Spring Data: Enumeration and Repository issue

Question

I am using Spring Data and Repositories. I created an Entity with a enum type field, which I declared @Enumerated(EnumType.STRING), but I am forced to create a method getAuthority returning a String.

@Entity
@Configurable
public class BaseAuthority implements GrantedAuthority {

    @Enumerated(EnumType.STRING)
    @Column(unique = true)
    private AuthorityType authority;

    @Override
    public String getAuthority() {
        return authority.toString();
    }

}

The enum is as follow:

public enum AuthorityType {
REGISTEREDUSER, ADMINISTRATOR;
}

In the repository for the entity, I created an operation to find by authority type:

@Repository
public interface BaseAuthorityRepository extends JpaRepository<BaseAuthority, Long> {

    BaseAuthority findByAuthority(AuthorityType authority);

}

However, I get a warning:

Parameter type (AuthorityType) does not match domain class 
property definition (String). BaseAuthorityRepository.java

I used to have the operation receiving a String rather than AuthorityType, but that generates a runtime exception. I could change the name of the field authority to authorityType, but I don't like that.

Am I doing something wrong? How can I remove the warning?

Answer 1

I guess you have to rename the field, but you can do it in an transparent way:

@Entity
public class BaseAuthority implements GrantedAuthority {
    private static final long serialVersionUID = 1L;

    @Enumerated(EnumType.STRING)
    @Column(unique = true, name = "authority")
    private AuthorityType authorityType;

    AuthorityType getAuthorityType() {
        return authorityType;
    }

    @Override
    public String getAuthority() {
        return authorityType.toString();
    }
}

and change your repository to

@Repository
public interface BaseAuthorityRepository extends JpaRepository<BaseAuthority, Long> {

    BaseAuthority findByAuthorityType(AuthorityType authority); 
}