hibernate - Persisting a composition interface of strategy pattern

Question

I have the following class structure:

public abstract class Creature{
   private String name;
   //strategy pattern composition
   private SkillInterface skill;
}

public interface SkillInterface {
   void attack();
}

public class NoSkill implements SkillInterface {
   @Override
   public void attack() {
       //statements
   }
}

My goal is to persist Creature objects at one table in database. Subclasses of SkillInterface are without any fields. As they determine the behaviour, I want to convert selected SkillInterface class name to a String, as I only need to persist the classname of the current skill strategy of creature, with a String like skill.getClass().getSimpleName(). I tried to implement it with @Converter annotation, using AttributeConverter class to convert SkillInterface to String and save, but always had mapping exceptions. I want to be able to save it as String and retrieve as SkillInterface object.

But how can I implement it with Hibernate? Or do I have a design mistake?

Answer 1

Ok looks like I have found a basic solution that can be used to persist Strategy Pattern interfaces implementations. I used a @Converter annotation and a AttributeConverter class to convert strategy class names to column while saving to database and cast the retrieved String back to strategy class as following:

@Entity
public class Creature {
    @Id
    @GeneratedValue(strategy = GenerationType.AUTO)
    private int id;

    @Convert(converter = SkillConverter.class)
    private SkillInterface skill;
}

public class SkillConverter implements AttributeConverter<SkillInterface,String> {
    @Override
    public String convertToDatabaseColumn(SkillInterface skill) {
        return skill.getClass().getSimpleName().toLowerCase();
    }

    @Override
    public SkillInterface convertToEntityAttribute(String dbData) {
        //works as a factory
        if (dbData.equals("noskill")) {
            return new NoSkill();
        } else if (dbData.equals("axe")) {
            return new Axe();
        }
        return null;
    }
}

public interface SkillInterface {
    public String getSkill();

    void attack();
}


public class NoSkill implements SkillInterface{
    public String getSkill() {
        return getClass().getSimpleName();
    }

    @Override
    public void attack() {
        //strategy statements
    }
}

Answer 2

You can use a proxy field to this for you like below:

abstract class Creature {
    @Column
    private String name;
    // strategy pattern composition
    private SkillInterface skill;

    @Column
    private String skillName;

    public String getSkillName() {
        return skill.getClass().getSimpleName();
    }

    public void setSkillName(String skillName) {
        //ignore
    }
}