Using MyBatis to Insert Collections Into MySQL

I recently updated one of my Java projects from and old iBatis version to the latest and greatest MyBatis 3.0.4. The conversion part was fairly straightforward so I decided to see what the new library could do to help with performance.

Since the application I’m writing is an ant task that process XML documents into list data that needs to be saved to MySQL, I wanted to see if MyBatis could help out with inserting Collections.

If you google around for ‘mybatis insert list’ you’ll end up on this page which shows the following (incorrect) XML snippet:

INSERT INTO tbl_name (A,B,C) VALUES 

    #{parm.val1},#{parm.val2},#{parm.val3}
;

Which will generate SQL:

INSERT INTO tbl_name(A, B, C) VALUES (1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, ...)

After downloading the source, finding the unit test that covered this scenario and adding an additional test for the case I was seeing I discovered that this is the snippet that generates correct MySQL SQL for inserting a list into a table:

    INSERT INTO tbl_name (A,B,C) VALUES (
    
        #{parm.val1},#{parm.val2},#{parm.val3}
    

)

Which will output SQL like:

INSERT INTO tbl_name(A, B, C) VALUES (1, 2, 3), (1, 2, 3), .....