automatic timestamps

Common problem: timestamps on your data

This is something quite common: you want to know, when your data was last changed and maybe who did it. Usually you keep a timestamp with your object and you need to make sure, that these timestamps are updated accordingly. Morphium does this automatically - just declare the annotations:

 @Entity
    @NoCache
    @LastAccess
    @LastChange
    @CreationTime
    public static class TstObjLA {
        @Id
        private ObjectId id;

        @LastAccess
        private long lastAccess;

        @LastChange
        private long lastChange;

        @CreationTime
        private long creationTime;

        private String value;

        public long getLastAccess() {
            return lastAccess;
        }

        public void setLastAccess(long lastAccess) {
            this.lastAccess = lastAccess;
        }

        public long getLastChange() {
            return lastChange;
        }

        public void setLastChange(long lastChange) {
            this.lastChange = lastChange;
        }

        public long getCreationTime() {
            return creationTime;
        }

        public void setCreationTime(long creationTime) {
            this.creationTime = creationTime;
        }

        public String getValue() {
            return value;
        }

        public void setValue(String value) {
            this.value = value;
        }
    }

You might ask, why do we need to specify, that access time is to be stored for the class and the field. The reason is: Performance! In order to search for a certain annotation we need to read all fields of the whole hierarchy the of the corresponding object which is rather expensive. In this case, we only search for those access fields, if necessary. All those are stored as long - System.currentTimeMillies()

Explanation:

• @StoreLastAccess: Stores the last time, this object was read from db! Careful with that one...
• @StoreCreationTime: Stores the creation timestamp
• @StoreLastChange: Timestamp the last moment, this object was stored.