Last update timestamp with JPA

Question

I'm playing around a bit with JPA(Eclipselink to be specific). The below entity have a timestamp that's supposed to reflect whenever that entity was last updated.

What are the strategies for making JPA update that timestamp automatically every time this entity is changed ?

How would I go about if I also want a 'creation' timestamp, only set when the entity is first persisted, never allowed to be changed again ?

 @Entity
 public class Item implements Serializable {
     private static final long serialVersionUID = 1L;
     private Integer id;
     private String note;


    public Item () {
    }


    @Id
    @GeneratedValue(strategy=SEQUENCE)
    @Column(unique=true, nullable=false)
    public Integer getId() {
        return this.id;
    }

    public void setId(Integer id) {
        this.id = id;
    }


    @Column(length=255)
    @Column(nullable=false)
    public String getNote() {
        return this.note;
    }

    public void setNote(String note) {
        this.note = note;
    }

    @Column(nullable=false)
    public Timestamp getUpdated() {
        return this.updated;
    }

    public void setUpdated(Timestamp updated) {
        this.updated = updated;
    }


}

score 19 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 12:09

19

Use @PrePersist and @PreUpdate annotations and write your own event listener.

Take a look at this answer for details. It's tagged as Hibernate but is applicable to any JPA provider.

edited May 23 '17 at 12:09

Community

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answered Nov 17 '09 at 00:48

ChssPly76

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surajz · Answer 2 · 2009-11-17T01:15:54.433

2

if you are using mysql, I think you can do the following to disable the timestamps from being updated from entity

@Column(name = "lastUpdate", updatable= false, insertable=false)
@Temporal(TemporalType.TIMESTAMP)
private Date lastUpdate;

for oracle you time have to set the timestamps from the entity using @PreUpdate annotation as explained above.

edited Nov 17 '09 at 01:15

answered Nov 17 '09 at 00:56

surajz

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This is wrong for many reasons: (1) the above assumes that you're manually updating the timestamp thus setting "updatable" is pointless; (2) consequently, the above will not work without @PreUpdate / @PrePersist event listeners; (3) if you want database to generate your timestamps (which you seem to imply), you have to mark your properties as generated which is **not** in JPA standard; (4) finally, MySQL will not let you have 2 auto-updated timestamps in the same table. – ChssPly76 Nov 17 '09 at 01:05
Regarding mysql, you can create one or more triggers to update any number of columns such as a timestamp - you are not limited to 1 auto updated timestamp in a table. – nos Nov 17 '09 at 16:56
in MySql you can also create table with 2 timestamps and insert NULL on both field when inserting a record. create table ts ( last_updated_ts TIMESTAMP, created_ts TIMESTAMP, name varchar(5) ); insert into ts(last_updated_ts, created_ts, name) value (null, null, 'test'); Definitely trigger or annotation is better depending on how the client accesses the database. – surajz Nov 17 '09 at 17:19

score 1 · Answer 3 · edited Sep 28 '12 at 11:13

1

Actually, surajz answer works. Consider a scenario where you are tracking 2 timestamps. You want to manually update them via the entity. You'd need to set one to updateble=false (the one you do not want updated when the record is updated), and leave the other free for updates.

That's what worked for me.

edited Sep 28 '12 at 11:13

Marko

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answered Aug 29 '12 at 02:44

Jubz

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Khalid Habib · Answer 4 · 2022-09-23T13:04:26.623

In Entity class

@Column
@UpdateTimestamp
private Timestamp updatedOn

@Column
@CreationTimestamp
private Timestamp createdOn

it will update automatically when any change in entity

Supported attribute types

java.time.LocalDate (since Hibernate 5.2.3)
java.time.LocalDateTime (since Hibernate 5.2.3)
java.util.Date
java.util.Calendar
java.sql.Date
java.sql.Time
java.sql.Timestamp

Example :

@Entity
public class MyEntity {
 
    @Id
    @GeneratedValue
    private Long id;
 
    @CreationTimestamp
    private Timestamp createdOn;
 
    @UpdateTimestamp
    private Timestamp updatedOn;
 
}

Last update timestamp with JPA

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