Hibernate SessionFactory vs. JPA EntityManagerFactory

Question

I am new to Hibernate and I\'m not sure whether to use a Hibernate SessionFactory or a JPA EntityManagerFactory to create a Hibernate Session

Answer 1

I want to add on this that you can also get Hibernate's session by calling getDelegate() method from EntityManager.

ex:

Session session = (Session) entityManager.getDelegate();

Answer 2

I prefer the JPA2 EntityManager API over SessionFactory, because it feels more modern. One simple example:

JPA:

@PersistenceContext
EntityManager entityManager;

public List<MyEntity> findSomeApples() {
  return entityManager
     .createQuery("from MyEntity where apples=7", MyEntity.class)
     .getResultList();
}

SessionFactory:

@Autowired
SessionFactory sessionFactory;

public List<MyEntity> findSomeApples() {
  Session session = sessionFactory.getCurrentSession();
  List<?> result = session.createQuery("from MyEntity where apples=7")
      .list();
  @SuppressWarnings("unchecked")
  List<MyEntity> resultCasted = (List<MyEntity>) result;
  return resultCasted;
}

I think it's clear that the first one looks cleaner and is also easier to test because EntityManager can be easily mocked.