JPA getSingleResult() or null

Question

I have an insertOrUpdate method which inserts an Entity when it doesn't exist or update it if it does. To enable this, I have to findByIdAndForeignKey, if it returned null insert if not then update. The problem is how do I check if it exists? So I tried getSingleResult. But it throws an exception if the

public Profile findByUserNameAndPropertyName(String userName, String propertyName) {
    String namedQuery = Profile.class.getSimpleName() + ".findByUserNameAndPropertyName";
    Query query = entityManager.createNamedQuery(namedQuery);
    query.setParameter("name", userName);
    query.setParameter("propName", propertyName);
    Object result = query.getSingleResult();
    if (result == null) return null;
    return (Profile) result;
}

but getSingleResult throws an Exception.

Thanks

Answer 1

Throwing an exception is how getSingleResult() indicates it can't be found. Personally I can't stand this kind of API. It forces spurious exception handling for no real benefit. You just have to wrap the code in a try-catch block.

Alternatively you can query for a list and see if its empty. That doesn't throw an exception. Actually since you're not doing a primary key lookup technically there could be multiple results (even if one, both or the combination of your foreign keys or constraints makes this impossible in practice) so this is probably the more appropriate solution.