🔥 Backup options:
- “Stop Writing createdAt/updatedAt Manually in Spring Boot”
- “Spring Boot Auditing: The Feature That Makes Your Backend Look Professional”
- “How I Automated Entity Timestamps in Spring Data JPA”
When I started building CRUD APIs with Spring Boot, everything worked fine.
But one thing kept bothering me.
Every entity needed fields like:
- createdAt
- updatedAt
- createdBy
- updatedBy
And I was setting them manually.
Again and again.
In every service method.
For every entity.
That’s when I discovered Auditing in Spring Boot — and it instantly made my backend feel more real-world and production-ready.
🧠 What is Auditing in Spring Boot?
Auditing in Spring Boot allows you to automatically populate fields such as:
✅ Creation timestamp
✅ Last modification timestamp
✅ Created by user
✅ Last modified by user
So instead of manually updating these fields, Spring does it for you automatically.
✅ Why Auditing is Actually Useful
Auditing helps in:
- tracking data history
- debugging changes
- maintaining clean records
- building professional enterprise systems
Most real applications require this, especially when multiple users are modifying records.
🛠️ Steps to Add Auditing in Spring Boot
1️⃣ Create an Auditable Base Entity
Create a superclass and add:
✅ @EntityListeners(AuditingEntityListener.class)
This gives access to:
- @CreatedBy
- @CreatedDate
- @LastModifiedBy
- @LastModifiedDate
2️⃣ Extend All Entities from the Superclass
Instead of repeating auditing fields in every entity, simply extend the base class.
This keeps the code:
✅ clean
✅ reusable
✅ consistent
3️⃣ Implement AuditorAware
Create a class that implements AuditorAware.
Its job is to provide:
✅ the current authenticated user (usually from Spring Security)
This is how Spring knows who created/modified the entity.
4️⃣ Enable JPA Auditing
Enable auditing using:
✅ @EnableJpaAuditing
This is usually added in a configuration class.
5️⃣ Pass the AuditorAware Bean Reference
Connect your auditor provider to auditing configuration so Spring can use it globally.
🔍 Internal Working of Auditing (Simple Explanation)
Auditing works using an entity listener called AuditingEntityListener.
Whenever an entity is saved or updated, Spring triggers:
✅ PrePersist (before insert)
✅ PreUpdate (before update)
So when an entity is:
- created → created fields are filled automatically
- updated → last modified fields are updated automatically
The user information comes from AuditorAware.
🚀 Final Thoughts
Spring Boot Auditing is one of those features that quietly improves your backend quality.
If you’re still:
- manually setting timestamps
- repeating createdAt/updatedAt logic everywhere
- struggling to track modifications
Start using Auditing.
It makes your project look professional and enterprise-ready.
This post is part of my learning-in-public journey while exploring Spring Boot and real-world backend development.
Do you handle createdAt/updatedAt manually or are you using Spring Boot Auditing?
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