What is the best way to query a JPA entity for instances based on the current date+time?

Question

I have an entity type that has two dates, startDate and endDate:

import org.joda.time.DateTime;

@Entity
public class Thing {
    @Type(type = "org.jadira.usertype.dateandtime.joda.PersistentDateTime")
    private DateTime startDate;

    @Type(type = "org.jadira.usertype.dateandtime.joda.PersistentDateTime")
    private DateTime endtDate;
}

I have a Spring Data-JPA repository (extends CrudRepository) for this entity type, and in there I need a way to query for all Things that are "active" where "active" is defined as

startDate <= now <= endDate

I tried a JPQL query like this, but it's not producing the expected results in some of our tests:

@Query("select t from Thing t where t.startDate <= CURRENT_TIMESTAMP and t.endDate >= CURRENT_TIMESTAMP")
public Iterable<Thing> findAllActive();

---

I also tried a method-name-convention query, which does produce the results I expect, but it's awkward:

public Iterable<Thing> findByStartDateBeforeAndEndDateAfter(DateTime minStartDate, DateTime maxEndDate);

I can wrap that in my @Service like

public Iterable<Thing> getActiveThings() {
    DateTime now = DateTime.now();
    return repository.findByStartDateBeforeAndEndDateAfter(now, now);
}

So the service interface is clean, but the repo interface is ugly and awkward (in my opinion).

Is there a better way to construct this Repository query method using JPA, either a better method-name-based query or an explicit JPQL query? I'd prefer to not have to manually construct the Query object in code (right now I don't even have a concrete class for the Repository, only an interface), but if that's the best way I'll consider it.

Answer 1

You could simply have the following:

@Query("select t from Thing t where t.startDate <= :time and t.endDate >= :time")
public Iterable<Thing> findActiveThings(@Param("time") DateTime time);

Which has the advantage of using only 1 parameter , but also allows you to later have queries such as: "Give me the list of active things on January 24th 2011"

Answer 2

You can write a workaround, something like this:

@Query("SELECT t FROM Thing t WHERE t.startDate <= :maxStartDate AND :minEndDate <= t.endDate")
public Iterable<Thing> findAllActive();

And create DateTime maxStartDate and DateTime minEndDate which are e.g. 2015-01-01 00:00:00 and 2015-01-01 23:59:59

DateTime maxStartDate= new DateTime().withTime(23, 59, 59, 0);
DateTime minEndDate = new DateTime().withTimeAtStartOfDay();