Create new JBoss Tools Documentation Jira issue

This will launch the Jboss Tools Jira page - to complete your feedback please login if needed, and submit the Jira.

JBoss.orgCommunity Documentation

Hibernate Tools Reference Guide

Olga Chikvina

Svetlana Mukhina

Version: 3.3.0.GA


1. Preface
1.1. Key Features
1.2. Other relevant resources on the topic
2. Download and install Hibernate Tools
2.1. JBoss Tools
2.2. Eclipse IDE
2.2.1. Usage of Eclipse WTP
2.3. Ant
3. Code generation architecture
3.1. Hibernate Meta Model
3.2. Exporters
4. Eclipse Plugins
4.1. Introduction
4.1.1. Download base project
4.2. Creating a Hibernate Mapping File
4.3. Creating a Hibernate Configuration File
4.4. Hibernate Console Configuration
4.4.1. Creating a Hibernate Console Configuration
4.4.2. Modifying a Hibernate Console Configuration
4.4.3. Closing Hibernate Console Configuration
4.5. Reverse Engineering and Code Generation
4.5.1. Code Generation Launcher
4.5.2. Exporters
4.6. Hibernate Mapping and Configuration File Editor
4.6.1. Java property/class completion
4.6.2. Table/Column completion
4.6.3. Configuration property completion
4.7. Structured Hibernate Mapping and Configuration File Editor
4.8. JBoss Tools Properties Editor
4.9. Reveng.xml Editor
4.10. Hibernate Console Perspective
4.10.1. Viewing the entity structure
4.10.2. Prototyping Queries
4.10.3. Properties View
4.11. Hibernate:add JPA annotations refactoring
4.12. Enable debug logging in the plugins
4.12.1. Relevant Resources Links
4.13. Hibernate support for Dali plugins in Eclipse WTP
4.13.1. Creating JPA project with Hibernate support
4.13.2. Generating DDL and Entities
4.13.3. Hibernate Annotations Support
4.13.4. Relevant Resources Links
5. Ant Tools
5.1. Introduction
5.2. The <hibernatetool> Ant Task
5.2.1. Basic examples
5.3. Hibernate Configurations
5.3.1. Standard Hibernate Configuration (<configuration>)
5.3.2. Annotation based Configuration (<annotationconfiguration>)
5.3.3. JPA based configuration (<jpaconfiguration>)
5.3.4. JDBC Configuration for reverse engineering (<jdbcconfiguration>)
5.4. Exporters
5.4.1. Database schema exporter (<hbm2ddl>)
5.4.2. POJO java code exporter (<hbm2java>)
5.4.3. Hibernate Mapping files exporter (<hbm2hbmxml>)
5.4.4. Hibernate Configuration file exporter (<hbm2cfgxml>)
5.4.5. Documentation exporter (<hbm2doc>)
5.4.6. Query exporter (<query>)
5.4.7. Generic Hibernate metamodel exporter (<hbmtemplate>)
5.5. Using properties to configure Exporters
5.5.1. <property> and <propertyset>
5.5.2. Getting access to user specific classes
6. Controlling reverse engineering
6.1. Default reverse engineering strategy
6.2. hibernate.reveng.xml file
6.2.1. Schema Selection (<schema-selection>)
6.2.2. Type mappings (<type-mapping>)
6.2.3. Table filters (<table-filter>)
6.2.4. Specific table configuration (<table>)
6.3. Custom strategy
6.4. Custom Database Metadata
7. Controlling POJO code generation
7.1. The <meta> attribute
7.1.1. Recommendations
7.1.2. Advanced <meta> attribute examples

Hibernate Tools is a toolset for Hibernate 3 and related projects. The tools provide Ant tasks and Eclipse plugins for performing reverse engineering, code generation, visualization and interaction with Hibernate.

First, we propose to look through the list of key features that you can benefit from if you start using Hibernate Tools.

Table 1.1. Key Functionality for Hibernate Tools

FeatureBenefitChapter

Code Generation through Ant Task

Allows to execute mapping or Java code generation from reverse engineering, schema generation and generation of other artifacts during the build process.

ant task

Wizards for creation purposes and code generation

A set of wizards are provided with the Hibernate Eclipse tools to quickly create common Hibernate files such as configuration (cfg.xml) files, mapping files and revenge.xml as well. Code Generation wizard helps to generate a series of various artifacts, there is even support for completely reverse engineer an existing database schema.

hibernate mapping file hibernate configuration file code generation

Mapping and Configuration files Editors

Support auto-completion and syntax highlighting. Editors also support semantic auto-completion for class names and property/field names, making it much more versatile than a normal XML editor.

mapping and configuration files editors

Tools for organizing and controlling Reverse Engineering

Code Generation wizard provides powerful functionality for generating a series of various artifacts like domain model classes, mapping files, annotated EJB3 entity beans, etc. and reveng.xml file editor allows to control this processes.

code generation reveng.xml editor

Hibernate Console

It is a new perspective in Eclipse which provides an overview of your Hibernate Console configurations, were you also can get an interactive view of your persistent classes and their relationships. The console allows you to execute HQL queries against your database and browse the result directly in Eclipse.

hibernate console

HQL Editor and Hibernate Criteria Editor

The editors are intended for writing, editing and executing HQL queries and criterias. They also support the functionality for generating simple queries.

hql and hibernate criteria editors

Functional Mapping Diagram

Makes possible to visualize structure of entities and relationships between them.

mapping diagram

Eclipse JDT integration

Hibernate Tools integrates into the Java code completion and build support of Java in Eclipse. This gives you code completion of HQL inside Java code. Additionally, Hibernate Tools will add problem markers if your queries are not valid against the console configuration associated with the project.

