Auto Generate Created and Modified Date Time in Spring Boot

In Spring Boot, managing timestamps for data auditing is simplified with Spring Data JPA’s auditing features. By using the @CreatedDate and @LastModifiedDate annotations along with @EntityListeners, you can automatically record when an entity is created or updated. Simply enable auditing with @EnableJpaAuditing in your main class to integrate this functionality seamlessly.

Quick Setup

To fully utilize the benefits of auto generate created and modified date time in Spring Boot, ensure that your application is configured correctly.

Annotate Your Entity:

We need to annotate our entity class with @EntityListeners and extend AuditingEntityListener. Also, we need to use @CreatedDate and @LastModifiedDate annotations for the date-time fields.

import org.springframework.data.annotation.CreatedDate;
import org.springframework.data.annotation.LastModifiedDate;
import org.springframework.data.jpa.domain.support.AuditingEntityListener;

import javax.persistence.*;
import java.time.LocalDateTime;

@Entity
@EntityListeners(AuditingEntityListener.class)
public class UserEntity {

    @Id
    @GeneratedValue(strategy = GenerationType.IDENTITY)
    private Long id;

    // Other fields...

    @CreatedDate
    @Column(name = "created_at")
    private LocalDateTime createdAt;

    @LastModifiedDate
    @Column(name = "updated_at")
    private LocalDateTime updatedAt;

    // Getters and setters...
}

With the implementation of auto generate created and modified date time in Spring Boot, the application will seamlessly handle date-time values.

Enable Auditing in Application:

Enable auditing in our Spring Boot application by adding the @EnableJpaAuditing annotation.

I prefer to use this annonation in the main class. If you want to use it in custom configuration then you can.

Example:

import org.springframework.boot.SpringApplication;
import org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.SpringBootApplication;

import org.springframework.data.jpa.repository.config.EnableJpaAuditing;


@SpringBootApplication
@EnableJpaAuditing
public class SBApplication {

	public static void main(String[] args) {
		SpringApplication.run(BanyanServiceApplication.class, args);
	}


}

That’s it 🙂

Using the functionality to auto generate created and modified date time in Spring Boot can greatly simplify your entity management and auditing processes.

With these annotations and configuration, Spring Data JPA will automatically update the createdAt and updatedAt fields in our entity class.

Understanding the Annotations

The @CreatedDate and @LastModifiedDate annotations are part of Spring Data JPA’s auditing capabilities. By incorporating these annotations into our entity classes, we can automate the recording of creation and modification timestamps without the need for manual intervention.