Spring Data JPA Sort(Order by)

While using Spring Data JPA, I went through the pain of sorting not working. As usual, I tried to apply order by through a Spring Data method name, but for some reason it couldn’t find the column name, so an error occurred where the query statement couldn’t be generated. So I found a simple solution using the Sort object.

First, find the column name in the Entity below. Here, it’s vDate. Note that this is not the column name of the DB table.

// Entity

// package...
// import...

@Entity
// Annotations...
public class VisitorHistory {
    // Columns...
    @Temporal(TemporalType.TIMESTAMP)
    @Column(name = "V_DATE", nullable = false, insertable = false)
    private Date vDate;
}

Add a sort parameter to the Repository method.

// Repository

// package ...
// import ...
import org.springframework.data.domain.Sort;

import java.util.Date;

@Repository
public interface VisitorHistoryRepository extends JpaRepository<VisitorHistory, Integer> {
    List<VisitorHistory> findAllByvDateBetween(Date start, Date end, Sort sort);
}

In the Service, create a Sort object and pass it in. Doing it like the code below appends order by V_DATE DESC to the query statement.

// Service
public List<VisitorHistory> getVisitorsByTypeAndId(String id, String type) {
    Sort sort = sortByvDate();
    final List<VisitorHistory> visitors = visitorHistoryRepository.findAllByvUseridAndType(id, typeCode, sort);
    return visitors;
}

private Sort sortByvDate() {
    return Sort.by(Sort.Direction.DESC, "vDate");
}

Now it works just fine. Done!

Out of this huge Spring army… I wonder what percentage of it I actually understand while using it?