Janik von Rotz


9 min read

Superb Java development with Gradle, Hibernate, FlywayDB, JavaFX and Eclipse - Part 1

Wow that’s the best Java tutorial I’ve seen so far!

-You in a few minutes.

Sounds selfish, doesn’t it? Well it has the right to be, it took me 2 hours to write that! Don’t hesitate now and turn on your dev machine. After this tutorial you have to rethink your Java development process and if you don’t have one yet this is the best place to start. I will show you the most advanced tools to speed up your Java development environment and collaboration capabilities. In this tutorial we are going to develop a simple MVC (Model, View, Controller) application ruled by the DRY (Don’t repeat yourself) approach.

The crappy picture below shows what’s going on according to my brain.

Project Concept

So what do I excepect from you? Well, make sure you know at least a little bit about the following topics:

Let’s get startet with the tools. You don’t have to install them yet, first I will explain them in detail.

Got it? Now we are going to install some stuff.

Installation

As told Gradle is our servant for the project. Follow these steps to set up our project directory and dependencies.

build.gradle - start

buildscript {
    repositories {
        mavenCentral()
    }
    dependencies {
        classpath 'mysql:mysql-connector-java:5.1.34'
        classpath 'org.flywaydb:flyway-gradle-plugin:3.1'
    }
}

Adds the Flyway database migration tool to your gradle task library.

apply plugin: 'java'
apply plugin: 'eclipse'
apply plugin: 'flyway'

Gradle plugins to set up the project.

repositories {
    mavenCentral()
}

Gradle gets dependencies from the maven repository.

dependencies {
    compile 'org.hibernate:hibernate-core:4.3.8.Final'
    compile 'mysql:mysql-connector-java:5.1.34'
    
    testCompile group: 'junit', name: 'junit', version: '4.+'
}

These commands compile hibernate, mysql and depending libraries for our Java project.

flyway {
    url = 'jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306'
    user = 'issuemanager'
    password = 'issuemanager'
    schemas = ['issuemanager']
}

Flyway task configuration section. Make sure to update these fields.

build.gradle - end

Eclipse Project Structure

V1__create_person_table.sql

create table person(
    id int NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT, PRIMARY KEY (id),
    name varchar(100) NOT NULL
);

This snippets creates the MySQL person table.

V2__add_people.sql.sql

insert into PERSON (NAME) values ('Axel');
insert into PERSON (NAME) values ('Mr. Foo');
insert into PERSON (NAME) values ('Ms. Bar');

This snippet adds people to the persons table.

If everything worked fine so far we are ready to write some code.

Coding - Controller

We will start with the DAO interface and the CRUD (create, read, update, delete) controller.

DAO.java

package ch.hslu.issueman;

import java.io.Serializable;
import java.util.List;

public interface DAO<T, Id extends Serializable> {
	
	public void persist(T t);
	public T getById(Id id);
	public List<T> getAll();
	public void update(T t);
	public void delete(T t);
	public void deleteAll();
}

This interface defines the functions required to communicate with the database later. As you can see we will use generics as we don’t want to create the same interface implementation for every model (despite we only have one model in this example).

I will split the controller in multiple snippets and explain what’s going on in detail.

Controller.java - start

package ch.hslu.issueman;

import java.io.Serializable;
import java.util.List;

import org.hibernate.Session;
import org.hibernate.SessionFactory;
import org.hibernate.Transaction;
import org.hibernate.boot.registry.StandardServiceRegistryBuilder;
import org.hibernate.cfg.Configuration;

public class Controller<T, Id extends Serializable> implements DAO<T, Id> {

	private final Class<T> clazz;
	private Session currentSession;
	private Transaction currentTransaction;
	
	protected Controller(Class<T> clazz) {
        this.clazz = clazz;
    }

These lines provide methods to interact with the hibernate session manager. Not very interesting also quite common. Below you’ll see that we will use CurrentSession to read from the database and CurrentSessionwithTransaction for operations such as delete in the database.

	public void persist(T t) {
		openCurrentSessionwithTransaction();
		getCurrentSession().save(t);
		closeCurrentSessionwithTransaction();
	}

	public T getById(Id id) {
		openCurrentSession();
		@SuppressWarnings("unchecked")
		T t = (T) getCurrentSession().get(clazz, id);
		closeCurrentSession();
		return t;
	}

	@SuppressWarnings("unchecked")
	public List<T> getAll() {
		openCurrentSession();
		List<T> list = (List<T>) getCurrentSession().createQuery("from " + clazz.getName()).list();
		closeCurrentSession();
		return list;
	}

	public void update(T t) {
		openCurrentSessionwithTransaction();
		getCurrentSession().update(t);
		closeCurrentSessionwithTransaction();
	}

	public void delete(T t) {
		openCurrentSessionwithTransaction();
		getCurrentSession().delete(t);
		closeCurrentSessionwithTransaction();
	}
	
	public void deleteAll() {
		openCurrentSessionwithTransaction();
		List<T> people = getAll();
		for (T t : people) {
			delete(t);
		}
		closeCurrentSessionwithTransaction();
	}

	public void printToJson(List<T> l) {
		
		int size = l.size();
		System.out.println("[");
		for (T i : l) {
			System.out.println(((Model) i).toJson());
			if (--size != 0){System.out.print(",");}
		}
		System.out.print("]");			
	}
}

This is the implementation of the DAO interface. Checkout the getAll method, there you’ll see how the class name workaround is used. The console output of values is Json styled.

