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Buggy JPA support in Google App Engine I wanted to develop application that allows me to track my running log on the web. Also, I wanted test NetBeans Google App Engine plugin that I was working in the last weeks. Since, I'm familiar with JPA I choose this datastore for my application and created the simple Activity entity class like this (app is hosted here):

    @Entity
public class Activity implements Serializable {

    @Id
    @GeneratedValue(strategy=GenerationType.IDENTITY)
    private Long id;
    private ActivityType type;
    @Temporal(TemporalType.TIMESTAMP)
    private Calendar start;
    private int avgheartRate;
    private long duration;

    public Activity() {
        
    }
 

Then, I implemented facade class that access datastore and persist activity in database:

     public void createActivity(ActivityType type, Calendar start,
            int avgheartRate, long duration) {
        EntityManager em = PersistenceFactory.getFactory().createEntityManager();
        Activity activity = new Activity(type, start, avgheartRate, duration);
        EntityTransaction tx = em.getTransaction();
        try {
            tx.begin();
            em.persist(activity);
            tx.commit();
        } catch (Exception ex) {
            if(tx != null && tx.isActive())
            tx.rollback();
            Logger.getLogger(this.getClass().getCanonicalName()).log(Level.SEVERE, ex.getLocalizedMessage(), ex);
        } finally {
             em.close();
        }
    }
 

Google App Engine has very nice support for unit testing hence I wrote simple test for above method and run tests. However, I got following exception:

 java.lang.UnsupportedOperationException
        at org.datanucleus.store.appengine.EntityUtils.getPropertyName(EntityUtils.java:60)
        at org.datanucleus.store.appengine.DatastoreFieldManager.getPropertyName(DatastoreFieldManager.java:872)
        at org.datanucleus.store.appengine.DatastoreFieldManager.storeObjectField(DatastoreFieldManager.java:757)
        at org.datanucleus.state.AbstractStateManager.providedObjectField(AbstractStateManager.java:1011)
        at org.mujbeh.model.Activity.jdoProvideField(Activity.java)
        at org.mujbeh.model.Activity.jdoProvideFields(Activity.java)
        at org.datanucleus.state.JDOStateManagerImpl.provideFields(JDOStateManagerImpl.java:2597)
        at org.datanucleus.store.appengine.DatastorePersistenceHandler.insertObject(DatastorePersistenceHandler.java:180)
        at org.datanucleus.state.JDOStateManagerImpl.internalMakePersistent(JDOStateManagerImpl.java:3067)
        at org.datanucleus.state.JDOStateManagerImpl.flush(JDOStateManagerImpl.java:4395)
        at org.datanucleus.ObjectManagerImpl.flushInternal(ObjectManagerImpl.java:2807)
        at org.datanucleus.ObjectManagerImpl.flush(ObjectManagerImpl.java:2747)
        at org.datanucleus.ObjectManagerImpl.preCommit(ObjectManagerImpl.java:2886)
        at org.datanucleus.TransactionImpl.internalPreCommit(TransactionImpl.java:348)
        at org.datanucleus.TransactionImpl.commit(TransactionImpl.java:235)
        at org.datanucleus.jpa.EntityTransactionImpl.commit(EntityTransactionImpl.java:104)
        at org.mujbeh.PersistenceFacadeImpl.createActivity(PersistenceFacadeImpl.java:37)
        at org.mujbeh.PersistenceFacadeImplTest.testCreateActivity(PersistenceFacadeImplTest.java:31)
        at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
        at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:39)
        at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:25)
        at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:597)
        at junit.framework.TestCase.runTest(TestCase.java:168)
        at junit.framework.TestCase.runBare(TestCase.java:134)
        at junit.framework.TestResult$1.protect(TestResult.java:110)
        at junit.framework.TestResult.runProtected(TestResult.java:128)
        at junit.framework.TestResult.run(TestResult.java:113)
        at junit.framework.TestCase.run(TestCase.java:124)
        at junit.framework.TestSuite.runTest(TestSuite.java:232)
        at junit.framework.TestSuite.run(TestSuite.java:227)
        at org.apache.tools.ant.taskdefs.optional.junit.JUnitTestRunner.run(JUnitTestRunner.java:515)
        at org.apache.tools.ant.taskdefs.optional.junit.JUnitTestRunner.launch(JUnitTestRunner.java:1031)
        at org.apache.tools.ant.taskdefs.optional.junit.JUnitTestRunner.main(JUnitTestRunner.java:888)
 

I spent almost one hour on debugging and finding the issue in my code but without any success. Then, I found out that it's known issue that was reported in April 09. The issue and some workarounds that don't work for me are described here. There are many posts from users who encounter this issue in their applications. It seems as the stopper for Persistence in Google App Engine and totally blocks me to continue in my application. Above use cases is really crucial for every application that might be developed in Google App Engine. JPA support in Google App Engine SDK 1.2.1 is useless now. Posted by pblaha ( Jun 23 2009, 04:54:19 PM CEST ) Permalink Comments [1]

Google App Engine plugin in NetBeans Me and several colleagues were thinking how to develop web applications for Google App Engine in NetBeans. We didn't find out any plugin that would support this functionality hence we decided to write support for this in NetBeans. The project is hosted here. Currently, we support following features:

• Registering App Engine SDK in NetBeans as local J2EE server
• The App Engine would be used as target server for JavaEE web projects
• Generation of specific configuration file
• Visual editor for appengin-web.xml
• Debug web application on local App Engine server
• Deployment to App Engine cloud
• Editor hints
• App Engine Samples
• JPA support
• File templates for cron, index files
• Code completion in configuration files like cron, app-engine

Also, I recorded video how it's easy to develop Google App Engine application in NetBeans. You can see that Hello World takes just 1 minute. :-)

Posted by pblaha ( Jun 09 2009, 01:12:01 PM CEST ) Permalink