 

Hibernate Tools can be used "standalone" via Ant 1.6.x or fully integrated into an Eclipse + WTP based IDE, such as JBDS/JBoss Tools, or a default Eclipse + WTP installation. The following sections describe the install steps in these environments.

Note:

The Hibernate Tools 3.3.0 (the current release version) requires Eclipse Galileo 3.5.

To install the Hibernate Tools into any Eclipse 3.5 based IDE you can either use JBoss Tools Update Site or install it manually.

If you want to install the Hibernate Tools distribution manually you need to:

  • Download from www.eclipse.org:

    • birt-report-framework-2_5_0.zip

    • birt-wtp-integration-sdk-2_3_2.zip

    • dtp-sdk_1.7.0.zip

    • eclipse-SDK-3.5-win32.zip

    • emf-runtime-2.5.0.zip

    • GEF-SDK-3.5.0.zip

    • org.eclipse.swtbot.eclipse.test-2.0.0.371-dev-e35.zip

    • org.eclipse.swtbot.eclipse-2.0.0.340-dev.zip

    • site-1.6.2.zip

    • tptp.sdk-TPTP-4.6.0.zip

    • wtp-sdk-R-3.1-20090616035105.zip

    • xsd-runtime-2.5.0.zip

  • Then you should unpack these files into Eclipse install folder.

  • From hibernate.org-Download Overview download Hibernate Tools .

  • Unpack Hibernate Tools in eclipse/dropins folder

Note:

If you need more detailed instructions on plugins installation and general usage of eclipse then check out https://eclipse-tutorial.dev.java.net/ and especially https://eclipse-tutorial.dev.java.net/visual-tutorials/updatemanager.html which covers using the update manager.

The code generation mechanism in the Hibernate Tools consists of a few core concepts. This section explains their overall structure which are the same for the Ant and Eclipse tools.

The meta model is the model used by Hibernate Core to perform its object relational mapping. The model includes information about tables, columns, classes, properties, components, values, collections etc. The API is in org.hibernate.mapping and its main entry point is the Configuration class, the same class that is used to build a session factory.

The model represented by the Configuration class can be build in many ways. The following list the currently supported ones in Hibernate Tools.

In most projects you will normally use only one of the Core, Annotation or JPA configuration and possibly the JDBC configuration if you are using the reverse engineering facilities of Hibernate Tools.

The following drawing illustrates the core concepts:


The code generation is done based on the Configuration model no matter which type of configuration have been used to create the meta model, and thus the code generation is independent on the source of the meta model and represented via Exporters.

This chapter will introduce you to the functionality that Hibernate Tools provide within Eclipse. That is a set of wizards and editors for simplifying the work with Hibernate.

Hibernate Eclipse Tools include wizards for creating Hibernate mapping files, configuration files (.cfg.xml), revenge.xml as well as wizards for adjusting Console Configuration and Code Generation. Special structured and XML editors, editors for executing HQL and Criteria queries are also provided in Hibernate Console. Refer to Key Features section to find all benefits that you can take advantage of while using the tools within Eclipse.

Note:

Please note that these tools do not try to hide any functionality of Hibernate. The tools make working with Hibernate easier, but you are still encouraged/required to read the Hibernate Documentation to fully utilize Hibernate Tools and especially Hibernate it self.

A Console configuration describes how the Hibernate plugin should configure Hibernate and what configuration files, including which classpath are needed to load the POJO's, JDBC drivers etc. It is required to make usage of query prototyping, reverse engineering and code generation. You can have multiple named console configurations. Normally you would just need one per project, but more is definitely possible if your project requires this.

You can create a console configuration by running the Console Configuration Wizard, shown in the following screenshot. The same wizard will also be used if you are coming from the hibernate.cfg.xml wizard and had enabled Create Console Configuration .

The dialog consists of five tabs:


The following table describes the available settings on the Main tab. The wizard can automatically detect the default values for most of them if you started the wizard with the relevant java project or resource selected.


Tip:

The two latter settings are usually not required if you specify a project and it has /hibernate.cfg.xml or /META-INF/persistence.xml in its project classpath.

  • Options for the additional/optional settings


The next table describes Hibernate Console Configuration options available on the Options tab.


  • Classpath for classpath


The following table specifies the parameters of the Classpath tab of the wizard.


  • Mappings for additional mappings


Parameters of the Mappings tab of the Hibernate Console Configuration wizard are explained below:


  • and the last tab Common


It allows to define general aspects of the launch configuration including storage location, console encoding and some others.

Clicking Finish creates the configuration and shows it in the Hibernate Configurations view.


When you created a hibernate console configuration you can modify it in 2 ways:

A "click-and-generate" reverse engineering and code generation facility is available. This facility allows you to generate a range of artifacts based on database or an already existing Hibernate configuration, be that mapping files or annotated classes. Some of these are POJO Java source file, Hibernate .hbm.xml , hibernate.cfg.xml generation and schema documentation.

To start working with this process, start the Hibernate Code Generation which is available in the toolbar via the Hibernate icon or via the Run > Hibernate Code Generation menu item.

When you click on Open Hibernate Code Generation Dialog... the standard Eclipse launcher dialog will appear. In this dialog you can create, edit and delete named Hibernate code generation "launchers".



The first time you create a code generation launcher you should give it a meaningful name, otherwise the default prefix New_Generation will be used.

Tip:

The "At least one exporter option must be selected" is just a warning stating that for this launch to work you need to select an exporter on the Exporter tab. When an exporter has been selected the warning will disappear.

The dialog also have the standard tabs Refresh and Common that can be used to configure which directories should be automatically refreshed and various general settings launchers, such as saving them in a project for sharing the launcher within a team.

