Hyperjaxb3: Create lookup table from enumeration element

Question

I have an xsd file which includes an element with an enumeration constraint:

<xs:complexType name="Request">
    <xs:sequence>
        <xs:element name="CommsAddress" type="xs:string" />
        <xs:element name="CommsAddressType">
            <xs:simpleType>
                <xs:restriction base="xs:string">
                    <xs:enumeration value="EMAIL"/>
                    <xs:enumeration value="PHONE"/>
                </xs:restriction>
            </xs:simpleType>
        </xs:element>
        ...

I would like the CommsAddressType field in the generated Java class to be a generated enum with the values EMAIL and PHONE . In turn, I would like Hibernate to automatically generate my database schema with a CommsAddressType table containing two rows with the values EMAIL and PHONE . The Request table can then simply reference these with a CommsAddressTypeId column.

Currently, Hyperjaxb3 generates my Request class with a CommsAddressType field of type String :

@XmlElement(name="CommsAddressType")
protected String commsAddressType

and the schema is generated so that the Request table has a CommsAddressType column of type VARCHAR . This will obviously result in a lot of unnecessary duplicated data.

Is there any way of achieving what I described above? Also, as I am exposing the xsd to my customer, I would like to avoid including any jaxb or hyperjaxb tags in the schema if possible.

Answer 1

Disclaimer: I'm the author of Hyperjaxb .

If you make your enumerated types to become enums in Java, Hyperjaxb will handle them as enums, not as strings. For this you can, for instance, customize your simple type with:

<jaxb:typesafeEnumClass/>

See this example .

Hyperjaxb will map corrsponding properties as @Enumerated .

No, you can't generate a lookup table but you can customize how the enum is mapped in the database. For instance, you can make it mapped as EnumType.ORDINAL :

<hj:basic><orm:enumerated>ORDINAL</orm:enumerated></hj:basic>

Example .

Actually, with enums you don't really need lookup tables for JPA. JPA will map enums correctly according to the speified EnumType mapping.

But you may need a lookup table for your own purposes - like being able to produce human-readable values in joined queries.

In this case I'd recommend mapping the enum as ORDINAL and adding a lookup table plus corresponding foreign keys on your own DDL scripts.

And yes, you can do all of the described customizations in a separate bindings file (normally bindings.xjb ), you don't have to do it directly in the schema. See test projects here , there is plenty of examples. Just look for *.xjb files in src/main/resources directories.