Returning a book

You are a developer for the Metropolitan Public Library's management system. Last week, a critical bug was discovered: when the system crashed during a book return, the loan was marked as "returned" but the book remained "checked-out" in the inventory. This left the book unavailable for weeks until staff manually corrected the database.

When a book is returned, three operations must succeed together or fail together:

Update the loan record to "returned" status.
Change the book's availability from "checked-out" to "available".
Record a fine if the book is returned late.

Your task is to implement proper transaction control to ensure data consistency.

This exercise is part of the course

Querying a PostgreSQL Database in Java

View Course

Exercise instructions

Set autoCommit to false at the beginning in line 26.
Commit the transaction if all operations succeed in line 59.
If any operation fails, roll back the transaction in line 66.

Hands-on interactive exercise

Have a go at this exercise by completing this sample code.

public class BookReturnProcessor {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        int loanId = 1;
        int bookId = 5;
        LocalDate dueDate = LocalDate.now().minusDays(2);
        
        try {
            boolean success = processBookReturn(loanId, bookId, dueDate);
            if (success) {
                System.out.println("Book return processed successfully.");
            } else {
                System.out.println("Book return processing failed.");
            }
        } catch (SQLException e) {
            System.err.println("Database error: " + e.getMessage());
        }
    }
    
    public static boolean processBookReturn(int loanId, int bookId, LocalDate dueDate) throws SQLException {
        Connection conn = null;
        try {
            HikariDataSource ds = HikariSetup.createDataSource();
            conn = ds.getConnection();
            
            // Start transaction by setting autoCommit to false
            conn.____(____);
            
            String updateLoanSQL = "UPDATE loans SET status = 'returned', return_date = ? WHERE loan_id = ?";
            try (PreparedStatement pstmt = conn.prepareStatement(updateLoanSQL)) {
                pstmt.setDate(1, java.sql.Date.valueOf(LocalDate.now()));
                pstmt.setInt(2, loanId);
                pstmt.executeUpdate();
            }
            
            String updateBookSQL = "UPDATE books SET status = 'available' WHERE book_id = ?";
            try (PreparedStatement pstmt = conn.prepareStatement(updateBookSQL)) {
                pstmt.setInt(1, bookId);
                pstmt.executeUpdate();
            }
            
            LocalDate today = LocalDate.now();
            if (today.isAfter(dueDate)) {
                long daysLate = ChronoUnit.DAYS.between(dueDate, today);
                double fineAmount = daysLate * 0.50;
                
                String insertFineSQL = "INSERT INTO fines (loan_id, amount, reason, date_assessed) VALUES (?, ?, ?, ?)";
                try (PreparedStatement pstmt = conn.prepareStatement(insertFineSQL)) {
                    pstmt.setInt(1, loanId);
                    pstmt.setDouble(2, fineAmount);
                    pstmt.setString(3, "Book returned " + daysLate + " days late");
                    pstmt.setDate(4, java.sql.Date.valueOf(today));
                    pstmt.executeUpdate();
                }
                
                System.out.println("Fine created: $" + fineAmount + " for loan " + loanId);
            }
            
            // Commit the transaction
            conn.____();
            
            return true;
            
        } catch (SQLException e) {
            // Roll back the transaction if an error occurs
            if (conn != null) {
                conn.____();
            }
            System.err.println("Error processing return: " + e.getMessage());
            return false;
        }
    }
}

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