Controller.java - end

That’s it, this is our basic Controller that will be used by each Model Controller to interact with the database.

Coding - Model

Now you will see the allmighty power of hibernate. It never was easier to connect a model with a SQL table.

Model.java

package ch.hslu.issueman;

public interface Model {
	public String toJson();
}

Easy but usefull. Every model has to implement the toJson method, because why not?

Person.java

package ch.hslu.issueman;

import javax.persistence.Column;
import javax.persistence.Entity;
import javax.persistence.GeneratedValue;
import javax.persistence.GenerationType;
import javax.persistence.Id;
import javax.persistence.Table;

@Entity
@Table(name="person")
public class Person implements Model{
	
	@Id
	@GeneratedValue(strategy=GenerationType.AUTO)
	@Column(name="id")
    private int id; 
	
	@Column(name="name")
    private String name;
	
	public Person() {}

	public Person(String name) {
		setName(name);
	}
	
	public int getId() {
		return id;
	}
		
	public String getName() {
		return name;
	}
	
	public void setName(String name) {
		this.name = name;
	}
	
	public String toJson() {
		return "{\"id\": \"" + getId() + "\", \"name\":\"" + getName() + "\"}";
	}

} 

Those @-Annotation will tell hibbernate which column belongs to which object attribute. Awesome! Isn’t it?

hibernate.cfg.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE hibernate-configuration SYSTEM 
"http://www.hibernate.org/dtd/hibernate-configuration-3.0.dtd">

<hibernate-configuration>
   <session-factory>
   <property name="hibernate.dialect">org.hibernate.dialect.MySQLDialect</property>
   <property name="hibernate.connection.driver_class">com.mysql.jdbc.Driver</property>
   <property name="hibernate.connection.url">jdbc:mysql://localhost/issuemanager</property>
   <property name="hibernate.connection.username">issuemanager</property>
   <property name="hibernate.connection.password">issuemanager</property>
   <property name="show_sql">true</property>
   <property name="hibernate.current_session_context_class">thread</property>
   <mapping class="ch.hslu.issueman.Person"/>
</session-factory>
</hibernate-configuration>

Add the same values as already used to configure flyway. Very important is the mapping property which finalizes the mapping process of the model with database table.

Coding - App

This is the last coding part of the first tutorial.

PersonController.java

package ch.hslu.issueman;

import java.util.List;

public class PersonController implements DAO<Person, Integer>{
	
	private static Controller<Person, Integer> controller;
	
	public PersonController() {
		controller = new Controller<Person, Integer>(Person.class);
	}
	
	public void persist(Person person) {
		controller.persist(person);
	}

	public Person getById(Integer id) {
		Person person = controller.getById(id);
		return person;
	}

	public List<Person> getAll() {
		List<Person> people = controller.getAll();
		return people;
	}

	public void update(Person person) {
		controller.update(person);
	}

	public void deleteById(Integer id) {
		controller.delete(controller.getById(id));
	}

	public void delete(Person person) {
		controller.delete(person);
	}
	
	public void deleteAll() {
		controller.deleteAll();
	}

	public void printToJson(List<Person> people) {
		controller.printToJson(people);	
	}
}

As you can see the Person Controller uses the basic Controller to do some CRUD actions. Every model controller must implement the DAO interface and must use the basic Controller. This strategy allows us to define model depended actions within the CRUD methods.

App.java

package ch.hslu.issueman;

public class App {

	public static void main(String[] args) {
		
		PersonController PersonController = new PersonController();
//		PersonController.deleteAll();
		
//		Person person4 = new Person("Fyodor Dostoevsky");
//		Person person5 = new Person("Leo Tolstoy");
//		Person person6 = new Person("Jane Austen");
//		
//		PersonController.persist(person4);
//		PersonController.persist(person5);
//		PersonController.persist(person6);

//		PersonController.deleteById(6);
		
//		person4.setName("Frodo");
//		PersonController.update(person4);
				
		PersonController.printToJson(PersonController.getAll());
	
		System.exit(0);
	}

}

This example application class shows how the Person Controller is used to retrieve and store Person object. Uncomment or comment sections to test the CRUD methods.

You should see a lot of hibernate blabla and of course the Json outpout of the person table.

Hibernate: select person0_.id as id1_0_, person0_.name as name2_0_ from person person0_
[
{"id": "1", "name":"Axel"}
,{"id": "2", "name":"Mr. Foo"}
,{"id": "3", "name":"Ms. Bar"}
]

That was the first part of this tutorial and of course it was just a peek into these great tools. Hibernate offers much more possibilites to connect different models and do other awesome stuff. So don’t miss the documentation on their website or other tutorials. I hope to see you soon in the next chapter when we create a rich client application with JavaFX.

Update

2015-03-05: Part 2 has been released: https://janikvonrotz.ch/2015/03/05/superb-java-development-with-gradle-hibernate-flywaydb-javafx-and-eclipse-part-2/

Source

You can get the project from here: https://github.com/janikvonrotz/issue-manager/releases/tag/v1.0

Categories: Software development
Tags: application , flyway , gradle , hibernate , java , javafx , mysql , nginx
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