@PreUpdate not working

[bdusauso]

Hi,

I'm using Spring Data JPA 1.2.0.RELEASE with Hibernate 3.6.6 as the JPA provider.

I have an entity with @PreUpdate and @PrePersist on a method :

@Entity
@Table(name = "procedure")
public class Procedure extends BaseEntity {
    // ...
    @Column(name = "updated")
    private Date updatedOn;

    public Date getUpdatedOn() {
        return updatedOn;
    }

    @PreUpdate
    @PrePersist
    public void preUpdateAndPersist() {
        this.updatedOn = new Date();
    }

}

The problem is that the preUpdateAndPersist() is called on persist but is never called on merge !
Here's a snippet of code to test that :

    @Test
    public void testSetUpdatedWhenPersist() {
        Procedure procedure = new Procedure();
        procedure.setProcedureReference("ref1");
        procedure = repository.save(procedure);
        assertNotNull(procedure.getUpdatedOn());
    }

    @Test
    @DatabaseSetup("/ec/ep/europarl/coordleg/access/interfaces/ProcedureRepositoryTest/testFindByCategoryId.xml")
    public void testSetUpdatedWhenMerge() {
        Procedure procedure = new Procedure();
        procedure.setId(1L);
        procedure.setProcedureReference("proc1");
        procedure = repository.save(procedure);
        assertNotNull(procedure.getUpdatedOn());
    }

The second one pass through the SimpleJpaRepository.save() method, it does call merge() on the entity manager, but doesn't call the method annotated by @PreUpdate.

junit.framework.AssertionFailedError
	at foo.access.interfaces.ProcedureRepositoryTest.testSetUpdatedWhenMerge(ProcedureRepositoryTest.java:104)
...

Can someone enlighten me on this one ?

Regards.

[zakhrim]

Exacty the same problem here. Just with a different Hibernate version (4.1.6).

I inquired it a little bit and found the reason: the @PreUpdate and @PostUpdate method receive another instance of the entity (you can see it from debugger, ids are different) while pre persist receive the actual entity. Same thing happens in @Pre[Post]Remove methods.

bdusauso, your methods are actually called, but on a different object, this is why you don't see any change in the persisted entity.

Now, my question to the Spring team is: Is this the expected behaviour or is it a bug? How could it be overcome?

Many thanks,
Stefano