Mapping Oracle XMLType on JPA (EclipseLink)

Question

We have a project with some special requirements, one of wich is getting data from a XMLType database column from an Oracle 10g database.

We have found an easy solut

Answer 1

I think that it would be fine to share the full solution resulting from James' answer.

First, create a DescriptorCustomizer implmentation:

import org.eclipse.persistence.config.DescriptorCustomizer;
import org.eclipse.persistence.descriptors.ClassDescriptor;
import org.eclipse.persistence.mappings.xdb.DirectToXMLTypeMapping;

public class XMLDataCustomizer  implements DescriptorCustomizer {

    public void customize(final ClassDescriptor descriptor) throws Exception {
        descriptor.removeMappingForAttributeName("xmlField");
        DirectToXMLTypeMapping mapping = new DirectToXMLTypeMapping();
        mapping.setAttributeName("xmlField"); //name of the atribute on the Entity Bean
        mapping.setFieldName("XML_COLUMN"); //name of the data base column
        descriptor.addMapping(mapping);
    }

}

Then, all you have to do is use the @Customizer anotation on the entity, for the EntityManager to make use of it when handling the property called xmlField (as seen at the previous code snippet):

@Entity
@Table(name="TABLE_NAME")
@NamedQueries({ /* ... */})
@Customizer(XMLDataCustomizer.class)
public class DataEntity implements Serializable {
   /* ... */

   private String xmlField;

   /* .... */ 
}

The xmlField attribute does not need @Column anotation, as it's mapping is defined at our DescriptorCustomizer implementation.

And there is it.