Spring Cacheable not working with default key

Question

Spring is not caching my function when i am using default key such as -

@PostMapping("getDashboardDataNew")
@Cacheable(value="myDash")
public DashboardDto getHomeDashboardDataNew(@RequestBody DashboardRequest dashboardRequest) {
    LOGGER.info(" Get All the Dashboard Information : ");
    //code
    return dashboardDto;
}

But when I am providing custom key using sPEL its caching the response eg.

@PostMapping("getDashboardDataNew")
@Cacheable(value="myDash", key="#dashboardRequest.level")
public DashboardDto getHomeDashboardDataNew(@RequestBody DashboardRequest dashboardRequest) {
    LOGGER.info(" Get All the Dashboard Information : ");
    //code
    return dashboardDto;
}

The request payload is always-

{"fromDate":null,"toDate":null,"theme":null,"activity":null,"level":1,"levelValue":null,"state":null,"district":null}

Even after auto generating equals and hashcode using eclipse the spring is not caching the value. Below are the auto generated codes

@Override
public int hashCode() {
    final int prime = 31;
    int result = 1;
    result = prime * result + ((activity == null) ? 0 : activity.hashCode());
    result = prime * result + ((fromDate == null) ? 0 : fromDate.hashCode());
    result = prime * result + ((level == null) ? 0 : level.hashCode());
    result = prime * result + ((levelValue == null) ? 0 : levelValue.hashCode());
    result = prime * result + ((organizer == null) ? 0 : organizer.hashCode());
    result = prime * result + ((theme == null) ? 0 : theme.hashCode());
    result = prime * result + ((toDate == null) ? 0 : toDate.hashCode());
    return result;
}

@Override
public boolean equals(Object obj) {
    if (this == obj)
        return true;
    if (obj == null)
        return false;
    if (getClass() != obj.getClass())
        return false;
    DashboardRequest other = (DashboardRequest) obj;
    if (activity == null) {
        if (other.activity != null)
            return false;
    } else if (!activity.equals(other.activity))
        return false;
    if (fromDate == null) {
        if (other.fromDate != null)
            return false;
    } else if (!fromDate.equals(other.fromDate))
        return false;
    if (level == null) {
        if (other.level != null)
            return false;
    } else if (!level.equals(other.level))
        return false;
    if (levelValue == null) {
        if (other.levelValue != null)
            return false;
    } else if (!levelValue.equals(other.levelValue))
        return false;
    if (organizer == null) {
        if (other.organizer != null)
            return false;
    } else if (!organizer.equals(other.organizer))
        return false;
    if (theme == null) {
        if (other.theme != null)
            return false;
    } else if (!theme.equals(other.theme))
        return false;
    if (toDate == null) {
        if (other.toDate != null)
            return false;
    } else if (!toDate.equals(other.toDate))
        return false;
    return true;
}

I am not changing the request payload.

Answer 1

I figured out what went wrong here. I was changing one of the property of the request payload somewhere inside the function eg.

dashboardRequest.setLevel(dashboardRequest.getLevel() + 1);

And as spring cache AOP puts the value in cache after the method execution is was using the modified object instead of value provided in param effectively making my key different from the key that would have generated by request payload. Hope this helps someone.