[hibernate-dev] hiberate-commons-annotations and locating annotations

[Steve Ebersole]

On Fri 30 Aug 2013 06:05:37 AM CDT, Emmanuel Bernard wrote:
>>
>>
>> 2) The 'declaringClassName' passed in to SimpleValueBinder#setType
>> is Sub. So maybe we can leverage that. But
>> org.hibernate.cfg.annotations.PropertyBinder#makePropertyAndValue
>> (the main caller of this method) has explicit handle for null-ness
>> so that makes me nervous.
>>
>> Given the differing rules for resolving converter to use for basic
>> types, collections and composites and the fact that these
>> distinctions are already handled in the PropertyHolder hierarchy, I
>> think it would be better to handle those distinctions there. Either
>> adding a separate method to inject the converter to use (making sure
>> it is called before setType, ugh) or changing the signature of
>> setType to accept the converter to use.
>> PropertyBinder#makePropertyAndValue would then use
>> PropertyHolder#resolveAttributeConverter to pass what it needs to
>> pass.
>>
>> WDYT?
>
>
> Yes that makes sense to consolidate this logic in PropertyHolder. But I
> have to admit I failed to find an elegant algorithm and data structure
> to resolve the convert use cases you have described. All involved some
> back reading of annotations etc :(

Depends what you mean "back-reading".  I planned on sifting through the 
annotations as "resolve" is called.

>
> BTW is it possible to have the illegal case by mean of mixing XML and
> annotation. ie you have the @Convert on the property and the disable
> facility at the class level in XML. Does the same rule apply?
> Because for sure the XML and the annotation are treated equally by
> commons annotation.
<quote>
The convert subelement is additive to any Convert or Converts 
annotations on the entity. It
overrides any Convert annotation for the same attribute name. If a 
convert subelement is present,
and attributes or subelements of that convert subelement are not 
explicitly specified, their default
values are applied
</quote>

My reading of that on your use-case is that we really should apply the 
XML-defined converter.  But hiberate-commons-annotations simply does not 
give us the information needed to be able to do that properly.