Enumerations in Hibernate

Question

It is often useful to have a field in a DAO whose value comes from a Java enumeration. A typical example is a login DAO where you usually have a field that characterises the

Answer 1

using hibernate or JPA annotations:

class User {
   @Enumerated(EnumType.STRING)
   UserType type
}

UserType is just a standard java 5 enum.

I can't imagine this is just limited to just annotations but I don't actually know how to do this with hbm files. It may be very version dependant, I'm guessing but I'm pretty sure that hibernate 3.2+ is required.

edit: it is possible in a hbm, but is a little messy, have a look at this forum thread

Answer 2

From the Hibernate documentation: http://www.hibernate.org/272.html

You can create a new typedef for each of your enums and reference the typedefs in the property tag.

Example Mapping - inline <type> tag

  <property name='suit'>
    <type name="EnumUserType">
      <param name="enumClassName">com.company.project.Suit</param>
    </type>
  </property>

Example Mapping - using <typedef>

  <typedef name="suit" class='EnumUserType'>
      <param name="enumClassName">com.company.project.Suit</param>
  </typedef>

  <class ...>
    <property name='suit' type='suit'/>
  </class>