Document that `JpaSpecificationExecutor.delete(…)` uses `CriteriaDelete` and hence `Cascades` are not considered

[bilak]

Hello,
When executing JpaSpecificationExecutor.delete(Specification<T> spec) the related entities which contains CascadeType.ALL are not deleted. However this works in CrudRepository.delete(T entity) or CrudRepository.deleteById(ID id).
Is this a bug (related to hibernate?) or is there any possibility to delete related entities with specification? I didn't found any info about this in documentation.

Sample app here with this test.

[quaff]

I think it's a limitation of ORM, for performance concern, batch delete will not load them into memory then delete one by one.

[bilak]

@quaff I don't understand what you mean. As I wrote, it works in CrudRespository.delete so it's not an limitation of ORM.

[quaff]

CrudRepository.deleteById(ID id) will call EntityManager.find() then call EntityManager.remove() which will fire event notify cascading.
JpaSpecificationExecutor.delete(Specification<T> spec) is implemented by CriteriaDelete which will only issue one single DELETE statement, cascading is not aware.

You should do this if insist cascading

jpaSpecificationExecutor.findBy(spec, q -> q.stream()).forEach(jpaRepository::delete)

Please note it will be slow if result is large.

[bilak]

@quaff thanks for explanation. I think it's not very consistent then and might be documented somewhere at least. I see developers using both of those methods (crud vs specs) and it leads to confusion mainly when ORM generates restrict by JPA definition.

[quaff]

Criteria API bulk delete operations map directly to database delete operations. The persistence context is not synchronized with the result of the bulk delete.

https://docs.oracle.com/javaee/7/api/index.html?javax/persistence/criteria/CriteriaDelete.html

[mp911de]

We updated our documentation to reflect that we're using CriteriaDelete when using specifications.