Spring Boot JPA Auditing

JPA Auditing in Spring Boot allows you to automatically track who created or modified an entity and when. This is extremely useful for audit logs, history tracking, and debugging.

🌟 Why Use JPA Auditing?

📅 Auto track createdDate, lastModifiedDate
👤 Record createdBy, modifiedBy
🧼 Cleaner code by avoiding manual field setting

🛠️ Add Dependencies

Make sure you have the following dependencies in your project:

Maven:

<dependency>
  <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
  <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-data-jpa</artifactId>
</dependency>

Gradle:

dependencies {
  implementation 'org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-data-jpa'
}

📋 Enable JPA Auditing

Add @EnableJpaAuditing to your main class or a configuration class.

import org.springframework.boot.SpringApplication;
import org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.SpringBootApplication;
import org.springframework.data.jpa.repository.config.EnableJpaAuditing;

@SpringBootApplication
@EnableJpaAuditing(auditorAwareRef = "auditorProvider")
public class DemoApplication {
  public static void main(String[] args) {
    SpringApplication.run(DemoApplication.class, args);
  }
}

import org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.SpringBootApplication
import org.springframework.boot.runApplication
import org.springframework.data.jpa.repository.config.EnableJpaAuditing

@SpringBootApplication
@EnableJpaAuditing(auditorAwareRef = "auditorProvider")
class DemoApplication

fun main(args: Array<String>) {
    runApplication<DemoApplication>(*args)
}

👤 Create AuditorAware Bean

This bean tells Spring Security who the current user is. Here's a basic static user example:

@Configuration
public class AuditingConfig {

  @Bean
  public AuditorAware<String> auditorProvider() {
    return () -> Optional.of("Şuayb");
  }
}

@Configuration
class AuditingConfig {

  @Bean
  fun auditorProvider(): AuditorAware<String> = AuditorAware { Optional.of("Şuayb") }
}

📖 Annotate Your Entity

Use auditing annotations like @CreatedDate, @LastModifiedDate, etc.

@Entity
@EntityListeners(AuditingEntityListener.class)
public class Article {

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

  private String title;

  @CreatedDate
  private LocalDateTime createdDate;

  @LastModifiedDate
  private LocalDateTime lastModifiedDate;

  @CreatedBy
  private String createdBy;

  @LastModifiedBy
  private String lastModifiedBy;

  // getters & setters
}

@Entity
@EntityListeners(AuditingEntityListener::class)
data class Article(
  @Id
  @GeneratedValue(strategy = GenerationType.IDENTITY)
  val id: Long? = null,

  var title: String? = null,

  @CreatedDate
  var createdDate: LocalDateTime? = null,

  @LastModifiedDate
  var lastModifiedDate: LocalDateTime? = null,

  @CreatedBy
  var createdBy: String? = null,

  @LastModifiedBy
  var lastModifiedBy: String? = null
)

▶️ Running the Application

Now when you save an entity using JpaRepository, auditing fields will be populated automatically.

🧪 Testing

You can test JPA Auditing functionality by saving an entity and checking whether the audit fields are populated.

@SpringBootTest
@AutoConfigureTestDatabase
@Transactional
class ArticleRepositoryTest {

  @Autowired
  private ArticleRepository articleRepository;

  @Test
  void testAuditFieldsAreSet() {
    Article article = new Article();
    article.setTitle("Test Title");

    Article saved = articleRepository.save(article);

    assertNotNull(saved.getCreatedDate());
    assertNotNull(saved.getLastModifiedDate());
    assertEquals("Şuayb", saved.getCreatedBy());
    assertEquals("Şuayb", saved.getLastModifiedBy());
  }
}

@SpringBootTest
@AutoConfigureTestDatabase
@Transactional
class ArticleRepositoryTest {

  @Autowired
  lateinit var articleRepository: ArticleRepository

  @Test
  fun `should set audit fields`() {
    val article = Article().apply {
      title = "Test Title"
    }

    val saved = articleRepository.save(article)

    assertNotNull(saved.createdDate)
    assertNotNull(saved.lastModifiedDate)
    assertEquals("Şuayb", saved.createdBy)
    assertEquals("Şuayb", saved.lastModifiedBy)
  }
}

Make sure your test includes the correct Spring context and that auditing is enabled during tests. You may also need to mock SecurityContext if you're using a dynamic user in production.

JPA Auditing is a powerful feature that lets you automatically track entity changes without cluttering your code. Happy coding! 🎯