Nested Hibernate Filters
Hibernate added a feature that is not part of the JPA, and
this is filters.
When you want to load information from the database but want
to filter the data, you can use HQL, @Where or filters.
HQL is good if your filter is limited to the query that you
need. If you always want to filter the class you can add to the class the @Where.
In the cases that you sometimes want to filter and sometimes not, or you need
to parameterize the filtering then you use the @Filters.
It feels like all the features of filtering were an afterthought
by hibernate. The reason is that hibernate does not use the field names for the
filtering or @Where but uses the database field name. The reason they do this,
is that it is easy to add to the sql statement the where statement, and they do
not have to parse the class objects.
For more information on filters see: http://docs.jboss.org/hibernate/orm/3.6/reference/en-US/html/filters.html,
http://java.dzone.com/articles/introduction-hibernate-filters.
Another oversight on the filter issue is nested filters.
Hibernate does not care how many times you enable the filter, one disable will
disable it in any case. Also if you change the parameter of a filter that is
already open hibernate has no problem and will update the fiter.
Take the following case:
Enable filter, date: 1/1/2000
Load data
Enable filter, date: 1/1/1999
Load data
Disable
filter
Load data
Disable filter
In this scenario we have two problems. Once the disable
filter is called there is no open filter so the third load data will run with
no filter at all. Even if the filter was not closed we would still have the
problem that the date of the filter is incorrect, since it is set for 1999 and
not 2000.
To solve this issue we need to implement a stack of filters
per filter name and store them on the local thread (so that our genericdao is
thread safe).
FilterInfo
Class
The first class will hold the parameters of the filter and
what is the nested count (how many times has the enable been called for the
same filter with the same parameters):
public class FilterInfo {
private int nestedCount;
private Map<String,
Object> parameters = new HashMap<String, Object>();
public
FilterInfo(Map<String, Object> parameters) {
super();
this.parameters = parameters;
}
public boolean
areParametersTheSame(Map<String, Object> currentParameters) {
if (parameters.size() > 0) {
// check old
parameters, see if changed
for (String paramName : parameters.keySet()) {
for (String
currentparamName : currentParameters.keySet()) {
if
(paramName.equals(currentparamName)) {
Object
newValue = parameters.get(paramName);
Object
oldValue = currentParameters.get(paramName);
if (!newValue.equals(oldValue))
{
return false;
}
}
}
}
}
return true;
}
public int decNestedCount() {
nestedCount--;
return nestedCount;
}
public int incNestedCount() {
nestedCount++;
return nestedCount;
}
public Map<String,
Object> getParameters() {
return parameters;
}
public int getNestedCount() {
return nestedCount;
}
}
FilterStack Class
This class will store a stack of the parameters per filter
so that we can re enable the filter with the correct parameters once a nested
filter is disabled.
public class FilterStack {
private String filterName;
private
Stack<FilterInfo> filterStack = new Stack<FilterInfo>();
public FilterStack(String
filterName) {
this.filterName = filterName;
}
public FilterInfo
setParameters(Map<String, Object> parameters) {
boolean areParametersTheSame
= false;
FilterInfo
filterInfo = null;
if (filterStack.size() > 0) {
filterInfo
= filterStack.peek();
areParametersTheSame
= filterInfo.areParametersTheSame(parameters);
}
if
(!areParametersTheSame) {
// add a new stack
filterInfo
= new
FilterInfo(parameters);
filterStack.push(filterInfo);
}
filterInfo.incNestedCount();
return filterInfo;
}
public FilterInfo
disableFilter() {
if (filterStack.size()==0) {
throw new InfraException("you are
closing a filter that is not open: " + filterName);
}
FilterInfo
peek = filterStack.peek();
if (peek != null) {
int decNestedCount =
peek.decNestedCount();
if (decNestedCount
<= 0) {
filterStack.pop();
return filterStack.size()>0 ? filterStack.peek() : null;
}
}
return peek;
}
}
NestedFilterInfo
Class
The last class will be stored on the local thread, and will
hold all the information for all the open filters.
public class NestedFilterInfo {
private Map<String,
FilterStack> filtersByName = new HashMap<String, FilterStack>();
public FilterInfo
enableFilter(String filterName, Map<String, Object> parameters) {
// get current
filter information
FilterStack
filterStack = filtersByName.get(filterName);
if (filterStack == null) {
filterStack
= new
FilterStack(filterName);
filtersByName.put(filterName,
filterStack);
}
// check if filter
parameters have changed.
return filterStack.setParameters(parameters);
}
public FilterInfo
disableFilter(String filterName) {
FilterStack
filterStack = filtersByName.get(filterName);
return
filterStack.disableFilter();
}
public Set<String>
getFilterNames() {
return filtersByName.keySet();
}
public void clear() {
filtersByName.clear();
}
}
GenericDao class
In the generic dao class that actually opens and closes the
filter will use these classes to manage all open filters. The function to
enable a filter will call:
public void enableFilter(String
filterName, Map<String, Object> mapParameters) {
NestedFilterInfo
filterStack = getFilterStack();
FilterInfo
enableFilter = filterStack.enableFilter(filterName, mapParameters);
sessionEnableFilter(filterName,
enableFilter.getParameters());
}
private void sessionEnableFilter(String
filterName, Map<String, Object> mapParameters) {
Filter
filter = session().enableFilter(filterName);
Object
value;
if (mapParameters != null) {
for
(Map.Entry<String, Object> entryParameters : mapParameters.entrySet()) {
value
= entryParameters.getValue();
filter.setParameter(entryParameters.getKey(),
value);
}
}
}
The enabling filter is the easy part. For every enable
filter if no parameters have changed we will increment the counter on the
FilterInfo class. If the parameters have changed we will create a new
FIlterInfo and add it to the stack in the FilterStack.
The magic is done in the disable filter:
public void disableFilter(String
filterName) {
NestedFilterInfo
filterStack = getFilterStack();
FilterInfo
filterInfo = filterStack.disableFilter(filterName);
if (filterInfo == null ||
filterInfo.getNestedCount() <= 0) {
session().disableFilter(filterName);
}
else {
sessionEnableFilter(filterName,
filterInfo.getParameters());
}
}
Here we call the disable and get a FilterInfo class. If the nested
count is down to zero then we have finished the stack and called the disable
the same amount as the enable so we will close the filter on the session. If
not then either the stack count went down by one, or we got the previous filter
that was open. In either case we update the session filter with the parameters,
and this way we have reverted the filter to the previous one.
This solution support both nested filters with the same
parameters (only after the last disable with the filter really be closed) and nested
filters with different parameters (with the new parameters the session will be
updated, and on the disable filter the previous parameters will be returned to
the session).
