Storing a comma separated list in a field using nHibernate

Question

I'm building a blog using C# and nHibernate for my database persistence. I want to make the entries taggable so I have an IList for the tags property. But how do I map this to a comma separated list in a single column in my database?

I want to avoid using a separate table for the tags and just keep them in one column as a separated list. So I'm basically trying to map a comma separated list in the database to a IList property. Is this possible in nHibernate?

Answer 1

Yes, this is possible:

http://www.nablasoft.com/alkampfer/index.php/2008/10/21/some-details-on-older-post-about-usertype/

Add that file to your assembly and then reference it in your mapping file:

<property name='ListAsStringProperty'
              type='namespace.StringListUserType, assembly' />

The property mapped should be a simple collection (List or IList), override the char separator to make it into a comma.

Answer 2

Why not make it another table? That way you could do tag clouds, searches on tags, etc.