how to remove the mapping resource property from hibernate.cfg file

Question

hi, i am currently working on one project. In my project there are many entity/POJO files. currently i am using simple hibernate.cfg.xml to add all the mapping files in to the configuration like :-

<mapping resource="xml/ClassRoom.hbm.xml"/>
<mapping resource="xml/Teacher.hbm.xml"/>
<mapping resource="xml/Student.hbm.xml"/>

i am having huge number of mapping files, which makes my hibernate.cfg file looks a bit messy, so is there any way so that i do not need to add the above in to the hibernate.cfg file. rather there can be any other way to achieve the same.. please help

Answer 1

Yes, use annotations.

@Entity
public class Teacher {

    @Column
    private String name;

    @Column
    private String address;

    etc..
}

Hibernate will automatically detect classes that are annotated with @Entity.

Answer 2

You could create a Configuration programmatically and use Configuration#addClass(Class) to specify the mapped class (and Hibernate will load the mapping file for you). From the javadoc:

Read a mapping as an application resource using the convention that a class named foo.bar.Foo is mapped by a file foo/bar/Foo.hbm.xml which can be resolved as a classpath resource.

So you could do something like this:

Configuration cfg = new Configuration()
    .addClass(org.hibernate.auction.Item.class)
    .addClass(org.hibernate.auction.Bid.class)
    ...
    .configure();
SessionFactory factory = cfg.buildSessionFactory();

See also

• Section 3.1. Programmatic configuration

Answer 3

Hibernate Configuration class itself does not provide a magic addAllEntities method. But you can use AnnotationSessionFactoryBean setPackagesToScan method. Keep in mind it just works when using annotated Entity class and it is a Spring dependent class

AnnotationSessionFactoryBean sessionFactory = new AnnotationSessionFactoryBean();

sessionFactory.setDataSource(<javax.sql.DataSource> implementation goes here)
sessionFactory.setPackagesToScan(new String [] {"xml"});

Answer 4

the addDirectory()/addJar() method of Configuration uses all .hbm.xml files found inside a specified directory/JAR-File. you will need to hardcode that location, but only that one