Why does EntityLoadByExample() ignore relationships?

[Sir_Meili]

I've been using ORM for a while, but just started getting into using EntityLoadByExample(). I thought this would be great, but I've run into an issue. Say I have an object "Art" and it has a many-to-one relationship to "Artist" (many arts may have the same artist).

So my sample Art object would be like:

component displayname = 'Art' {

     property name='artID' fieldtype='id' generator='identity';

     property name='title' type='string';

     property name='Artist' fieldtype='many-to-one' CFC='Artist' fkcolumn='ArtistID'

}

My sample Artist Object would be like:

component displayname = 'Artist' {

     property name='ArtistID' fieldtype='id' generator='identity';

     property name='Name' type='string';

}

So, lets say I have an artist in my DB:

ArtistID	Name
1	Monet
2	Rembrandt

And let's say I have some "Art" in my DB:

ArtID	title	ArtID
1	The Water Lily Pond	1
2	Woman with a Parasol	1
3	Poppies	1
4	The Night Watch	2
5	The Jewish Bride	2

So, I will get the Monet Object:

monet = EntityLoad( 'Artist' , 1 , true );

Then I will create a "new" Art and add in monet as the artist:

myBlankArt = EntityNew( 'Art' , { Artist = monet } );

So, my expectations is that I would be able to run the following code and ONLY get the Art Objects with ArtIDs 1, 2, and 3 (because they have ArtistID 1).

artSearch = EntityLoadByExample( 'Art' , myBlankArt );

However, what happens is I get ALL the Art Objects because it IGNORES the Artist object in my example entity.

Am I complete crazy for expecting this to work? I understand that it might be a limitation of Hibernate, but it is quite frustrating!

I have found a work around by adding the following property to the Art Object:

property name='ArtistID' forumula='select ArtistID';

then adding using the ID in the entity using some somewhat complex code to dynamically pull the objects, then grab their ids,

    public function loadByExample( example ) {

          local.metaData = getMetaData( arguments.example );

          for( local.property in local.metaData.properties ) {

               if( structKeyExists( local.property , 'fieldtype' ) && listFind( 'many-to-one,one-to-one' , local.property.fieldType , ',' ) ) {

                    if( structKeyExists( local.property , 'fkcolumn' ) ) {

                         local.innerObject = arguments.example.getProperty( local.property.name , arguments.example );

                         if( !isNull( local.innerObject ) )

                         {

                              local.id = local.innerObject.getPrimaryKey();

                              if( !isNull( local.id ) )

                              {

                                   arguments.example.setProperty( local.property.fkcolumn , local.id , local.newObject );

                              }

                         }

                    }

               }

          }

          return EntityLoadByExample( arguments.example );

     }

(note: getProperty and setProperty are methods in my base object that all my ORM objects extend that allow me to send in the name of a property and set/retrieve it instead of using the setter/getter. This is helpful when I am dynamically pulling the objects name)

It just seems like a hassle when the "...ByExample" I feel should do this for you.

[BKBK]

Sir_Meili wrote:

ArtID	title	ArtID
1	The Water Lily Pond	1
2	Woman with a Parasol	1
3	Poppies	1
4	The Night Watch	2
5	The Jewish Bride	2

artSearch = EntityLoadByExample( 'Art' , myBlankArt );

Two comments:

1.      The last table column should be artistID.
2.       Why don't you just go for something like

               artSearch = EntityLoadByExample(myBlankArt);

[Sir_Meili]

1. You are correct. it shoudl be artistID (And it would be in my use case). I can't edit the original post to fix it.

2. That is what I do, again you are correct. I'm new lot using EntityLoadByExample. It does not need the object name.

So, to be clear, when I run:

artSearch = EntityLoadByExample(myBlankArt);

it completely ignores that the myBlankArt Object has the artist object in it and returns all art objects.

(sorry for the errors in my example above, I was writing the example in the post, my objects are a bit more complex, so I wanted to dumb it down some.)

[BKBK]

myBlankArt = EntityNew( 'Art' , { Artist = monet } );

I would, after changing the last column name to artistID, do what comes naturally:

myBlankArt = EntityNew( 'Art' , { artistID = 1 } );