On the Main tab you see the following fields:

Table 4.6. Code generation "Main" tab fields

Field

Description

Console Configuration

The name of the console configuration which should be used when code generating

Output directory

Path to a directory where all output will be written by default. It's possible to enter absolute directory path, for example - "d:/temp". Be aware that existing files will be overwritten, so be sure to specify the correct directory.

Reverse engineer from JDBC Connection

If enabled, the tools will reverse engineer the database available via the connection information in the selected Hibernate Console Configuration and generate code based on the database schema. If not enabled, the code generation will just be based on the mappings already specified in the Hibernate Console configuration.

Package

The package name here is used as the default package name for any entities found when reverse engineering

reveng.xml

Path to a reveng.xml file. A reveng.xml file allows you to control certain aspects of the reverse engineering. e.g. how jdbc types are mapped to hibernate types and especially important which tables are included/excluded from the process. Clicking "setup" allows you to select an existing reveng.xml file or create a new one. See more details about the reveng.xml file in Chapter 6, Controlling reverse engineering.

reveng. strategy

If reveng.xml does not provide enough customization you can provide your own implementation of an ReverseEngineeringStrategy. The class needs to be in the classpath of the Console Configuration, otherwise you will get class not found exceptions. See Section 6.3, “Custom strategy” for details and an example of a custom strategy.

Generate basic typed composite ids

A table that has a multi-column primary key a <composite-id> mapping will always be created. If this option is enabled and there are matching foreign-keys each key column is still considered a 'basic' scalar (string, long, etc.) instead of a reference to an entity. If you disable this option a <key-many-to-one> instead. Note: a <many-to-one> property is still created, but is simply marked as non-updatable and non-insertable.

Detect optimistic lock columns

Automatically detect optimistic lock columns. Controllable via reveng. strategy; the current default is to use columns named VERSION or TIMESTAMP.

Detect many-to-many tables

Automatically detect many-to-many tables. Controllable via reveng. strategy.

Detect one-to-one associations

Reverse engineering detects one-to-one associations via primary key and both hbm.xml and annotation generation generates the proper code for it.

The detection is enabled by default (except for Seam 1.2 and Seam 2.0) reverse engineering. For Hibernate Tools generation there is a checkbox to disable if not wanted.

Use custom templates

If enabled, the Template directory will be searched first when looking up the templates, allowing you to redefine how the individual templates process the hibernate mapping model.

Template directory

A path to a directory with custom templates


The Exporters tab is used to specify which type of code that should be generated. Each selection represents an Exporter that is responsible for generating the code, hence the name.


The following table describes in short the various exporters. Remember you can add/remove any Exporters depending on your needs.


Each Exporter listens to certain properties and these can be setup in the Properties section where you can add/remove predefined or customer properties for each of the exporters. The following table lists the time of writing predefined properties:


To add a property to the chosen Exporter click the Add button in the Properties section. In the appeared dialog you should select the property from the proposed list and the value for it.


Tip:

If the property is a directory, it is possible to browse directories in the Value field.


The Hibernate Mapping File editor provides XML editing functionality for the hbm.xml and cfg.xml files. The editor is based on the Eclipse WTP tools and extends its functionality to provide Hibernate specific code completion.


A reveng.xml file is used to customize and control how reverse engineering is performed by the tools. The plugins provide an editor to ease the editing of this file and hence used to configure the reverse engineering process.

The editor is intended to allow easy definition of type mappings, table include/excludes and specific override settings for columns, e.g. define an explicit name for a column when the default naming rules are not applicable.

The editor is activated as soon as an .reveng.xml file is opened. To get an initial reveng.xml file the Reverse Engineering File Wizard can be started via Ctrl+N and Hibernate > Hibernate Reverse Engineering File (reveng.xml) then.


Or you can get it via the Code Generation Launcher by checking the proper section in the Main tab of the Hibernate Code Generation Wizard.

The following screenshot shows the Overview page where the wanted console configuration is selected (auto-detected if Hibernate 3 support is enabled for the project)


The Table Filter page allows you to specify which tables to include and exclude. Pressing Refresh shows the tables from the database that have not yet been excluded.


The Type Mappings page is used for specifying type mappings from JBDC types to any Hibernate type (including usertypes) if the default rules are not applicable. Here again to see the database tables press Refresh button underneath. More about type mappings you can find further in the Type Mappings section.


The Table and Columns page allows you to explicit set e.g. which hibernatetype and propertyname that should be used in the reverse engineered model. For more details on how to configure the tables while reverse engineering read the Specific table configuration section.


Now that you have configured all necessary parts, you can learn how to work with Hibernate Console Perspective.

The Hibernate Console Perspective combines a set of views which allow you to see the structure of your mapped entities/classes, edit HQL queries, execute the queries, and see the results. To use this perspective you need to create a Console configuration.

To view your new configuration and entity/class structure, switch to Hibernate Configurations View. Expanding the tree allows you to browse the class/entity structure and see the relationships.


The Console Configuration does not dynamically adjust to changes done in mappings and java code. To reload the configuration select the configuration and click the Reload button in the view toolbar or in the context menu.

Besides, it's possible to open source and mapping files for objects showed in Hibernate Configurations View. Just bring up the context menu for a necessary object and select Open Source File to see appropriate Java class or Open Mapping File to open a proper .hbm.xml.


In order to get a visual feel on how entities are related as well as view their structures, a Mapping Diagram is provided. It is available by right clicking on the entity you want a mapping diagram for and then choosing Mapping Diagram.


To make Mapping Diagram usage easier you can use Rules, Grid,Snap to Geometry checkboxes in the View menu.


