ENTITY_INSTANCE_WITH_NULL_ID exception on cascading save of entity with new child

I’m using javers 1.3.17 with spring integration (spring boot + data jpa) I have a parent child relationship such as

@Entity
@Data
@Builder
@AllArgsConstructor
@NoArgsConstructor
public class Parent {
    @Id
    @GeneratedValue
    private Long id;

    private String name;

    @OneToMany(fetch = FetchType.EAGER, cascade = CascadeType.ALL)
    private List<Child> children;
}

@Entity
@Data
@Builder
@AllArgsConstructor
@NoArgsConstructor
public class Child {
    @Id
    @GeneratedValue
    private Long id;

    private String name;
}

When I try to save an existing parent (with id) with a newly added child element (without id) I get the ENTITY_INSTANCE_WITH_NULL_ID. Is casading save with new child entities not supported by javers? I can only get it to work by manually persisting each new child before saving the parent (JPA can handle this just fine).

A full demo project can be found on github

[gimoh]

Unfortunately using saveAndFlush doesn’t really help as javers just doesn’t commit the change as it doesn’t fire after it (#427).

I’ve dug into this and AFAICS this is because when creating a new entity the JPA repository’s save() method will fire EntityManager’s persist() method which updates objects in-place (so both parent and nested objects get IDs populated). When updating an existing entity it fires merge() method which doesn’t update objects in-place but returns a new managed object.

Now IIUC because Javers gets triggered via an aspect, it gets reference to the original entity object which won’t be touched by merge() so Javers sees NULL IDs. See also this SO answer.

Any ideas if there’s anything that can be done to make this work?

[esmelulitaonly]

Good news! I could solve the problem using “saveAndFlush()” instead of “save()”

    @Transactional
    public Cotizacion saveQuotationDraft(Cotizacion quotation) throws ServletException, IOException {

        Authentication auth = SecurityContextHolder.getContext().getAuthentication();                       
        Usuario executive = usuarioRepository.findByUsername(auth.getName());
        quotation.setEjecutivo(executive);

        if (quotation.getCotizacionAseguradoras() != null) {
            cotizacionAseguradoraAuditory.finishEntity(quotation.getCotizacionAseguradoras(), true);
        }

        if (quotation.getRamos() != null) {
            for (CotizacionRamo branch : quotation.getRamos()) {
                cotizacionRamoAuditory.finishEntity(branch, true);

            }
        }

        cotizacionAuditory.finishEntity(quotation, true);
        quotation = cotizacionRepository.saveAndFlush(quotation);

        String numberQuotation = "COT" + String.format("%010d", Integer.parseInt(quotation.getId().toString()));
        quotation.setNumero(numberQuotation);
        quotation = cotizacionRepository.saveAndFlush(quotation);

        return quotation;
    }

saveAndFlush() belongs to org.springframework.data.jpa.repository.JpaRepository package, and my repositories extend of JpaRepository instead CrudRepository.