Hibernate Merging and Refreshing Entities

In previous tutorial, we learned about saving entities using save() or saveOrUpdate() methods in hibernate. There we learned that in most of the cases, you will not even need those methods as hibernate manages the updates on persistent entities automatically. You only need to care about transient objects in most of cases. In this tutorial, I am discussing few thoughts around refresh() and merge() method present in hibernate session class.

Refreshing Hibernate Entities Using refresh() Method

Sometimes we face situation where we application database is modified with some external application/agent and thus corresponding hibernate entity in your application actually becomes out of sync with it’s database representation i.e. having old data. In this case, you can use session.refresh() method to re-populate the entity with latest data available in database.

You can use one of the refresh() methods on the Session interface to refresh an instance of a persistent object, as follows:

public void refresh(Object object) throws HibernateException
public void refresh(Object object, LockMode lockMode) throws HibernateException

These methods will reload the properties of the object from the database, overwriting them. In real life applications, you do not have to use the refresh() method very often apart from above stated scenario.

Let’s look at an example of refresh() method.

public class RefreshEntityExample
{
   public static void main(String[] args)
   {
      Session sessionOne = HibernateUtil.getSessionFactory().openSession();
      sessionOne.beginTransaction();
      
      //Create new Employee object
      EmployeeEntity emp = new EmployeeEntity();
      emp.setEmployeeId(1);
      emp.setFirstName("Lokesh");
      emp.setLastName("Gupta");
      
      //Save employee
      sessionOne.save(emp);
      sessionOne.getTransaction().commit();
      sessionOne.close();
      
      //Verify employee's firstname
      System.out.println(verifyEmployeeFirstName(1, "Lokesh"));
      
      Session sessionTwo = HibernateUtil.getSessionFactory().openSession();
      sessionTwo.beginTransaction();
      
      //This 
      emp.setFirstName("Vikas");
      sessionTwo.refresh(emp);
      
      sessionTwo.getTransaction().commit();
      sessionTwo.close();
      
      System.out.println(emp.getFirstName().equals("Lokesh"));
      
      HibernateUtil.shutdown();
   }  
   
   private static boolean verifyEmployeeFirstName(Integer employeeId, String firstName){
      Session session = HibernateUtil.getSessionFactory().openSession();
      EmployeeEntity employee = (EmployeeEntity) session.load(EmployeeEntity.class, employeeId);
      //Verify first name
      boolean result = firstName.equals(employee.getFirstName());
      session.close();
      //Return verification result
      return result;
   }
}

Output:

true
true

Look above the highlighted lines.

• Line 15 save the employee with first name “Lokesh”
• Line 26 set the first name “Vikas”. As entity is detached, DB will not be updated.
• Line 27 refresh the entity with database using refresh() method.
• Line 32 verify that firstname set in entity has been updated with “Lokesh” as it is what database have this moment.

This was all about refresh method. Let’s look an another similar method merge().

Merging Hibernate Entities Using merge() Method

Method merge() does exactly opposite to what refresh() does i.e. It updates the database with values from a detached entity. Refresh method was updating the entity with latest database information. So basically, both are exactly opposite.

Merging is performed when you desire to have a detached entity changed to persistent state again, with the detached entity’s changes migrated to (or overriding) the database. The method signatures for the merge operations are:

Object merge(Object object)
Object merge(String entityName, Object object)

Hibernate official documentation give a very good explanation of merge() method:

So if I take below code for example then below listed points should be clear to you.

EmployeeEntity mergedEmpEntity = session.merge(empEntity);

• ’empEntity’ is detached entity when it is passed to merge() method.
• merge() method will search for an already loaded EmployeeEntity instance with identifier information taken from empEntity. If such persistent entity is found then it will be used for updates. Other wise a new EmployeeEntity is loaded into session using same identifier information as present in ’empEntity’.
• Data is copied from ’empEntity’ to new found/loaded entity.
• Because new/found entity is persistent, all data copied to it from ’empEntity’ is automatically saved into database.
• Reference of that new entity is returned from merge() method and is assigned to ‘mergedEmpEntity’ variable.
• ’empEntity’ is still detached entity.

public class MergeEntityExample
{
   public static void main(String[] args)
   {
      Session sessionOne = HibernateUtil.getSessionFactory().openSession();
      sessionOne.beginTransaction();
      
      //Create new Employee object
      EmployeeEntity emp = new EmployeeEntity();
      emp.setEmployeeId(1);
      emp.setFirstName("Lokesh");
      emp.setLastName("Gupta");
      
      //Save employee
      sessionOne.save(emp);
      sessionOne.getTransaction().commit();
      sessionOne.close();
      
      //Verify employee's firstname
      System.out.println(verifyEmployeeFirstName(1, "Lokesh"));
      
      Session sessionTwo = HibernateUtil.getSessionFactory().openSession();
      sessionTwo.beginTransaction();
      
      //Set new first name
      emp.setFirstName("Vikas");
      
      //Merge the emp object using merge() method
      EmployeeEntity mergedPersistentEmpEntity = (EmployeeEntity) sessionTwo.merge(emp);
      
      sessionTwo.getTransaction().commit();
      sessionTwo.close();
      
      //Verify employee's firstname again in database
      System.out.println(verifyEmployeeFirstName(1, "Vikas"));
      
      HibernateUtil.shutdown();
   }  
   
   private static boolean verifyEmployeeFirstName(Integer employeeId, String firstName){
      Session session = HibernateUtil.getSessionFactory().openSession();
      EmployeeEntity employee = (EmployeeEntity) session.load(EmployeeEntity.class, employeeId);
      //Verify first name
      boolean result = firstName.equals(employee.getFirstName());
      session.close();
      //Return verification result
      return result;
   }
}

Output:

true
true

In above example, ‘mergedPersistentEmpEntity’ is new entity which is persistent. So if you want to any more change, then make in in ‘mergedPersistentEmpEntity’ instance.

That’s all for this tutorial covering merge() and refresh() methods in hibernate. Remember that question can be asked as difference between merge() and refresh(), or difference between merge() and load() etc. Be ready to encounter any such difference between interview questions.

Happy Learning !!

Further Reading:

Hibernate Entities Equality and Identity Hibernate save() and saveOrUpdate() methods Hibernate get entity example – get vs load methods