Column type for foreign key field empty when adding ManyToOne relationship with incremental changelogs

[marklcg]

Overview of the issue

I have an existing project with multiple entities and incremental changelogs enabled. I'm attempting to add a new entity with unidirectional ManyToOne relationships to the existing entities, however, the generator is not filling in the "type" attribute for the column definition correctly. It is empty resulting in liquibase errors later. In the example case, the type value should be "bigint" but is instead empty ("").

Motivation for or Use Case

I would like to add new entities and with unidirectional relationships to an existing project.

Reproduce the error

This project was generated with jhipster using:

jhipster --incremental-changelog

It's a monolith with default selections and mariadb. I created two entities by importing the following test.jdl (found in the project root).

entity Company {
   companyName String
}

entity Region {
    regionName String
}

To reproduce the issue, add the following to the JDL:

entity Employee {
    firstName String,
    lastName String
}

relationship ManyToOne {
   Employee{region} to Region
   Employee{company} to Company
}

Then re-import:

jhipster import-jdl test.jdl

You will see that the column type is null:

   <changeSet id="20210620155811-1" author="jhipster">
        <createTable tableName="employee">
            <column name="id" type="bigint">
                <constraints primaryKey="true" nullable="false"/>
            </column>
            <column name="first_name" type="varchar(255)">
                <constraints nullable="true" />
            </column>
            <column name="last_name" type="varchar(255)">
                <constraints nullable="true" />
            </column>
            <column name="region_id" type=""> <!-- HERE -->
                <constraints nullable="true" />
            </column>
            <column name="company_id" type=""> <!-- HERE -->
                <constraints nullable="true" />
            </column>
            <!-- jhipster-needle-liquibase-add-column - JHipster will add columns here -->
        </createTable>
    </changeSet>

Related issues

N/A

Suggest a Fix

I currently manually set the column types after the import to work around the issue.

JHipster configuration

INFO! Using JHipster version installed locally in current project's node_modules
Welcome to the JHipster Information Sub-Generator

JHipster Version(s)

bug-2@0.0.1-SNAPSHOT /home/xxxx/jhipster/bug2
└── generator-jhipster@7.0.1

JHipster configuration, a .yo-rc.json file generated in the root folder

.yo-rc.json file

{
  "generator-jhipster": {
    "incrementalChangelog": true,
    "blueprints": [],
    "otherModules": [],
    "applicationType": "monolith",
    "baseName": "bug2",
    "jhipsterVersion": "7.0.1",
    "skipClient": false,
    "skipServer": false,
    "skipUserManagement": false,
    "skipCheckLengthOfIdentifier": false,
    "skipFakeData": false,
    "jhiPrefix": "jhi",
    "entitySuffix": "",
    "dtoSuffix": "DTO",
    "testFrameworks": [],
    "pages": [],
    "creationTimestamp": 1624204207376,
    "serviceDiscoveryType": false,
    "reactive": false,
    "authenticationType": "jwt",
    "packageName": "com.example",
    "serverPort": "8080",
    "cacheProvider": "ehcache",
    "enableHibernateCache": true,
    "databaseType": "sql",
    "devDatabaseType": "h2Disk",
    "prodDatabaseType": "mariadb",
    "buildTool": "maven",
    "serverSideOptions": [],
    "websocket": false,
    "searchEngine": false,
    "messageBroker": false,
    "enableSwaggerCodegen": false,
    "clientFramework": "angularX",
    "withAdminUi": true,
    "clientTheme": "none",
    "enableTranslation": false,
    "nativeLanguage": "en",
    "packageFolder": "com/example",
    "jwtSecretKey": "xxxxx",
    "clientPackageManager": "npm",
    "clientThemeVariant": "",
    "languages": ["en", "fr"],
    "entities": ["Company", "Region"],
    "lastLiquibaseTimestamp": 1624204587000
  }
}

JDL for the Entity configuration(s) entityName.json files generated in the .jhipster directory

JDL entity definitions

entity Company {
  companyName String
}
entity Region {
  regionName String
}

Environment and Tools

openjdk version "11.0.11" 2021-04-20
OpenJDK Runtime Environment (build 11.0.11+9-Ubuntu-0ubuntu2.20.10)
OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM (build 11.0.11+9-Ubuntu-0ubuntu2.20.10, mixed mode, sharing)

git version 2.27.0
node: v12.18.2
npm: 7.13.0

Docker version 20.10.2, build 20.10.2-0ubuntu1~20.10.1

docker-compose version 1.25.0, build unknown

No change to package.json was detected. No package manager install will be executed.
Congratulations, JHipster execution is complete!

