Lightrun logo

Debugging Spring Persistence and JPA Issues Using Lightrun

So many things can fail when dealing with persistence. We can usually inspect the end result but understanding how it “got there” is often challenging. With verbose SQL we might see the actual SQL call but who generated it and why, they are also often very hard to read and don’t include important information such as the values passed to the prepared query.

This is where Lightrun really shines, it lets you “see” the details in that middle layer. Before the data gets into the database or before the data is sent as a response.

For the purpose of this tutorial I’ll use the pet clinic demo from here: https://github.com/spring-projects/spring-petclinic 

It’s a relatively simple demo which includes rest calls. You can use any code since I won’t rely on anything specific to that demo.

 

Step 1 – Build the Demo

Open the project directory from the repository in IntelliJ. Run the “Package” option in the maven toolwindow. 

 

Step 2 – Install Lightrun

If you didn’t do this yet go to https://app.lightrun.com and follow the steps to create an account. Download the IDE plugin and set up the agent on your server. I won’t replicate the steps here as they are pretty clear on the website.

You can download the agent into the project directory then run the app using:

java -agentpath:PATH_TO_AGENT_DIRECTORY/lightrun_agent.so -jar target/spring-petclinic-2.4.5.jar

Notice you need to replace PATH_TO_AGENT_DIRECTORY with the right path. Try to avoid shortcuts like ~ which might cause issues.

You can now install the plugin and login via the IDE.

 

Step 3 – Place a Snapshot to See The DB Object

We want to see the value of the object in the server before it was sent to the database for storage. In case of a problem this will tell us if the problem was in the storage process or in the web service layer. 

 

Open the OwnerController class and go to line 73 which is in the else block of the  processCreationForm() method. It should include the code this.owners.save(owner);

 

Right click on the line and select “Lightrun” -> “Snapshot”:

In the expression section add the following code:

owner.getFirstName().equals("Shai")

 

This effectively means the snapshot will only occur for a user whose name is “Shai”. This is important in production systems since you might want data about a specific entry and don’t want noise about every single entry. Notice that this is an optional feature and you can leave the expression blank to grab any request. 

 

Press OK to submit the snapshot and a camera will appear next to the line.

Apply This to your Own Application

This functionality is remarkably useful for validating assumptions in live applications. When you get data corruption it’s often very hard to determine at which point it happened especially if you can’t reproduce this from your machine. 

A simple snapshot or log on the server can instantly change the balance completely.

Ready to get started ?

Sign Up for Lightrun