {
   if(trns != null){
    trns.rollback();
   }
   e.printStackTrace();
  } finally{
   session.flush();
   session.close();
  }
 }
}
If you have setup the database and followed the above steps correctly you should get following output.
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Hibernate: insert into users (first_name, last_name) values (?, ?)
Hibernate: insert into users (first_name, last_name) values (?, ?)
Hibernate: insert into users (first_name, last_name) values (?, ?)
Hibernate: insert into users (first_name, last_name) values (?, ?)
Hibernate: insert into tasks (user_id, title, description) values (?, ?, ?)
Hibernate: insert into tasks (user_id, title, description) values (?, ?, ?)
Hibernate: insert into tasks (user_id, title, description) values (?, ?, ?)
Hibernate: insert into tasks (user_id, title, description) values (?, ?, ?)
Hibernate: insert into tasks (user_id, title, description) values (?, ?, ?)
Hibernate: select user0_.id as id0_, user0_.first_name as first2_0_, user0_.last_name as last3_0_ from users user0_ where user0_.first_name=?
Saranga Rath
Saranga Jaya
Hibernate: update users set first_name=?, last_name=? where id=?
Hibernate: update users set last_name=? where id=?
Hibernate: delete from users where id=?
Hibernate use Hibernate Query Language (HQL) which is powerful than SQL and fully object-oriented. You can get good knowledge about HQL by following HQL Documentation.

I have included the source files of this tutorial with the database. You can download it from

When to use ConcurrentHashMap in Java | Key summary of ConcurrentHashMap | Java collection interview Question

ConcurrentHashMap is best suited when you have multiple readers and few writers. If writers outnumber reader, or writer is equal to reader, than performance of ConcurrentHashMap effectively reduces to synchronized map or Hashtable. Performance of CHM drops, because you got to lock all portion of Map, and effectively each reader will wait for another writer, operating on that portion of Map. ConcurrentHashMap is a good choice for caches, which can be initialized during application start up and later accessed my many request processing threads. As javadoc states, CHM is also a good replacement of Hashtable and should be used whenever possible, keeping in mind, that CHM provides slightly weeker form of synchronization than Hashtable.


Summary
Now we know What is ConcurrentHashMap in Java and when to use ConcurrentHashMap, it’s time to know and revise some important points about CHM in Java.

1. ConcurrentHashMap allows concurrent read and thread-safe update operation.

2. During update operation, ConcurrentHashMap only lock a portion of Map instead of whole Map.

3. Concurrent update is achieved by internally dividing Map into small portion which is defined by concurrency level.

4. Choose concurrency level carefully as a significant higher number can be waste of time and space and lower number may introduce thread contention in case writers overnumber concurrency level.

5. All operations of ConcurrentHashMap are thread-safe.

6. Since ConcurrentHashMap implementation doesn't lock whole Map, there is chance of read overlapping with update operations like put() and remove(). In that case result returned by get() method will reflect most recently completed operation from there start.

7. Iterator returned by ConcurrentHashMap is weekly consistent, fail safe and never throw ConcurrentModificationException. In Java.

8. ConcurrentHashMap doesn't allow null as key or value.

9. You can use ConcurrentHashMap in place of Hashtable but with caution as CHM doesn't lock whole Map.

10. During putAll() and clear() operations, concurrent read may only reflect insertion or deletion of some entries.

That’s all on What is ConcurrentHashMap in Java and when to use it. We have also seen little bit about internal working of ConcurrentHashMap and how it achieves it’s thread-safety and better performance over Hashtable and synchronized Map. Use ConcurrentHashMap in Java program, when there will be more reader than writers and it’s a good choice for creating cache in Java as well.

Diffrence between Spring MVC and Struts MVC | MindMill Software Ltd interview question 2013

Date of interview 21 Feb 2013

In technical round they asked to tell difference between Spring MVC and Struts MVC

Spring is a powerful Java application framework, used in a wide range of Java applications. It provides enterprise services to Plain Old Java Objects (POJOs). Spring uses dependency injection to achieve simplification and increase testability.
1. Spring provides a very clean division between controllers, JavaBean models, and views.
2. Spring’s MVC is very flexible. Unlike Struts, which forces your Action and Form objects into concrete inheritance (thus taking away your single shot at concrete inheritance in Java), Spring MVC is entirely based on interfaces. Furthermore, just about every part of the Spring MVC framework is configurable via plugging in your own interface. Of course we also provide convenience classes as an implementation option.
3. Spring, like WebWork, provides interceptors as well as controllers, making it easy to factor out behavior common to the handling of many requests.
4. Spring MVC is truly view-agnostic. You don’t get pushed to use JSP if you don’t want to; you can use Velocity, XLST or other view technologies. If you want to use a custom view mechanism – for example, your own templating language – you can easily implement the Spring View interface to integrate it.
5. Spring Controllers are configured via IoC like any other objects. This makes them easy to test, and beautifully integrated with other objects managed by Spring.
6. Spring MVC web tiers are typically easier to test than Struts web tiers, due to the avoidance of forced concrete inheritance and explicit dependence of controllers on the dispatcher servlet.
7. The web tier becomes a thin layer on top of a business object layer. This encourages good practice. Struts and other dedicated web frameworks leave you on your own in implementing your business objects; Spring provides an integrated framework for all tiers of your application.
8. No ActionForms. Bind directly to domain objects
9. More testable code (validation has no dependency on Servlet API)
10. Struts imposes dependencies on your Controllers (they must extend a Struts class), Spring doesn’t force you to do this although there are convenience Controller implementations that you can choose to extend.
11. Spring has a well defined interface to business layer
12. Spring offers better integration with view technologies other than JSP (Velocity / XSLT / FreeMarker / XL etc.)