If you will select Rules checkbox, the view print page scale will be added to the page. The numbers on the scale show its size in inches.If you click on the scale a Ruler Guide will appear on the diagram. You can connect any diagram item to it.To connect the items you should move their tops to the Ruler Guide. And while moving the ruler guide, the items will be moved together with it as a whole.


If you'll select Grid checkbox, the grid will appear on the diagram.


The checkbox Snap to Geometry helps to put the items of the diagram into allineation with the grid.

For better navigating through the diagram use Outline view which is available in the structural and graphical modes.


To switch over between the modes use the buttons in the top-right corner of the Outline view.


The options in the context menu of the mapping diagram are listed in the next table.


When you open the context menu while clicking an item on the diagram, it quite differs from the one described before.


The next table describes all the extra options in the menu of mapping items:


Tip:

All the described types of the context menu are also available in the Outline view.

The below table lists the actions that could be performed using the keyboard keys (or keys combinations).


It's possible to save the diagram in the eclipse workspace. Click the usual File > Save As option, the wizard will ask you to set the location within you project where to save the file and give the name for the diagram. The item's names concatenated with the ampersand symbols are set as the default name for a diagram. The file is saved with the .hibernate extension.


Note:

If you restart the Eclipse with the mapping diagram opened, the mapping diagram will be restored with the message like on the figure below. To view the diagram content, you should perform the refreshing.



There are some useful commands in the toolbar.


They are described in the table below.


Queries can be prototyped by entering them into the HQL or Criteria Editor. To execute a query you should click the green run button in the editor toolbar or press Ctrl+Enter .

To open the query editors right-click your project Console Configuration and select HQL Editor (or Hibernate Criteria Editor).


Tip:

If the context menu items are disabled then you need at first to create a Session Factory. That is done by simply expanding the Session Factory node.

When open the editors they should automatically detect the chosen Console Configuration.

To get a prefill query for any entity (or any entity child node) listed in the Session Factory you should double-click it. This will open the HQL Editor with the associated query.

Choosing HQL Editor in the context menu for any entity (or any entity child node) will also open the HQL editor with the associated query. If you choose Hibernate Criteria Editor in the context menu, it will open Hibernate Criteria Editor with the associated criteria.


It's also possible to copy a portion of code from .java file into the HQL or Criteria editor. To do this make use of the Quick Fix option ( Ctrl + 1).


You can also update the original java code according to changes in the HQL or Criteria editor. For that you should save your HQL/Criteria query and submit the replacing in appeared confirmation dialog.


Also you can pin HQL editor and Criteria editor for one tab in Hibernate Query Result view. For that you need click on Stick result to one tab button( ). In the issue query executions results will be shown in one tab (no more will be opened).

Moreover you are able to rename tab in Hibernate Query Result. Click the tab, and type a new name in Property View->Tab name field.


Using this wizard you can add the next Hibernate annotations to the class: @Column , @Entity , @ManyToOne , @OneToMany , @OneToOne , @ManyToMany , @MappedSuperclass , @Id , @GeneratedValue , @Version

Note:

This section doesn't cover the meaning of the Hibernate annotations , for more information read Hibernate Annotations Documentation .

To open this wizard you should right click the class you want to enrich with annotations >Source>Generate Hibernate/JPA annotations . You will see the Hibernate:add JPA annotations dialog.


In the top of it you can see the list of all classes that will be passed through refactoring. Besides the class you have selected in this list you can also find its superclasses and the classes that objects present in the current class as properties. If you want to add new classes or package to the list of classes, you should click the Back button. In result you will see Add classes and packages page.


Here you can add one more classes or whole package, moreover you can limit dependencies depth by selecting depth control option (more about this option you will find in Creating a Hibernate Mapping File). When finished just press the Next button and you will be returned to The following classes will be changed page and will be able to continue work with it.

By default the tags are added to the fields of selected classes. But you can change this option to Getters in Preferred location of Annotations dropdownlist and then all the annotations will be added to the getter methods. If you choose Auto select from class preference then the annotations are added according to the majority of the already existed ones positions.

If it's nessecary to map your String properties to the columns that length differ from the default value(255) ,change Default string length field and @Column(length = your length) will be created before every String property.

You can add optimistic locking capability to an entity bean by selecting Enable optimistic locking checkbox. This operation will add version property to all the selected classes. The property will be also annotated with @Version ,getter and setter will be created. If the property is already exists,it won't be created ,but the getters,setters will be generated. If there is already @MappedSuperclass with version in the base class of the current class - "version" is not inserted into the current class.

After defining all necessary settings in the current step press Next and follow the next wizard steps.


The view represents two windows: one with the source code and and the second with refactored one. With the help of , , , buttons you can quickly navigate between the differences in the code. If you don't agree with some changes you can't undo them but you can remove the class from the list of classes that need refactoring.


To apply the changes click Finish .

Starting from 3.0.0 Alpha1 version of JBoss Tools Hibernate plugins support Eclipse Dali integration what now makes it possible to use a Hibernate as a complete JPA development platform.

Maybe somebody will find it more preferable to use Ant for generation purposes. Thus, this chapter is intended to get you ready to start using Hibernate Tools via Ant tasks.

To use the ant tasks you need to have the hibernatetool task defined. That is done in your build.xml by inserting the following xml (assuming the jars are in the lib directory):


<path id="toolslib">
 <path location="lib/hibernate-tools.jar" />
 <path location="lib/hibernate3.jar" />
 <path location="lib/freemarker.jar" />
 <path location="${jdbc.driver.jar}" />
</path>
   
<taskdef name="hibernatetool" 
         classname="org.hibernate.tool.ant.HibernateToolTask" 
         classpathref="toolslib" />

This <taskdef> defines an Ant task called hibernatetool which now can be used anywhere in your ant build.xml files. It is important to include all the Hibernate Tools dependencies as well as the jdbc driver.

