Spring Boot & JPA: Implementing search queries with optional, ranged criteria

Question

This is an SSCCE, shows research, isn't a dupe and is on topic!!!

---

Spring Boot REST service and MySQL here. I have the following Profile entity:

@Entity
@Table(name = "profiles")
public class Profile extends BaseEntity {
    @Id
    @GeneratedValue(strategy = GenerationType.IDENTITY)
    private Long id;

    @Column(name = "profile_given_name")
    private String givenName;

    @Column(name = "profile_surname")
    private String surname;

    @Column(name = "profile_is_male")
    private Integer isMale;

    @Column(name = "profile_height_meters", columnDefinition = "DOUBLE")
    private BigDecimal heightMeters;

    @Column(name = "profile_weight_kilos", columnDefinition = "DOUBLE")
    private BigDecimal weightKilos;

    @Column(name = "profile_dob")
    private Date dob;

    // Getters, setters & ctor down here
}

I also have a ProfileController and I want to expose a GET endpoint that provides a really flexible/robust way to search for Profiles based on a large range of criteria:

# Search for women between 1.2 and 1.8 meters tall.
GET /v1/profiles?isMale=0&heightMeters={"gt": 1.2, "lt": 1.8}

# Search for men born after Jan 1, 1990 who weigh less than 100 kg.
GET /v1/profiles?isMale=1&dob={"gt" : "1990-01-01 00:00:00"}&weightKilos={"lt": 100.0}

etc.

So here's my controller:

@RestController
@RequestMapping("/v1/profiles")
public class ProfileResource {
  @Autowired
  ProfileRepository profileRepository;

  @GetMapping
  public ResponseEntity<Set<Profile>> searchProfiles(@RequestParam(value = "isMale", required = false) String isMaleVal,
                                              @RequestParam(value = "heightMeters", required = false) String heightMetersVal,
                                              @RequestParam(value = "weightKilos", required = false) String weightKilosVal,
                                              @RequestParam(value = "dob", required = false) String dobVal) {

      Integer isMaleVal;
      BooleanCriteria isMaleCriteria;
      if(isMaleVal != null) {
        // Parse the value which could either be "0" for female, "1" for male or something like
        // ?isMale={0,1} to indicate

        // BooleanCriteria would store which values male, female or both) to include in the search
      }

      BigDecimal heighMeters;
      BigDecimalCriteria heightCriteria;
      if(heightMetersVal != null) {
        // Parse the value which like in the examples could be something like:
        // ?heightMeters={"gt" : "1.0"}

        // BigDecimalCriteria stores range information
      }

      BigDecimal heighMeters;
      BigDecimalCriteria weightCriteria;
      if(weightKilosVal != null) {
        // Parse the value which like in the examples could be something like:
        // ?weightKilos={"eq" : "100.5"}

        // BigDecimalCriteria stores range information
      }

      // Ditto for DOB and DateCriteria

      // TODO: How to pack all of these "criteria" POJOs into a
      // CrudRepository/JPQL query against the "profiles" table?
      Set<Profile> profiles = profileRepository.searchProfiles(
        isMaleCriteria, heightCriteria, weightCriteria, dobCriteria);
    }
}

My thinking for, say, BigDecimalCriteria would be something like:

// Basically it just stores the (validated) search criteria that comes in over the wire
// on the controller method
public class BigDecimalCriteria {
  private BigDecimal lowerBound;
  private Boolean lowerBoundInclusive;
  private BigDecimal upperBound;
  private Boolean upperBoundInclusive;

  // Getters, setters, ctors, etc.
}

Since all of these search criteria are optional (and thus can be null), I'm stuck on how to write the JPQL query in the ProfileRepository:

public interface ProfileRepository extends CrudRepository<Profile,Long> {
  @Query("???")
  public Set<Profile> searchProfiles();
}

How can I implement the @Query(...) for ProfileRepository#searchProfiles in such a way that enables all of my search criteria (given all the permissible ranges and criteria values to search for), and allows any criteria to be null/optional?

Of course, if there are any nifty little libraries or if Spring Boot/JPA already has a solution for this, I'm all ears!

Answer 1

You can achieve complex queries with specifications by JpaSpecificationExecutor in spring data. Repository interface must extend the JpaSpecificationExecutor<T> interface so we can specify the conditions of our database queries by creating new Specification<T> objects.

The trick is in the use of the Specification interface in combination with a JpaSpecificationExecutor. here is the example:

@Entity
@Table(name = "person")
public class Person {

 @Id
 @GeneratedValue(strategy = GenerationType.AUTO)
 private Long id;

 @Column(name = "name")
 private String name;

 @Column(name = "surname")
 private String surname;

 @Column(name = "city")
 private String city;

 @Column(name = "age")
 private Integer age;

        ....

}

Then we define our repository:

public interface PersonRepository extends JpaRepository<Person, Long>, JpaSpecificationExecutor<Person> {

}

As you can see we have extended another interface the JpaSpecificationExecutor. This interface defines the methods to perform the search via a Specification class.

What we have to do now is to define our specification that will return the Predicate containing the constraints for the query (in the example the PersonSpecification is performing the query select * from person where name = ? or (surname = ? and age = ?) ):

public class PersonSpecification implements Specification<Person> {

    private Person filter;

    public PersonSpecification(Person filter) {
        super();
        this.filter = filter;
    }

    public Predicate toPredicate(Root<Person> root, CriteriaQuery<?> cq,
            CriteriaBuilder cb) {

        Predicate p = cb.disjunction();

        if (filter.getName() != null) {
            p.getExpressions()
                    .add(cb.equal(root.get("name"), filter.getName()));
        }

        if (filter.getSurname() != null && filter.getAge() != null) {
            p.getExpressions().add(
                    cb.and(cb.equal(root.get("surname"), filter.getSurname()),
                            cb.equal(root.get("age"), filter.getAge())));
        }

        return p;
    }
}

Now it is time to use it. The following code fragment shows how to use the Specification we just created:

...

Person filter = new Person();
filter.setName("Mario");
filter.setSurname("Verdi");
filter.setAge(25);

Specification<Person> spec = new PersonSpecification(filter);

List<Person> result = repository.findAll(spec);

Here is full example present in github

Also you can create any complex queries using Specification