Issue
How does Spring Data's findBy decide which database record to return if there are multiple matches?
I realised if I have more than one entry in my Elastic Search database with the same attribute code (ie: "123"), Spring only returns one entry when I call a 'findByAttributeCode'.
If I use a findById, its self explanatory as Id's are unique, however with other findBys, there can be many matches. Note: attributeCode is NOT unique.
How does Spring decide which one to return?
My call would be something like this:
Attribute attribute = findByAttribute(attributeCode);
The repo would look like this:
public interface AttributeRepository extends ElasticsearchRepository<Attribute, String> {
Attribute findByAttributeCode(String attributeCode);
}
Solution
What you should be doing, if there are more than one possibility is creating the method stub like this:
<Iterable>Attribute findByAttributeCode(String attributeCode);
This way you return them all. If you don't do that, you are beholden to the RDBMS in how it builds it swap to return a single entry from the multiple tuples it will return from the query it builds, which should be something like:
select * from table where attributeCode = ?;
Answered By - fpmoles
Answer Checked By - Timothy Miller (JavaFixing Admin)