Notice that to use the annotation based Configuration you must get a release.

When using the hibernatetool task you have to specify one or more of the following:


<hibernatetool
  destdir="defaultDestinationDirectory"
  templatepath="defaultTemplatePath"
>
  <classpath ...>
  <property key="propertyName" value="value"/>
  <propertyset ...>
  (<configuration ...>|<annotationconfiguration ...>|
   <jpaconfiguration ...>|<jdbcconfiguration ...>)
  (<hbm2java>,<hbm2cfgxml>,<hbmtemplate>,...)  
</hibernatetool>

Hibernatetool supports four different Hibernate configurations: A standard Hibernate configuration (<configuration>), Annotation based configuration (<annotationconfiguration>), JPA persistence based configuration (<jpaconfiguration>) and a JDBC based configuration (<jdbcconfiguration>) for use when reverse engineering.

Each have in common that they are able to build up a Hibernate Configuration object from which a set of exporters can be run to generate various output.

The following sections describe what the various configurations can do, plus lists the individual settings they have.

A <configuration> is used to define a standard Hibernate configuration. A standard Hibernate configuration reads the mappings from a cfg.xml and/or a fileset.


<configuration
  configurationfile="hibernate.cfg.xml"
  propertyfile="hibernate.properties"
  entityresolver="EntityResolver classname"
  namingstrategy="NamingStrategy classname"
>
  <fileset...>
  
  </configuration>

A <jpaconfiguration> is used when you want to read the metamodel from JPA/Hibernate Annotation where you want to use the auto-scan configuration as defined in the JPA spec (part of EJB3). In other words, when you do not have a hibernate.cfg.xml, but instead have a setup where you use a persistence.xml packaged in a JPA compliant manner.

The <jpaconfiguration> will simply just try and auto-configure it self based on the available classpath, e.g. look for META-INF/persistence.xml.

The persistenceunit attribute can be used to select a specific persistence unit. If no persistenceunit is specified it will automatically search for one and if a unique one is found, use it, but if multiple persistence units are available it will error.

To use a <jpaconfiguration> you will need to specify some additional jars from Hibernate EntityManager in the <taskdef> of the hibernatetool. The following shows a full setup:


<path id="ejb3toolslib">
 <path refid="jpatoolslib"/> <!-- ref to previously defined toolslib -->
 <path location="lib/hibernate-annotations.jar" />
 <path location="lib/ejb3-persistence.jar" />
 <path location="lib/hibernate-entitymanager.jar" />
 <path location="lib/jboss-archive-browsing.jar" />
 <path location="lib/javaassist.jar" /> 
</path>
   
<taskdef name="hibernatetool" 
         classname="org.hibernate.tool.ant.HibernateToolTask" 
         classpathref="jpatoolslib" />

<hibernatetool destdir="${build.dir}">
 <jpaconfiguration persistenceunit="caveatemptor"/>
 <classpath>
  <!-- it is in this classpath you put your classes dir,
   and/or jpa persistence compliant jar -->
  <path location="${build.dir}/jpa/classes" />
 </classpath>

 <!-- list exporters here -->

</hibernatetool>

A <jdbcconfiguration> is used to perform reverse engineering of the database from a JDBC connection.

This configuration works by reading the connection properties either from hibernate.cfg.xml or hibernate.properties with a fileset.

The <jdbcconfiguration> has the same attributes as a <configuration> plus the following additional attributes:


<jdbcconfiguration
  ...
  packagename="package.name"
  revengfile="hibernate.reveng.xml"
  reversestrategy="ReverseEngineeringStrategy classname"
  detectmanytomany="true|false"
  detectoptmisticlock="true|false"
>
  ...
  </jdbcconfiguration>

Exporters are the parts that do the actual job of converting the hibernate metamodel into various artifacts, mainly code. The following section describes the current supported set of exporters in the Hibernate Tool distribution. It is also possible for userdefined exporters, that is done through the <hbmtemplate> exporter.

<hbm2ddl> lets you run schemaexport and schemaupdate which generates the appropriate SQL DDL and allow you to store the result in a file or export it directly to the database. Remember that if a custom naming strategy is needed it is placed on the configuration element.


<hbm2ddl
 export="true|false"
 update="true|false"
 drop="true|false"
 create="true|false"
 outputfilename="filename.ddl"
 delimiter=";" 
 format="true|false"
 haltonerror="true|false"
 >

Exporters can be controlled by user properties. The user properties are specified via <property> or <propertyset> and each exporter will have access to them directly in the templates and via Exporter.setProperties().

When using the <jdbcconfiguration>, the ant task will read the database metadata and thus will perform a reverse engineering of the database schema into a normal Hibernate Configuration. It is from this object e.g. <hbm2java>can generate other artifacts such as .java , .hbm.xml etc.

To govern this process Hibernate uses a reverse engineering strategy. A reverse engineering strategy is mainly called to provide more java like names for tables, column and foreignkeys into classes, properties and associations. It also used to provide mappings from SQL types to Hibernate types. The strategy can be customized by a user. The user can even provide its own custom reverse engineering strategy if the provided strategy is not enough, or simply just provide a small part of the strategy and delegate the rest to the default strategy.

Thus, further in this chapter we will discuss how you can configure the process of a reverse engineering, what default reverse engineering strategy includes as well as some custom concepts.

To have fine control over the process a hibernate.reveng.xml file can be provided. In this file you can specify type mappings and table filtering. This file can be created by hand (it's just basic XML) or you can use the Hibernate plugins which have a specialized editor.

