Enum field in JPA Entity

Question

I feel a little dumb asking this but I can\'t find any simple answer to the question.

Take this simple entity as example:

@Entity
@Table( name=\"clienti\         


        

Answer 1

You can map your enum to a String or to an ordinal number. Mapping to String is the more portable approach as the mapping will survive changing the enumeration order.

Using your example:

@Entity
@Table( name="clienti" )
public class Cliente implements Serializable {

...
    @Enumerated(EnumType.STRING)
    private Gender gender;
...
}

The string mapping will use the simple name of the enumeration type, so you would have two possible values in the DB - 'Male' and 'Female'

public enum Gender { MALE, FEMALE }

The persistence provider takes care of the mapping, so in your code, you can continue using the Gender enum and not worry about Strings or ordinals.