---
title: "Play Framework 2.0, Ebean Lazy Loading and Object References that are null"
date: 2013-01-04T10:29:56+00:00
author: "poornerd"
tags: ["ebean"]
canonical: https://www.poornerd.com/2013/01/04/play-framework-2-0-ebean-lazy-loading-and-object-references-that-are-null/
source: Raw Markdown twin of the HTML article; content is the original source.
---
I began having sporadic problems in my Play Framework 2.0.4 application where the attributes of referenced objects were null.

Example:
  
When getting a Contact object with ebean:
  
`Contact contact = Contact.find.byId(id)`

`contact.user.username`
  
will be null.

However, this will return the correct value:
  
`contact.user.getUsername()`

So I started googleing the problem and found this:

> Enhancement of direct Ebean field access (enabling lazy loading) is only applied to Java classes, not to Scala. Thus, direct field access from Scala source files (including standard Play 2 templates) does not invoke lazy loading, often resulting in empty (unpopulated) entity fields. To ensure the fields get populated, either (angel) manually create getter/setters and call them instead, or (beer) ensure the entity is fully populated before accessing the fields.
> 
> <a href="https://github.com/playframework/Play20/wiki/JavaEbean" target="_blank">https://github.com/playframework/Play20/wiki/JavaEbean</p> 
> 
> <p>
>   </a>
> </p></blockquote> 
> 
> <p>
>   This described the problem but offered a poor solution&#8230;
> </p>
> 
> <p>
>   Then I found this thread with the answer: <a href=" onclick="javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview('/outbound/article/github.com');"http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12977513/ewonetoone-relationship-with-play-framework-that-does-not-use-join" target="_blank">http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12977513/ewonetoone-relationship-with-play-framework-that-does-not-use-join</a>
> </p>
> 
> <p>
>   When loading the contact, you have to force the loading of the user as well!
> </p>
> 
> <p>
>   <code>Contact contact =&lt;br />
Ebean.find(Contact.class)&lt;br />
.fetch("user")&lt;br />
.where().eq("id", id)&lt;br />
.findUnique();</code>
> </p>