How to clone a JPA entity

You are better off using a copy constructor and controlling exactly what attributes need to be cloned.

So, if you have a Post entity like this one:

@Entity(name = "Post")
@Table(name = "post")
public class Post {
 
    @Id
    @GeneratedValue
    private Long id;
 
    private String title;
 
    @OneToMany(
        mappedBy = "post",
        cascade = CascadeType.ALL, 
        orphanRemoval = true
    )
    private List<PostComment> comments = new ArrayList<>();
 
    @OneToOne(
        mappedBy = "post",
        cascade = CascadeType.ALL, 
        orphanRemoval = true, 
        fetch = FetchType.LAZY
    )
    private PostDetails details;
 
    @ManyToMany
    @JoinTable(
        name = "post_tag",
        joinColumns = @JoinColumn(
            name = "post_id"
        ),
        inverseJoinColumns = @JoinColumn(
            name = "tag_id"
        )
    )
    private Set<Tag> tags = new HashSet<>();
 
    //Getters and setters omitted for brevity
 
    public void addComment(
            PostComment comment) {
        comments.add(comment);
        comment.setPost(this);
    }
 
    public void addDetails(
            PostDetails details) {
        this.details = details;
        details.setPost(this);
    }
 
    public void removeDetails() {
        this.details.setPost(null);
        this.details = null;
    }
}

It does not make sense to clone the comments when duplicating a Post and using it as a template for a new one:

Post post = entityManager.createQuery(
    "select p " +
    "from Post p " +
    "join fetch p.details " +
    "join fetch p.tags " +
    "where p.title = :title", Post.class)
.setParameter(
    "title", 
    "High-Performance Java Persistence, 1st edition"
)
.getSingleResult();
 
Post postClone = new Post(post);
postClone.setTitle(
    postClone.getTitle().replace("1st", "2nd")
);
entityManager.persist(postClone);

What you need to add to the Post entity is a copy constructor:

/**
 * Needed by Hibernate when hydrating the entity 
 * from the JDBC ResultSet
 */
private Post() {}
 
public Post(Post post) {
    this.title = post.title;
 
    addDetails(
        new PostDetails(post.details)
    );
 
    tags.addAll(post.getTags());
}

This is the best way to address the entity clone/duplication problem. Any other methods, which try to make this process completely automatic, miss the point that not all attributes are worth duplicating.

Use EntityManager.detach. It makes the bean no longer linked to the EntityManager. Then set the Id to the new Id (or null if automatic), change the fields that you need and persist.

I face the same problem today : I have an entity in database and I want to :

• get it from database
• change one of its attributes value
• create a clone of it
• modify just some few attributes of the clone
• persist clone in database

I succeed in doing following steps :

@PersistenceContext(unitName = "...")
private EntityManager entityManager;

public void findUpdateCloneAndModify(int myEntityId) {
  // retrieve entity from database
  MyEntity myEntity = entityManager.find(MyEntity.class, myEntityId);
  // modify the entity
  myEntity.setAnAttribute(newValue);
  // update modification in database
  myEntity = entityManager.merge(myEntity);
  // detach entity to use it as a new entity (clone)
  entityManager.detach(myEntity);
  myEntity.setId(0);
  // modify detached entity
  myEntity.setAnotherAttribute(otherValue);
  // persist modified clone in database
  myEntity = entityManager.merge(myEntity);
}

Remark : last step (clone persistence) does not work if I use 'persist' instead of 'merge', even if I note in debug mode that clone id has been changed after 'persist' command !

The problem I still face is that my first entity has not been modified before I detach it.

When using EclipseLink, you can use the VERY handy CopyGroup-Feature:

http://wiki.eclipse.org/EclipseLink/Examples/JPA/AttributeGroup#CopyGroup

A big plus is that without much fiddling it properly clones private-owned relation-ships, too.

This is my code, cloning a Playlist with its private-owned @OneToMany-relationship is a matter of a few lines:

public Playlist cloneEntity( EntityManager em ) {
    CopyGroup group = new CopyGroup();
    group.setShouldResetPrimaryKey( true );
    Playlist copy = (Playlist)em.unwrap( JpaEntityManager.class ).copy( this, group );
    return copy;
}

Make sure that you use persist() to save this new object, merge() does not work.