How to implement the state design pattern in a JPA domain model

Question

I want to implement the state design pattern in JPA. The way I am currently doing this is outlined in this blog post.

The author uses an enum containing all available state implementations instead of creating abstract class/interface for state abstraction and writing implementation for each state. I find this approach very useful, since enums can be easily serialized in JPA and you can store the current state of your object without additional effort. I also nested the state interface and all state classes into the enum making them private, since they are implementation specific and should not be visible to any client. Here's a code example of the enum:

public enum State {

  STATE_A(new StateA()),
  STATE_B(new StateB());

  private final StateTransition state;

  private State(StateTransition state) {
     this.state = state;
  }

  void transitionA(Context ctx) {
    state.transitionA(ctx);
  }

  void transitionB(Context ctx) {
     state.transitionB(ctx);
  }

  private interface StateTransition {

    void transitionA(Context ctx);

    void transitionB(Context ctx);
  }

  private static class StateA implements StateTransition {

    @Override
    public void transitionA(Context ctx) {
        // do something
    ctx.setState(STATE_B);
    }

    @Override
    public void transitionB(Context ctx) {
        // do something
    ctx.setState(STATE_A);
    }
  }

  private static class StateB implements StateTransition {

    @Override
    public void transitionA(Context ctx) {
    throw new IllegalStateException("transition not allowed");
    }

    @Override
    public void transitionB(Context ctx) {
        // do something
    ctx.setState(STATE_A);
    }
  }
}

I'd like to and share this with you and get your thoughts on it. Do you find this useful? How would you implement the state design pattern in a JPA domain model?

score 0 · Answer 1 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:32

Well it's an old question, but for the sake of those who might search archives - I have used spring state machine with enums (instead Strings).

Regarding handling transitions, there are annotations that allow your functions to be called when transition happens.

1.1.0.RELEASE gives a default mechanism to persist a state by persisting StateMachineContext, and an alternative using persist recipe.

Now refering to JPA - it's possible to have Entity Listener that will initialize statemachine on postload (@Postload), I think it's not good path to go.

Mohan Radhakrishnan · Answer 2 · 2020-10-29T14:03:53.610

As a corollary this AspectJ pattern combined with constant-specific Enum classes is also useful. I am not showing Spring integration here as this focuses only on AspectJ. But I guess we can use Spring with AspectJ too.

One more point is that OO patterns can be powerful for this usecase. I show this pattern only because the question points to the blog post which has a link to a Spring and AspectJ example.

And I also have a need to use good OO patterns with JPA.

public interface StateTransition {

StateTransition activate();

StateTransition deActivate();

}
  
public enum AStateTransition implements StateTransition{

ACTIVATE(new Activation()),

DEACTIVATE(new DeActivation());

private final StateTransition stateTransition;

private AStateTransition(StateTransition stateTransition) {
    this.stateTransition = stateTransition;
}

@Override
public StateTransition activate() {
    return stateTransition.activate();
}

@Override
public StateTransition deActivate() {
    return stateTransition.deActivate();
}
}

public class Activation implements StateTransition {

@Override
public StateTransition activate() {
    return AStateTransition.ACTIVATE;
}

@Override
public StateTransition deActivate() {
    return AStateTransition.DEACTIVATE;
}
}

public class DeActivation implements StateTransition {

@Override
public StateTransition deActivate() {
    return AStateTransition.DEACTIVATE;
}

@Override
public StateTransition activate() {
    return AStateTransition.ACTIVATE;
}
}

 @Aspect()


 public class StateChangeAspect {

    //Could be more generic so that all implemented methods
    //are covered
    @Pointcut("execution(* AStateTransition.activate()) && target(stateTransition) && if()")

    public static boolean stateChangePointcut( AStateTransition stateTransition ){
        return AStateTransition.ACTIVATE == stateTransition;
    }

    @Before("stateChangePointcut(stateTransition)")
    public void test1( AStateTransition stateTransition ) {
        System.out.println( " aspect  " );
    }

    @Before("stateChangePointcut(stateTransition)")
    public void test1(JoinPoint joinPoint, AStateTransition stateTransition) {
      System.out.println(joinPoint + " -> " + stateTransition);
    }

}

Test code :

        System.out.println(AStateTransition.ACTIVATE.activate());
        System.out.println(AStateTransition.DEACTIVATE.deActivate());

How to implement the state design pattern in a JPA domain model

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