Note:

Many databases are case-sensitive with their names and thus if you cannot make some table match and you are sure it is not excluded by a <table-filter> then check if the case matches; most databases stores table names in uppercase.

Below you can see an example of a reveng.xml. Following the example gives you more details about the format.


<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE hibernate-reverse-engineering 
  SYSTEM "http://hibernate.sourceforge.net/hibernate-reverse-engineering-3.0.dtd" >

<hibernate-reverse-engineering>

<type-mapping>
 <!-- jdbc-type is name for java.sql.Types -->
 <sql-type jdbc-type="VARCHAR" length='20' hibernate-type="SomeUserType" /> 
 <sql-type jdbc-type="VARCHAR" length='1' hibernate-type="yes_no" />
 <!-- length, scale and precision can be used to specify the mapping precisely -->
 <sql-type jdbc-type="NUMERIC"  precision='1' hibernate-type="boolean" /> 
 <!-- the type-mappings are ordered. This mapping will be consulted last, 
  thus overridden by the previous one if precision=1 for the column -->
 <sql-type jdbc-type="NUMERIC"  hibernate-type="long" /> 
</type-mapping>

<!-- BIN$ is recycle bin tables in Oracle -->
<table-filter match-name="BIN$.*" exclude="true" /> 

<!-- Exclude DoNotWantIt from all catalogs/schemas -->
<table-filter match-name="DoNotWantIt" exclude="true" /> 

<!-- exclude all tables from the schema SCHEMA in catalog BAD. -->
<table-filter match-catalog="BAD" match-schema="SCHEMA" match-name=".*" exclude="true" /> 

<!-- table allows you to override/define how reverse engineering 
     is done for a specific table -->
<table name="ORDERS"> 
 <primary-key>
   <!-- setting up a specific id generator for a table -->
  <generator class="sequence">
    <param name="table">seq_table</param>
  </generator>
   <key-column name="CUSTID"/>
 </primary-key>
 <column name="NAME" property="orderName" type="string" />
 <!-- control many-to-one and set names for a specific named foreign key constraint -->
 <foreign-key constraint-name="ORDER_CUST">
   <many-to-one property="customer"/>
   <set property="orders"/>
 </foreign-key>
 <!-- can also control a pure (shared pk) one-to-one  -->
  <foreign-key constraint-name="ADDRESS_PERSON">
   <one-to-one exclude="false"/>
   <inverse-one-to-one exclude="true"/>
  </foreign-key>
</table>

</hibernate-reverse-engineering>

The <type-mapping> section specifies how the JDBC types found in the database should be mapped to Hibernate types. e.g. java.sql.Types.VARCHAR with a length of 1 should be mapped to the Hibernate type yes_no or java.sql.Types.NUMERIC should generally just be converted to the Hibernate type long.


<type-mapping>
 <sql-type
  jdbc-type="integer value or name from java.sql.Types"
  length="a numeric value"
  precision="a numeric value"
  scale="a numeric value"
  not-null="true|false"  
  hibernate-type="hibernate type name"  
 />
</type-mapping>

The number of attributes specified and the sequence of the sql-type's is important. Meaning that Hibernate will search for the most specific first, and if no specific match is found it will seek from top to bottom when trying to resolve a type mapping.

The following is an example of a type-mapping which shows the flexibility and the importance of ordering of the type mappings.


<type-mapping>
 <sql-type jdbc-type="NUMERIC" precision="15" hibernate-type="big_decimal"/>
 <sql-type jdbc-type="NUMERIC" not-null="true" hibernate-type="long" />
 <sql-type jdbc-type="NUMERIC" not-null="false" hibernate-type="java.lang.Long" />
 <sql-type jdbc-type="VARCHAR" length="1" not-null="true" 
       hibernate-type="java.lang.Character"/>
 <sql-type jdbc-type="VARCHAR" hibernate-type="your.package.TrimStringUserType"/>
 <sql-type jdbc-type="VARCHAR" length="1" hibernate-type="char"/>
 <sql-type jdbc-type="VARCHAR" hibernate-type="string"/>
</type-mapping>

The following table shows how this affects an example table named CUSTOMER:


<table> allows you to provide explicit configuration on how a table should be reverse engineered. Amongst other things it allows controlling over the naming of a class for the table, specifying which identifier generator should be used for the primary key etc.


<table 
 catalog="catalog_name"
 schema="schema_name"
 name="table_name"
 class="ClassName"
>
 <primary-key.../>
 <column.../>
 <foreign-key.../>
 </table>

The <foreign-key> has two purposes. One for allowing to define foreign-keys in databases that does not support them or does not have them defined in their schema. Secondly, to allow defining the name of the resulting properties (many-to-one, one-to-one and one-to-many's).


<foreign-key
  constraint-name="foreignKeyName"
  foreign-catalog="catalogName"
  foreign-schema="schemaName"
  foreign-table="tableName"
 >
 <column-ref local-column="columnName" foreign-column="foreignColumnName"/>
 <many-to-one 
   property="aPropertyName"
   exclude="true|false"/>
 <set 
   property="aCollectionName"
   exclude="true|false"
   
 <one-to-one 
   property="aPropertyName"
   exclude="true|false"/>
 <inverse-one-to-one
   property="aPropertyName"
   exclude="true|false"/>
   </foreign-key>

Table 6.6. Foreign-key attributes

Attribute nameDefinitionAttribute use

constraint-name

Name of the foreign key constraint. Important when naming many-to-one, one-to-one and set. It is the constraint-name that is used to link the processed foreign-keys with the resulting property names.

Required

foreign-catalog

Name of the foreign table's catalog. (Only relevant if you want to explicitly define a foreign key).

Optional

foreign-schema

Name of the foreign table's schema. (Only relevant if you want to explicitly define a foreign key).

