How do I update an entity using spring-data-jpa?

Well the question pretty much says everything. Using JPARepository how do I update an entity?

JPARepository has only a save method, which does not tell me if it’s create or update actually. For example, I insert a simple Object to the database User, which has three fields: firstname, lastname and age:

 @Entity
 public class User {

  private String firstname;
  private String lastname;
  //Setters and getters for age omitted, but they are the same as with firstname and lastname.
  private int age;

  @Column
  public String getFirstname() {
    return firstname;
  }
  public void setFirstname(String firstname) {
    this.firstname = firstname;
  }

  @Column
  public String getLastname() {
    return lastname;
  }
  public void setLastname(String lastname) {
    this.lastname = lastname;
  }

  private long userId;

  @Id
  @GeneratedValue(strategy=GenerationType.AUTO)
  public long getUserId(){
    return this.userId;
  }

  public void setUserId(long userId){
    this.userId = userId;
  }
}

Then I simply call save(), which at this point is actually an insert into database:

 User user1 = new User();
 user1.setFirstname("john"); user1.setLastname("dew");
 user1.setAge(16);

 userService.saveUser(user1);// This call is actually using the JPARepository: userRepository.save(user);

So far so good. Now I want to update this user, say change his age. For this purpose I could use a Query, either QueryDSL or NamedQuery, whatever. But, considering I just want to use spring-data-jpa and the JPARepository, how do I tell it that instead of an insert I want to do an update?

Specifically, how do I tell spring-data-jpa that users with the same username and firstname are actually EQUAL and that the existing entity supposed to be updated? Overriding equals did not solve this problem.

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