This
example is the same as the first example except
that it uses annotations. There we first started by creating the .hbm.xml file,
here there is no need to create it instead we will use annotations to do the
object relational mapping.
In addition to the already existing jar files you
need to add the following jar files to the classpath.
1.hibernate-commons-annotations.jar
2.ejb3-persistence.jar
3.hibernate-annotations.jar
Here
we first start by creating the Course class.
The Course class
is shown below.
01.package com.vaannila.course;
02.
03.import javax.persistence.Column;
04.import javax.persistence.Entity;
05.import javax.persistence.GeneratedValue;
06.import javax.persistence.Id;
07.import javax.persistence.Table;
08.
09.
10.@Entity
11.@Table(name="COURSES")
12.public class Course {
13.
14.private long courseId;
15.private String courseName;
16.
17.public Course() {
18.}
19.
20.public Course(String courseName) {
21.this.courseName = courseName;
22.}
23.
24.@Id
25.@GeneratedValue
26.@Column(name="COURSE_ID")
27.public long getCourseId() {
28.return this.courseId;
29.}
30.
31.public void setCourseId(long courseId) {
32.this.courseId = courseId;
33.}
34.
35.@Column(name="COURSE_NAME", nullable=false)
36.public String getCourseName() {
37.return this.courseName;
38.}
39.
40.public void setCourseName(String courseName)
{
41.this.courseName = courseName;
42.}
43.
44.}
As
you can see we have used annotations in the code to do the object relational
mapping. Hibernate supports EJB 3 persistence annotations. The EJB 3
annotations are contained in thejavax.persistence package.
If you avoid using Hibernate specific features in your application, then you
will have the freedom to deploy your application in any environment that
supports EJB 3. Anything imported from javax.persistence package
tree is EJB 3 supported and anything imported fromorg.hibernate package
tree is Hibernate specific.
The @Entity annotation
is used to mark this class as an Entity bean. So the class should atleast have
a package scope no-argument constructor.
The @Table annotation
is used to specify the table to persist the data. The name attribute
refers to the table name. If @Table annotation
is not specified then Hibernate will by default use the class name as the table
name.
The @Id annotation
is used to specify the identifier property of the entity bean. The placement of
the@Id annotation
determines the default access strategy that Hibernate will use for the mapping.
If the@Id annotation
is placed over the field, then filed access will be used. Instead if it placed
over the getter method of that field, then property access will be used. Here
we use property access.
The @GeneratedValue annotation
is used to specify the primary key generation strategy to use. If the strategy
is not specified by default AUTO will
be used.
The @Column annotation
is used to specify the details of the column to which a field or property will
be mapped. Here the courseId property is mapped to COURSE_ID column
in the COURSES table. If the @Column annotation
is not specified by default the property name will be used as the column name.
The
next change you need to do here is, instead of adding the .hbm.xml file
to the hibernate.cfg.xmlfile, we add the fully qualified name of the
annotated class to the mapping element.
01.<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
02.<!DOCTYPE
hibernate-configuration PUBLIC
03."-//Hibernate/Hibernate
Configuration DTD 3.0//EN"
05.<hibernate-configuration>
06.<session-factory>
07.<property name="hibernate.connection.driver_class"> org.hsqldb.jdbcDriver</property>
09.<property name="hibernate.connection.username">sa</property>
10.<property name="connection.password"></property>
11.<property name="connection.pool_size">1</property>
12.<property name="hibernate.dialect"> org.hibernate.dialect.HSQLDialect</property>
13.<property name="show_sql">true</property>
14.<property name="hbm2ddl.auto">create</property>
15.<mapping class="com.vaannila.course.Course" />
16.</session-factory>
17.</hibernate-configuration>
The SessionFactory should
be configured using the AnnotationConfiguration object
instead of theConfiguration object
used with XML mappings.
01.package com.vaannila.util;
02.
03.import org.hibernate.SessionFactory;
04.import org.hibernate.cfg.AnnotationConfiguration;
05.
06.public class HibernateUtil {
07.private static final SessionFactory sessionFactory;
08.static {
09.try {
10.sessionFactory = new AnnotationConfiguration().configure()
11..buildSessionFactory();
12.} catch (Throwable ex) {
13.System.err.println("Initial
SessionFactory creation failed." + ex);
14.throw new ExceptionInInitializerError(ex);
15.}
16.}
17.
18.public static SessionFactory
getSessionFactory() {
19.return sessionFactory;
20.}
21.}
These are the only few changes you need to do to
make the example work using annotations. Now the big question is should you use
annotations?
If your answer is yes to the following questions
then you can use annotations in your project.
·
Do you have the flexibility to use
Java 5 Environment?
·
Do you have the knowledge of which
production database you are going to use? If yes, you can use annotations, this
brings in strong coupling. Inorder to support multiple databases, it is better
to have the mapping information in a seperate xml file rather than using
annotations. You can easily have multiple xml files each specific for a
particular database rather than having a different sets of source codes.
Instead than keeping the mapping informations in a
seperate file, using annotations you can always keep them along with the source
code, in this way the soure code and mapping information will always be in sync.
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