When Does JPA Set the Primary Key

1. Overview

In this tutorial, we'll illustrate the moment when JPA assigns a value to the primary key. We'll clarify what the JPA specification says, and then, we'll show examples using various JPA strategies for primary key generation.

2. Problem Statement

As we know, JPA (Java Persistence API) uses the EntityManager to manage the lifecycle of an Entity. At some point, the JPA provider needs to assign acvalue to the primary key. So, we may find ourselves asking, when does this happen? And where is the documentation that states this?

The JPA specification says:

A new entity instance becomes both managed and persistent by invoking the persist method on it or by cascading the persist operation.

So, we'll focus on the EntityManager.persist() method in this article.

3. The Generate Value Strategy

When we invoke the EntityManager.persist() method, the entity's state is changed according to the JPA specification:

• GenerationType.AUTO
• GenerationType.IDENTITY
• GenerationType.SEQUENCE
• GenerationType.TABLE

3.1. GenerationType.AUTO

AUTO is the default strategy for @GeneratedValue. If we just want to have a primary key, we can use the AUTO strategy. The JPA provider will choose an appropriate strategy for the underlying database:

@Entity
@Table(name = "app_admin")
public class Admin {

    @Id
    @GeneratedValue
    private Long id;

    @Column(name = "admin_name")
    private String name;

    // standard getters and setters
}

3.2. GenerationType.IDENTITY

The IDENTITY strategy relies on the database auto-increment column. The database generates the primary key after each insert operation. JPA assigns the primary key value after performing the insert operation or upon transaction commit:

@Entity
@Table(name = "app_user")
public class User {

    @Id
    @GeneratedValue(strategy = GenerationType.IDENTITY)
    private Long id;

    @Column(name = "user_name")
    private String name;

    // standard getters and setters
}

Here, we verify the id values before and after the transaction commit:

@Test
public void givenIdentityStrategy_whenCommitTransction_thenReturnPrimaryKey() {
    User user = new User();
    user.setName("TestName");
        
    entityManager.getTransaction().begin();
    entityManager.persist(user);
    Assert.assertNull(user.getId());
    entityManager.getTransaction().commit();

    Long expectPrimaryKey = 1L;
    Assert.assertEquals(expectPrimaryKey, user.getId());
}

The IDENTITY strategy is supported by MySQL, SQL Server, PostgreSQL, DB2, Derby, and Sybase.

3.3. GenerationType.SEQUENCE

By using the SEQUENCE strategy, JPA generates the primary key using a database sequence. We first need to create a sequence on the database side before applying this strategy:

CREATE SEQUENCE article_seq
  MINVALUE 1
  START WITH 50
  INCREMENT BY 50

JPA sets the primary key after we invoke the EntityManager.persist() method and before we commit the transaction.

Let's define an Article entity with the SEQUENCE strategy:

@Entity
@Table(name = "article")
public class Article {
    
    @Id
    @GeneratedValue(strategy = GenerationType.SEQUENCE, generator = "article_gen")
    @SequenceGenerator(name="article_gen", sequenceName="article_seq")
    private Long id;

    @Column(name = "article_name")
    private String name

    // standard getters and setters
}

The sequence starts from 50, so the first id will be the next value, 51.

Now, let's test the SEQUENCE strategy:

@Test
public void givenSequenceStrategy_whenPersist_thenReturnPrimaryKey() {
    Article article = new Article();
    article.setName("Test Name");

    entityManager.getTransaction().begin();
    entityManager.persist(article);
    Long expectPrimaryKey = 51L;
    Assert.assertEquals(expectPrimaryKey, article.getId());

    entityManager.getTransaction().commit();
}

The SEQUENCE strategy is supported by Oracle, PostgreSQL, and DB2.

3.4. GenerationType.TABLE

The TABLE strategy generates the primary key from a table and works the same regardless of the underlying database.

We need to create a generator table on the database side to generate the primary key. The table should at least have two columns: one column to represent the generator's name and another to store the primary key value.

Firstly, let's create a generator table:

@Table(name = "id_gen")
@Entity
public class IdGenerator {

    @Id
    @GeneratedValue(strategy = GenerationType.IDENTITY)
    private Long id;
    
    @Column(name = "gen_name")
    private String gen_name;

    @Column(name = "gen_value")
    private Long gen_value;

    // standard getters and setters
}

Then, we need to insert two initial values to the generator table:

INSERT INTO id_gen (gen_name, gen_val) VALUES ('id_generator', 0);
INSERT INTO id_gen (gen_name, gen_val) VALUES ('task_gen', 10000);

JPA assigns the primary key values after calling EntityManager.persist() method and before the transaction commit.

Let's now use the generator table with the TABLE strategy. We can use allocationSize to pre-allocate some primary keys:

@Entity
@Table(name = "task")
public class Task {
    
    @TableGenerator(name = "id_generator", table = "id_gen", pkColumnName = "gen_name", valueColumnName = "gen_value",
        pkColumnValue="task_gen", initialValue=10000, allocationSize=10)
    @Id
    @GeneratedValue(strategy = GenerationType.TABLE, generator = "id_generator")
    private Long id;

    @Column(name = "name")
    private String name;

    // standard getters and setters
}

And the id starts from 10,000 after we invoke the persist method:

@Test
public void givenTableStrategy_whenPersist_thenReturnPrimaryKey() {
    Task task = new Task();
    task.setName("Test Task");

    entityManager.getTransaction().begin();
    entityManager.persist(task);
    Long expectPrimaryKey = 10000L;
    Assert.assertEquals(expectPrimaryKey, task.getId());

    entityManager.getTransaction().commit();
}

4. Conclusion

This article illustrates the moment when JPA sets the primary key under different strategies. In addition, we also learned about the usage of each of these strategies through examples.

The complete code can be found over on GitHub.