Configure Spring Audit

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In order to track when our entities are created and updated, we need to enable Spring JPA's auditing functionality to automatically maintain audit fields like @CreatedDate and @LastModifiedDate.

Enable JPA Auditing

Spring JPA auditing allows us to automatically track when entities are created and modified, but it needs to be explicitly enabled.

We'll enable it globally for our application with two key components:

A configuration class with the @EnableJpaAuditing annotation
An orm.xml configuration file that registers the auditing entity listener

Here's how we implement the configuration class:

@Configuration
@EnableJpaAuditing
public class JpaConfiguration {
}

Next, we need to create the orm.xml file in a specific location:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<entity-mappings xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/persistence/orm"
                 xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
                 xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/persistence/orm http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/persistence/orm_2_0.xsd"
                 version="2.0">
    <persistence-unit-metadata>
        <persistence-unit-defaults>
            <entity-listeners>
                <entity-listener class="org.springframework.data.jpa.domain.support.AuditingEntityListener"/>
            </entity-listeners>
        </persistence-unit-defaults>
    </persistence-unit-metadata>
</entity-mappings>

The orm.xml file needs to be placed in the src/main/resources/META-INF directory. When the application is built, this file will be included in the final package and made available to Hibernate.

Why Global Configuration?

While we could add the @EntityListeners annotation to each entity class individually, using global configuration through orm.xml is a better approach because:

It reduces code duplication
It makes the auditing behavior consistent across all entities
It's easier to maintain and modify in one central location

Summary

Created JpaConfiguration class with the @EnableJpaAuditing annotation
Added orm.xml configuration file enabling the audit fields