LDAP-305: Permit ODM to allow inheritance

[spring-projects-issues]

Demétrius Jubé (Migrated from LDAP-305) said:

I was trying do use some inheritance when using ODM. Looking in the Internet, I found out this thread: http://forum.spring.io/forum/spring-projects/data/ldap/129952-permit-odm-to-allow-inheritance

But I could not find anything here to make that modification, so I am opening an issue to it.

The solution Fneuch proposed was as follow:

Hi Guys,

First of all, sorry for any english mistake.

Secondly, is it me or ODM doesn't allow hierarchical inheritance? I've made a little change and it seems to work fine.

In the constructor of class ObjectMetaData I've replaced:

Code:

//Field[] fields = clazz.getDeclaredFields();

by

Code:

ArrayList<Field> fieldsTemp = new  ArrayList<>();
        fieldsTemp.addAll(Arrays.asList(clazz.getDeclaredFields()));
        Class<?> classTemp = clazz.getSuperclass();        
        while(!classTemp.equals(Object.class)) {
            fieldsTemp.addAll(Arrays.asList(classTemp.getDeclaredFields()));
          classTemp = classTemp.getSuperclass();            
        }
        // Get field meta-data - the @Attribute annotation
        Field[] fields = fieldsTemp.toArray(new Field[fieldsTemp.size()]);

Can you correct me here? Is there something that I didn't see? Because on create, find, delete I've seen no problem with my test... I didn't checkout project to made a full change, just replace the class in my own project for testing.

How can I ask for that feature in a future version? Thanks for any information!

Sylvain aka Fneuch

[spring-projects-issues]

daniel carter said:

This should be trivial to do by changing to use existing spring-framework utility methods. Then field behaviour will be the same as the rest of spring. Such a limitation that spring-ldap does not allow object-oriented programming

[btocquec]

Hi, Is there any chance to have this improvement added to a not-so-far release? Please ... :/ Thanks

[christophs78]

Just run into this issue... 4 years later... still not fixed. :-(

Background: I have to implement a ldap-scheme which has common attributs. (each objectClass has a base of the same 3 attributes) Wanted to put this 3 attributes into a base class. And inhert the concrete classes (Person, OrgUnit, ...) from this. Scheme: https://www.ref.gv.at/fileadmin/_migrated/content_uploads/LDAP-gv-at-teil1-2-3-0_2006-0221.pdf, Page 5 (2.4.2)

[ricejamesh]

In the meantime, perhaps a comment in the @Entry documentation stating that it doesn't support class inheritance. I've had the impression that I was doing something wrong in my project by using a class inheritance chain of customObject extends InterOrgPerson which extended OrganizationalPerson which extended Person. Until I read this post. A little comment in the @Entry annotation saying that it will only reference the fields in the annotated class and excludes parent classes would have saved me a lot of head scratching. I also feel that JPA repositories do support inheritance which led me to believe this did also. At this point, cut-and-paste along with Lombok is the intermediate solution until something changes.

[jtgasper3]

Ran into this today. Rather annoying. Please at least add a note to the @entry docs as @ricejamesh suggested.

[oscarbrookssynacor]

Hello, are there any plans to merge the PR that will close this issue?