We’re happy to announce 1.4 of our superfast mobile database that comes with three new features:

Queries may now return values for an individual property (also supports distinct values)
Entities may extend other entities
50% size reduction of native library

Property queries were one of the most requested features in the last months. They do not to return entire objects but only one property of the entity. This can be much more efficient and convenient. For example, you may only need the email adresses of all users entity:

String[] emails = userBox.query().build().property(User_.email).findStrings();

1	String[] emails = userBox.query().build().property(User_.email).findStrings();

An important aspect of querying individual properties are distinct values. For example, let’s query all the different (distinct) first names users have (“Joe” will be returned only once regardless of how many users are named “Joe”):

String[] names = userBox.query().build().property(User_.firstName).distinct().findStrings();

1	String[] names = userBox.query().build().property(User_.firstName).distinct().findStrings();

The API also let’s you configure the behavior in regards to null values and string case sensitivity. Check the JavaDocs of PropertyQuery for details.

Entity inheritance is the other new major functionality. You can now define persistent properties in super classes annotated with @Entity or the new @BaseEntity. The following example illustrates how to define a base class for all shapes including properties for a bounding box:

@BaseEntity
public class Shape {
    @Id long id;
    public double boundingBoxX1, boundingBoxY1, boundingBoxX2, boundingBoxY2;
}

@Entity
public class Circle extends Shape {
    public double x, y, radius;
}

@Entity
public class Triangle extends Shape {
    public double x1, y1, x2, y2, x3, y3;
}

@BaseEntity

public class Shape {

@Id long id;

public double boundingBoxX1, boundingBoxY1, boundingBoxX2, boundingBoxY2;

}

@Entity

public class Circle extends Shape {

public double x, y, radius;

}

@Entity

public class Triangle extends Shape {

public double x1, y1, x2, y2, x3, y3;

}

For more details and current restrictions, please check the entity inheritance docs.

And last but not least, we halfed the size of ObjectBox native libraries! The size of the AAR went down from 2,523 KB in V1.3.4 to 1,553 KB (38% reduction of the compressed archive containing 4 ABIs). We’re very happy about this, because we are dedicated to keep ObjectBox as fast and lean as possible.

Start Developing Today

3 Comments

djakdekiel on January 11, 2018 at 2:05 pm

Waiting for unique fields 🙁
Also you have some weird bug in this comment form. I don’t see fields names
Sumit on February 13, 2018 at 10:31 am

Actually, we are really enjoying Objectbox. But, every time I see the beta-repo thing, my heart skips a beat! Makes me rethink our decision, maybe we were too eager to move on to Objectbox, maybe we should have waited a tad bit longer?
Markus on February 14, 2018 at 3:46 pm

@Sumit: we’re in the process of moving everything to JCenter. It’s long overdue and it was never intended to stick with the custom repo so long…

@djakdekiel: yes, we know “unique” is important… Just a little bit more patience please…

ObjectBox 1.4 with Property Queries and Entity Inheritance

3 Comments