Spring Boot JPA@CreatedDate @LastModifiedDate not being populated when saving the object

Question

I am writing an app with Spring Boot + JPA, using a Postgres database. I have a User Entity and I am trying to get a timestamp when the user record is saved and/or modified.

Answer 1

The AuditingEntityListener methods are called in the @PrePersist and @PreUpdate phase.

This means they are called just before the insert or update SQL statements are executed.

Read more about JPA events in the Hibernate doc: https://docs.jboss.org/hibernate/orm/5.2/userguide/html_single/Hibernate_User_Guide.html#events-jpa-callbacks

Unit Tests

When using in Tests you have to enable auditing as well on the test

@DataJpaTest
@RunWith(SpringRunner.class)
@EnableJpaAuditing
public class EntityListenerTest {

Answer 2

I had similar issue, but the reason for my case is that I had @Transactional annotation on the test class, after removing that, everything works as expected.

Answer 3

I had similar issue (Spring Boot 2.2.1 and JUnit5) with null values. Adding @EnableJpaAuditing to test class did not work.

My example (did not copy everything):

@Getter(AccessLevel.PROTECTED)
@Setter(AccessLevel.PROTECTED)
@MappedSuperclass
@EntityListeners(AuditingEntityListener.class)
public class Auditable<U> {

    @CreatedBy
    @Column(name = "created_by", nullable = false)
    private U createdBy;

    @CreatedDate
    @Column(name = "created", nullable = false)
    private OffsetDateTime created;
}

and respective class:

@Getter
@Setter
@Entity
@Table(name="survey_records")
public class SurveyRecord extends Auditable<String> implements Serializable {

I had following configuration for auditing:

@Configuration
@EnableJpaAuditing(auditorAwareRef = "auditorProvider", dateTimeProviderRef = "auditingDateTimeProvider")
public class JpaAuditingConfiguration {

    @Bean(name = "auditingDateTimeProvider")
    public DateTimeProvider dateTimeProvider() {
        return () -> Optional.of(OffsetDateTime.now());
    }

    @Bean
    public AuditorAware<String> auditorProvider() {

To get @CreatedBy and @CreatedDate working inside test only @Import was needed

@DataJpaTest
@Import(JpaAuditingConfiguration.class)
class SurveyRecordRepositoryTest {

Used references:

• https://springbootdev.com/2018/03/13/spring-data-jpa-auditing-with-createdby-createddate-lastmodifiedby-and-lastmodifieddate/

• https://github.com/spring-projects/spring-boot/issues/10743#issuecomment-416777423

Answer 4

My prefered solution is a set of multiple annotations to ensure test of @CreatedBy or @CreatedDate:

@RunWith(SpringRunner.class)
@DataJpaTest
@Import(JPAConfig.class)
@WithMockUser(username = "testuser")
public class MYRepositoryTest {
...
}

My Entities looks like:

@MappedSuperclass
@EntityListeners(AuditingEntityListener.class)
public class AbstractEntity {

    @CreatedBy
    private String createdBy;

    @CreatedDate
    private Date createdOn;

    @LastModifiedDate
    private Date updatedOn;

    @LastModifiedBy
    private String updatedBy;
}

My JPA configuration is:

@Configuration
@EnableJpaAuditing(auditorAwareRef = "auditorAware")
public class JPAConfig {

    @Bean
    public AuditorAware<String> auditorAware() {
        return () -> Optional.of(((User)     SecurityContextHolder.getContext().getAuthentication().getPrincipal()).getUsername());
    }
}

Now your audit fields also created during JPA test:

assertThat(result.getCreatedBy()).isNotNull().isEqualTo("testuser");
assertThat(result.getCreatedOn()).isNotNull();
assertThat(result.getUpdatedBy()).isNotNull().isEqualTo("testuser");
assertThat(result.getUpdatedOn()).isNotNull();