Optional

foreign-table

Name of the foreign table. (Only relevant if you want to explicitly define a foreign key).

Optional

column-ref

Defines that the foreign-key constraint between a local-column and foreign-column name. (Only relevant if you want to explicitly define a foreign key).

Optional

many-to-one

Defines that a many-to-one should be created and the property attribute specifies the name of the resulting property. Exclude can be used to explicitly define that it should be created or not.

Optional

set

Defines that a set should be created based on this foreign-key and the property attribute specifies the name of the resulting (set) property. Exclude can be used to explicitly define that it should be created or not.

Optional

one-to-one

Defines that a one-to-one should be created and the property attribute specifies the name of the resulting property. Exclude can be used to explicitly define that it should be created or not.

Optional

inverse-one-to-one

Defines that an inverse one-to-one should be created based on this foreign-key and the property attribute specifies the name of the resulting property. Exclude can be used to explicitly define that it should be created or not.

Optional


When using <hbm2java> or the eclipse plugin to generate POJO java code you have the possibility to control certain aspects of the code generation. This is primarily done with the <meta> tag in the mapping files. The following section describes the possible <meta> tags and their use.

The <meta> tag is a simple way of annotating the hbm.xml with information, so tools have a natural place to store/read information that is not directly related to the Hibernate core.

You can use the <meta> tag to e.g. tell <hbm2java> to only generate "protected" setters, have classes always implement a certain set of interfaces or even have them extend a certain base class and even more.

The following example shows how to use various <meta> attributes and the resulting java code.


<class name="Person">
    <meta attribute="class-description">
        Javadoc for the Person class
        @author Frodo
    </meta>
    <meta attribute="implements">IAuditable</meta>
    <id name="id" type="long">
        <meta attribute="scope-set">protected</meta>
        <generator class="increment"/>
    </id>
    <property name="name" type="string">
        <meta attribute="field-description">The name of the person</meta>
    </property>
</class>

The above hbm.xml will produce something like the following (code shortened for better understanding). Notice the Javadoc comment and the protected set methods:

// default package


import java.io.Serializable;
import org.apache.commons.lang.builder.EqualsBuilder;
import org.apache.commons.lang.builder.HashCodeBuilder;
import org.apache.commons.lang.builder.ToStringBuilder;
/** 
 *         Javadoc for the Person class
 *         @author Frodo
 */
public class Person implements Serializable, IAuditable {
    public Long id;
    public String name;
    public Person(java.lang.String name) {
        this.name = name;
    }
    public Person() {
    }
    public java.lang.Long getId() {
        return this.id;
    }
    protected void setId(java.lang.Long id) {
        this.id = id;
    }
    /** 
     * The name of the person
     */
    public java.lang.String getName() {
        return this.name;
    }
    public void setName(java.lang.String name) {
        this.name = name;
    }
}

Attributes declared via the <meta> tag are per default "inherited" inside an hbm.xml file.

What does that mean? It means that if you e.g want to have all your classes implement IAuditable then you just add an <meta attribute="implements">IAuditable</meta> in the top of the hbm.xml file, just after <hibernate-mapping>. Now all classes defined in that hbm.xml file will implement IAuditable!

Note:

This applies to all <meta>-tags. Thus it can also e.g. be used to specify that all fields should be declare protected, instead of the default private. This is done by adding <meta attribute="scope-field">protected</meta> at e.g. just under the <class> tag and all fields of that class will be protected.

To avoid having a <meta> tag inherited then you can simply specify inherit = "false" for the attribute, e.g. <meta attribute = "scope-class" inherit = "false">public abstract</meta> will restrict the "class-scope" to the current class, not the subclasses.

The following are some good practices when using <meta> attributes.

If we have two entities with a bi-directional association between them and define at class scope level the meta attributes: use-in-string, use-in-equals:


<hibernate-mapping>
  <class name="Person">
    <meta attribute="use-in-tostring">true</meta>
    <meta attribute="use-in-equals">true</meta>
    ...
  </class>
</hibernate-mapping>

And for Event.hbm file:


<hibernate-mapping>              
  <class name="events.Event" table="EVENTS">
    <meta attribute="use-in-tostring">true</meta>
    <meta attribute="use-in-equals">true</meta>                  
    <id name="id" column="EVENT_ID">
        <generator class="native"/>
    </id>
    <property name="date" type="timestamp" column="EVENT_DATE"/>
    <property name="title"/>
    <set name="participants" table="PERSON_EVENT" inverse="true">
        <key column="EVENT_ID"/>
        <many-to-many column="PERSON_ID" class="events.Person"/>
    </set>                    
  </class>
</hibernate-mapping>

Then <hbm2java> will assume you want to include all properties and collections in the toString()/equals() methods and this can result in infinite recursive calls.

To remedy this you have to decide which side of the association will include the other part (if at all) in the toString()/equals() methods. Therefore it is not a good practice to put at class scope such meta attributes, unless you are defining a class without bi-directional associations.

We recommend instead to add the meta attributes at the property level:


<hibernate-mapping>             
  <class name="events.Event" table="EVENTS">                  
    <id name="id" column="EVENT_ID">
        <meta attribute="use-in-tostring">true</meta>
        <generator class="native"/>
    </id>
    <property name="date" type="timestamp" column="EVENT_DATE"/>
    <property name="title">
      <meta attribute="use-in-tostring">true</meta>
      <meta attribute="use-in-equals">true</meta>      
    </property>
    <set name="participants" table="PERSON_EVENT" inverse="true">
        <key column="EVENT_ID"/>
        <many-to-many column="PERSON_ID" class="events.Person"/>
    </set>                    
  </class>
</hibernate-mapping>

and now for Person:


<hibernate-mapping>
    <class name="Person">
    <meta attribute="class-description">
        Javadoc for the Person class
        @author Frodo
    </meta>
    <meta attribute="implements">IAuditable</meta>
    <id name="id" type="long">
        <meta attribute="scope-set">protected</meta>
        <meta attribute="use-in-tostring">true</meta>        
        <generator class="increment"/>
    </id>
    <property name="name" type="string">
        <meta attribute="field-description">The name of the person</meta>
        <meta attribute="use-in-tostring">true</meta>
    </property>
  </class>
</hibernate-mapping>

This section shows an example for using meta attributes (including userspecific attributes) together with the code generation features in Hibernate Tools.

