The best way to update entity in spring boot-CodePudding

I'm new to spring boot and trying to make my first api. I've made a lot of apis on python using FastAPI framework, but now i decided to study this technology. But here, I met a problem. So I'm using the jpa for database communication and I don't really understand how to update entity's fields correctly.

I've read a lot of guidelines, and all of them says that updating an entity carried out like this:

    public void updateUserInDatabase(long userId, UserUpdateModel newData) {
        UserEntity user = userRepo.findById(userId).orElseThrow();
        if(newData.getUsername() != null) {
            user.setUsername(newData.getUsername());
        }
        if(newData.getPassword() != null) {
            user.setPassword(newData.getPassword());
        }
    }

But I think it's not useful as newData can have a lot of fields, so for updating an entity I'll need a lot of conditions.

So, yeah, maybe this question is silly, but I really try to understand XD. If you know the answer, please tell me! I'd really appreciate it. Thank you in advance.

CodePudding user response：

You could use an entity mapper like MapStruct or ModelMapper

A ModelMapper example:

ModelMapper mapper = new ModelMapper();
// this will tell ModelMapper to ignore null fields when mapping the source (newData) to the destination (user)
mapper.getConfiguration().setSkipNullEnabled(true);

UserEntity user = userRepo.findById(userId).orElseThrow();
// this will tell ModelMapper to map newData into user
mapper.map(newData, user);

CodePudding user response：

Your question is not silly, you want to make it better, but you are already doing it, like it is supposed to be done.

However, having a lot of fields in a table, could indicate a problem in the DB design, if you are not using Cassandra or something like that.