Entity configuration(s) entityName.json files generated in the .jhipster directory

See attached.

Browsers and Operating System

Linux pop-os 5.11.0-7614-generic #15161862669320.10~ecb25cd-Ubuntu SMP Thu Apr 22 16:00:45 UTC x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

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[github-actions]

This issue is stale because it has been open 30 days with no activity.
Our core developers tend to be more verbose on denying. If there is no negative comment, possibly this feature will be accepted.
We are accepting PRs 😃.
Comment or this will be closed in 7 days

[egvimo]

@pascalgrimaud I have the same issue, please reopen.

See my sample app.

[github-actions]

This issue is stale because it has been open 30 days with no activity.
Our core developers tend to be more verbose on denying. If there is no negative comment, possibly this feature will be accepted.
We are accepting PRs 😃.
Comment or this will be closed in 7 days

[egvimo]

Keep it open please.

[github-actions]

This issue is stale because it has been open 30 days with no activity.
Our core developers tend to be more verbose on denying. If there is no negative comment, possibly this feature will be accepted.
We are accepting PRs 😃.
Comment or this will be closed in 7 days

[egvimo]

The issue also persists in 7.4.0.

[github-actions]

This issue is stale because it has been open 30 days with no activity.
Our core developers tend to be more verbose on denying. If there is no negative comment, possibly this feature will be accepted.
We are accepting PRs 😃.
Comment or this will be closed in 7 days

[Tcharl]

I still don't get the thing about this 'incremental changelog' feature, when we have the liquibase-maven-plugin that is maintained by the liquibase community thus bullet proof...
I would have preferred to get a 'smart' integration of it within the jdl generation process (and of course also integrated with the reactive framework, which is not the case today).

Usage of the liquibase-maven-plugin:

1. Generate a database with the 'old' version (for example an h2 disk with ddl generated from your main branch)
2. Modify your entities (i.e. modify your jdl and import it
3. Execute the ./mvnw liquibase:diff command to get your new changelog
4. Reference the generated changelog in master.xml

I think that we could wrap this workflow into a import-jdl --incremental-changelog-from-branch=<legacy branch> which would:

1. Commit everything on the current branch
2. Switch to the legacy branch
3. Either startup the test (using h2disk) or start a container with dev database then the tests (IT will populate the database schema)
4. Switch back to the branch to update (1.)
5. Launch codegen
6. ./mvnw compile
7. ./mvnw liquibase:diff
8. Add the line in config/liquibase/master.xml
9. Continue the original jdl generation process.

I know that it would be a little bit painful to implement, but we won't have to maintain our changelog's code anymore (or maybe just the part that updates the .jhipster/*.json in order to keep sources changelog timestamps file and will easily keep being bullet proof on the generated code side.

[mraible]

@Tcharl Should we leave this issue open?

[yelhouti]

@mraible yes please leave it open.

I have been debugging this today and the issue seems to come from:

1. relationship.otherEntity.liquibaseFakeData

When an entity is added by specifying only and exactly one side:

relationship ManyToOne {
    A{b required} to B
}

NOT

relationship ManyToOne {
    A to B
}

or

relationship ManyToOne {
    A{b required} to B{a}
}

it causes jhipster to not see that B has a new relationship, and not calling prepareFakeData on it, which causes the csv (and depending on the version other stuff) to be broken.

EDIT:
workaround:

generate first with the 2 sides, then regenerate after removing a side if you don't want it

[github-actions]

This issue is stale because it has been open for too long without any activity.
Due to the moving nature of jhipster generated application, bugs can become invalid.
If this issue still applies please comment otherwise it will be closed in 7 days