The usecase being implemented is to automatically insert some pre- and post-conditions into the getter and setters of the generated POJO.

With a <meta attribute="class-code">, you can add additional methods on a given class, nevertheless such <meta> attribute can not be used at a property scope level and Hibernate Tools does not provide such ><meta> attributes.

A possible solution for this is to modify the freemarker templates responsible for generating the POJO's. If you look inside hibernate-tools.jar, you can find the template: pojo/PojoPropertyAccessor.ftl

This file is as the name indicates used to generate property accessors for pojo's.

Extract the PojoPropertyAccessor.ftl into a local folder i.e. ${hbm.template.path}, respecting the whole path, for example: ${hbm.template.path}/pojo/PojoPropertyAccessor.ftl

The contents of the file is something like this:


<#foreach property in pojo.getAllPropertiesIterator()>
    ${pojo.getPropertyGetModifiers(property)} 
    ${pojo.getJavaTypeName(property, jdk5)} 
    ${pojo.getGetterSignature(property)}() {
        return this.${property.name};
    }
    
    ${pojo.getPropertySetModifiers(property)} void set${pojo.getPropertyName(property)}
        (${pojo.getJavaTypeName(property, jdk5)} ${property.name}) 
    {
        this.${property.name} = ${property.name};
    }
</#foreach>

We can add conditionally pre/post-conditions on our set method generation just adding a little Freemarker syntax to the above source code:


<#foreach property in pojo.getAllPropertiesIterator()>
    ${pojo.getPropertyGetModifiers(property)} 
    ${pojo.getJavaTypeName(property, jdk5)} 
    ${pojo.getGetterSignature(property)}()
    {
        return this.${property.name};
    }
    
    ${pojo.getPropertySetModifiers(property)} void set${pojo.getPropertyName(property)}
        (${pojo.getJavaTypeName(property, jdk5)} ${property.name}) 
        {
      <#if pojo.hasMetaAttribute(property"pre-cond")> 
       ${c2j.getMetaAsString(property, "pre-cond","\n")} 
      </#if>      
      this.${property.name} = ${property.name};
      <#if pojo.hasMetaAttribute(property"post-cond")> 
       ${c2j.getMetaAsString(property, "post-cond","\n")} 
      </#if>        
}
</#foreach>

Now if in any .hbm.xml file we define the <meta> attributes: pre-cond or post-cond, their contents will be generated into the body of the relevant set method.

As an example let us add a pre-condition for property name preventing no Person can have an empty name. Hence we have to modify the Person.hbm.xml file like this:


<hibernate-mapping>
  <class name="Person">
  <id name="id" type="long">        
      <generator class="increment"/>
  </id>
  <property name="firstName" type="string">
      <meta attribute="pre-cond">
      if ((firstName != null) &amp;&amp; (firstName.length() == 0) ) {
        throw new IllegalArgumentException("firstName can not be an empty String");
      }
      </meta>
  </property>
</class>
</hibernate-mapping>

Finally we have to generate the Person.java class, for this we can use both Eclipse and Ant as long as you remember to set or fill in the templatepath setting. For Ant we configure <hibernatetool> task via the templatepath attribute as in:



    <target name="hbm2java">
        <taskdef name="hibernatetool"
          classname="org.hibernate.tool.ant.HibernateToolTask"
          classpathref="lib.classpath"/>
        <hibernatetool destdir="${hbm2java.dest.dir}"
          templatepath="${hbm.template.path}">
          <classpath>
            <path refid="pojo.classpath"/>
          </classpath>        
          <configuration>
            <fileset dir="${hbm2java.src.dir}">
              <include name="**/*.hbm.xml"/>
            </fileset>
          </configuration>
          <hbm2java/>
        </hibernatetool>
    </target>

Invoking the target <hbm2java> will generate on the ${hbm2java.dest.dir} the file Person.java :

// default package

import java.io.Serializable;
public class Person implements Serializable {
    public Long id;
    public String name;
    public Person(java.lang.String name) {
        this.name = name;
    }
    public Person() {
    }
    public java.lang.Long getId() {
        return this.id;
    }
    public void setId(java.lang.Long id) {
        this.id = id;
    }
    
    public java.lang.String getName() {
        return this.name;
    }
    public void setName(java.lang.String name) {
        if ((name != null) &amp;&amp; (name.length() == 0)) {
            throw new IllegalArgumentException("name can not be an empty String");
        }
        this.name = name;
    }
    }

In conclusion, this document is intended to introduce you to Hibernate plugin specific features related to tools bath for the Eclipse and Ant tasks.

In the Eclipse Plugins chapter you've learnt about a set of wizards for creating Mapping files, Configuration file, Console Configuration, got familiar with Mapping and Configuration files editors, tooling for organizing and controlling Reverse Engineering, Hibernate Console and Mapping diagram as well.

The rest chapters have shown the aspects of using the Hibernate Tools via Ant tasks.

Please, visit JBoss Tools Users Forum to leave questions or/and suggestions on the topic. Your feedback is always appreciated.