Lazy Loading In Loop

Potential JPA/Hibernate lazy-loading N+1 patterns: collection getter calls on entities inside loops.

Rule details

Rule ID	lazy-loading-in-loop
Severity	WARNING — likely performance problem
Confidence	LOW — heuristic, check manually
Category	Query patterns
Complexity	O(n × IO) → O(1 × IO + n)

What it detects

List<Order> orders = orderRepository.findAll();
for (Order order : orders) {
    List<LineItem> items = order.getLineItems();  // lazy load per iteration
    process(items);
}

Each getLineItems() call may trigger a separate SQL query if the association is lazily loaded.

Why LOW confidence

This rule uses name-based heuristics — it flags getter methods with plural/collection-style names (getOrders, getLineItems, getRoles) but can't distinguish lazy-loaded collections from preloaded fields without type information. Scalar getters like getName(), getStatus() are not flagged.

What it skips

• Scalar getters (non-plural names)
• Names with scalar-looking suffixes (-ss, -us, -ness, etc.)
• Loops where the entity wasn't assigned from a repository-like fetch
• Non-JVM languages

Fix

Use a JPQL fetch join or @EntityGraph to load the association in the same query:

@Query("SELECT o FROM Order o JOIN FETCH o.lineItems")
List<Order> findAllWithLineItems();

Or with @EntityGraph (Spring Data JPA):

@EntityGraph(attributePaths = "lineItems")
List<Order> findAll();