How to make an Entity read-only?

Question

What is the proper way to make an Entity read-only with JPA ? I wish my database table to never be modified at all programmatically.

I think I understand that I sho

Answer 1

IIRC you could set every field to insertable = false and updatable = false in your @Column annotations, but I'm sure there must be a better method... :)

I don't suppose this helps?

Answer 2

This is probably going to catch me a downvote because I always get downvoted for suggesting it, but you could use AspectJ in several ways to enforce this:

Either automate Mac's solution (make AspectJ inject the @Column annotation):

declare @field : (@Entity *) *.* : @Column(insertable=false);

Or declare a compiler error for all access to set methods:

declare error : execution((@Entity *) *.set*(*) );

Downside: you need to add AspectJ compilation to your build, but that's easy if you use ant or maven

Answer 3

I think what you are looking for is your entity to be Immutable. Hibernate supports this; JPA(at least JPA 1.0) does not. I suppose you can only control this by providing only getters and make sure that the getters return only immutable values.