Question

I have a bunch of Hibernate mapped objects in my Spring MVC app. Default seems to be lazy loading for nested objects with relations. I realized this by getting a lot of errors in my JSP when accessing e.g. a list of children objects.

So I implemented a second method to get a list of objects with all children initliazed. I was wondering if someone could give me some feedback if this was the way to go or not?

This is my code in my DAO implementation that works:

public List<Address> getTripListFullyInitliazed() {

    HibernateTemplate template = getHibernateTemplate();

    List<Address> addresses = template.loadAll(Address.class);
    for (Address address : address) {
        template.initialize(address.getChildren());
    }
    return addresses;   
}

Can someone please tell me if this ok to do or if I should change something?

Answer 1

I think a more elegant approach would be to use HQL JOIN FETCH clause, since it minimizes the number of SQL queries issued, as well as makes your code more clear:

public List<Address> getTripListFullyInitliazed() {
    return getHibernateTemplate().find(
        "from Address a left join fetch a.children");
}

See also:

• 16.3. Associations and joins
• 21.1. Fetching strategies