Hibernate.orgCommunity Documentation
Table of Contents
This tutorial is located within the download bundle under basic/.
Objectives
using Hibernate mapping files (hbm.xml) to provide mapping information
using the native Hibernate APIs
The resource file hibernate.cfg.xml defines Hibernate configuration
information.
The connection.driver_class, connection.url,
connection.username and connection.password
property elements define JDBC connection information. These tutorials utilize the H2
in-memory database, So the values of these properties are all specific to running H2 in its in-memory mode.
connection.pool_size is used to configure the number of connections in Hibernate's
built-in connection pool.
The built-in Hibernate connection pool is in no way intended for production use. It lacks several features found on production-ready connection pools. See the section discussion in Hibernate Developer Guide for further information.
The dialect property specifies the particular SQL variant with which Hibernate will
converse.
In most cases, Hibernate is able to properly determine which dialect to use. This is particularly useful if your application targets multiple databases. This is discussed in detail in the Hibernate Developer Guide
The hbm2ddl.auto property enables automatic generation of database schemas directly into
the database.
Finally, add the mapping file(s) for persistent classes to the configuration. The resource
attribute of the mapping element causes Hibernate to attempt to locate that mapping as a
classpath resource, using a java.lang.ClassLoader lookup.
The entity class for this tutorial is org.hibernate.tutorial.hbm.Event.
Notes About the Entity
This class uses standard JavaBean naming conventions for property getter and setter methods, as well as private visibility for the fields. Although this is the recommended design, it is not required.
The no-argument constructor, which is also a JavaBean convention, is a
requirement for all persistent classes. Hibernate needs to create objects for you, using Java
Reflection. The constructor can be private. However, package or public visibility is required for runtime
proxy generation and efficient data retrieval without bytecode instrumentation.
The hbm.xml mapping file for this tutorial is the classpath resource
org/hibernate/tutorial/hbm/Event.hbm.xml as we saw in
Section 2.1, “The Hibernate configuration file”
Hibernate uses the mapping metadata to determine how to load and store objects of the persistent class. The Hibernate mapping file is one choice for providing Hibernate with this metadata.
Functions of the class mapping element
The name attribute (combined here with the package attribute from
the containing hibernate-mapping element) names the FQN of the class to be
defined as an entity.
The table attribute names the database table which contains the data for this
entity.
Instances of the Event class are now mapped to rows in the
EVENTS table.
Hibernate uses the property named by the id element to uniquely identify rows in the
table.
It is not required for the id element to map to the table's actual primary key
column(s), but it is the normal convention. Tables mapped in Hibernate do not even need to define
primary keys. However, it is strongly recommend that all schemas define proper referential
integrity. Therefore id and primary key are used interchangeably
throughout Hibernate documentation.
The id element here identifies the EVENT_ID column as
the primary key of the EVENTS table. It also identifies the
id property of the Event class as the property containing the
identifier value.
The generator element nested inside the id element informs Hibernate
about which strategy is used to generated primary key values for this entity. This example uses a simple
incrementing count.
Example 2.3. The property mapping element
<property name="date" type="timestamp" column="EVENT_DATE"/> <property name="title"/>
The two property elements declare the remaining two properties of the
Event class: date and title. The
date property mapping includes the column attribute, but the
title does not. In the absence of a column attribute, Hibernate
uses the property name as the column name. This is appropriate for title, but since
date is a reserved keyword in most databases, you need to specify a non-reserved
word for the column name.
The title mapping also lacks a type attribute. The types
declared and used in the mapping files are neither Java data types nor SQL database types. Instead,
they are Hibernate mapping types. Hibernate mapping types are
converters which translate between Java and SQL data types. Hibernate attempts to determine the correct
conversion and mapping type autonomously if the type attribute is not present in the
mapping, by using Java reflection to determine the Java type of the declared property and using a
default mapping type for that Java type.
In some cases this automatic detection might not chose the default you expect or need, as seen with the
date property. Hibernate cannot know if the property, which is of type
java.util.Date, should map to a SQL DATE,
TIME, or TIMESTAMP datatype.
Full date and time information is preserved by mapping the property to a timestamp converter,
which identifies an instance of the class org.hibernate.type.TimestampType.
Hibernate determines the mapping type using reflection when the mapping files are processed. This process adds overhead in terms of time and resources. If startup performance is important, consider explicitly defining the type to use.
The org.hibernate.tutorial.hbm.NativeApiIllustrationTest class illustrates using
the Hibernate native API.
The examples in these tutorials are presented as JUnit tests, for ease of use. One benefit of this
approach is that setUp and tearDown roughly illustrate
how a org.hibernate.SessionFactory is created at the start-up of an
application and closed at the end of the application lifecycle.
Example 2.4. Obtaining the org.hibernate.SessionFactory
protected void setUp() throws Exception {
// A SessionFactory is set up once for an application
sessionFactory = new Configuration()
.configure() // configures settings from hibernate.cfg.xml
.buildSessionFactory();
}
Procedure 2.1. Tutorial Workflow
The configuration is loaded.
The org.hibernate.cfg.Configuration class is the first thing to notice. In this
tutorial, all configuration details are located in the hibernate.cfg.xml file
discussed in Section 2.1, “The Hibernate configuration file”.
The org.hibernate.SessionFactory is created.
The org.hibernate.cfg.Configuration then creates the
org.hibernate.SessionFactory which is a thread-safe object that is
instantiated once to serve the entire application.
SessionFactory creates Session instances.
The org.hibernate.SessionFactory acts as a factory for
org.hibernate.Session instances as can be seen in the
testBasicUsage method.
Sessions perform work.
A org.hibernate.Session should be thought of as a corollary to a "unit of
work".
Example 2.5. Saving entities
Session session = sessionFactory.openSession(); session.beginTransaction(); session.save( new Event( "Our very first event!", new Date() ) ); session.save( new Event( "A follow up event", new Date() ) ); session.getTransaction().commit(); session.close();
testBasicUsage first creates some new Event objects and
hands them over to Hibernate for management, using the save method. Hibernate now
takes responsibility to perform an INSERT on the database.
Example 2.6. Obtaining a list of entities
session = sessionFactory.openSession();
session.beginTransaction();
List result = session.createQuery( "from Event" ).list();
for ( Event event : (List<Event>) result ) {
System.out.println( "Event (" + event.getDate() + ") : " + event.getTitle() );
}
session.getTransaction().commit();
session.close();
testBasicUsage illustrates use of the Hibernate Query Language
(HQL) to load all existing Event objects from the database and generate the
appropriate SELECT SQL, send it to the database and populate Event
objects with the result set data.