JPA Multiple Embedded fields

Question

Is it possible for a JPA entity class to contain two embedded ( @Embedded ) fields? An example would be:

@Entity
public class Person {
    @Embedded
    public Address home;

    @Embedded
    public Address work;
}

public class Address {
    public String street;
    ...
}

In this case a Person can contain two Address instances - home and work. I'm using JPA with Hibernate's implementation. When I generate the schema using Hibernate Tools, it only embeds one Address . What I'd like is two embedded Address instances, each with its column names distinguished or pre-pended with some prefix (such as home and work). I know of @AttributeOverrides , but this requires that each attribute be individually overridden. This can get cumbersome if the embedded object ( Address ) gets big as each column needs to be individually overridden.

Answer 1

The generic JPA way to do it is with @AttributeOverride. This should work in both EclipseLink and Hibernate.

@Entity 
public class Person {
  @AttributeOverrides({
    @AttributeOverride(name="street",column=@Column(name="homeStreet")),
    ...
  })
  @Embedded public Address home;

  @AttributeOverrides({
    @AttributeOverride(name="street",column=@Column(name="workStreet")),
    ...
  })
  @Embedded public Address work;
  }

  @Embeddable public class Address {
    @Basic public String street;
    ...
  }
}

Answer 2

If you want to have the same embeddable object type twice in the same entity, the column name defaulting will not work: at least one of the columns will have to be explicit. Hibernate goes beyond the EJB3 spec and allows you to enhance the defaulting mechanism through the NamingStrategy. DefaultComponentSafeNamingStrategy is a small improvement over the default EJB3NamingStrategy that allows embedded objects to be defaulted even if used twice in the same entity.

From Hibernate Annotations Doc: http://docs.jboss.org/hibernate/stable/annotations/reference/en/html_single/#d0e714

Answer 3

When using Eclipse Link, an alternative to using AttributeOverrides it to use a SessionCustomizer. This solves the issue for all entities in one go:

public class EmbeddedFieldNamesSessionCustomizer implements SessionCustomizer {

@SuppressWarnings("rawtypes")
@Override
public void customize(Session session) throws Exception {
    Map<Class, ClassDescriptor> descriptors = session.getDescriptors();
    for (ClassDescriptor classDescriptor : descriptors.values()) {
        for (DatabaseMapping databaseMapping : classDescriptor.getMappings()) {
            if (databaseMapping.isAggregateObjectMapping()) {
                AggregateObjectMapping m = (AggregateObjectMapping) databaseMapping;
                Map<String, DatabaseField> mapping = m.getAggregateToSourceFields();

                ClassDescriptor refDesc = descriptors.get(m.getReferenceClass());
                for (DatabaseMapping refMapping : refDesc.getMappings()) {
                    if (refMapping.isDirectToFieldMapping()) {
                        DirectToFieldMapping refDirectMapping = (DirectToFieldMapping) refMapping;
                        String refFieldName = refDirectMapping.getField().getName();
                        if (!mapping.containsKey(refFieldName)) {
                            DatabaseField mappedField = refDirectMapping.getField().clone();
                            mappedField.setName(m.getAttributeName() + "_" + mappedField.getName());
                            mapping.put(refFieldName, mappedField);
                        }
                    }

                }
            }

        }
    }
}

}

Answer 4

In case you are using hibernate you can also use a different naming scheme which adds unique prefixes to columns for identical embedded fields. See Automatically Add a Prefix to Column Names for @Embeddable Classes