Ignore null values of entity bean while updating the table using Hibernate

Question

Stuck on the same problem Is there any method to ignore null values when updating the database in Hibernate?

Whenever you call update(); of Session, it will also update the null values found in the object.

Example:

User user = new User();
user.setUserId(5);
user.setUserName("Maarten");
user.setUserFirstName(null); // but in database this value is not null

session.update( user);

OR

session.saveOrUpdate( user);

The DB will now update the user, but will set the user firstname to null (because it is null in the object).

Is there any way or method in Hibernate to avoid this (I don't want to fire a select/ update query to set the bean)? that it will ignore the null value?

Answer 1

hibernate-dynamic-update

The dynamic-update attribute tells Hibernate whether to include unmodified properties in the SQL UPDATE statement.

Answer 2

One of the options is, load the bean using get(object) method from the session and then set/change the values. But this comes with an overhead of one extra call to the database. Or you can create a custom query if making an extra call is crucial.

Edit: if bean is cached then get(object) will not be a performance hit.