Do I need elements in persistence.xml?

Question

I have very simple persistance.xml file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<persistence version="1.0"
    xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/persistence" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/persistence http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/persistence/persistence_1_0.xsd">

    <persistence-unit name="eventractor" transaction-type="RESOURCE_LOCAL">
        <class>pl.michalmech.eventractor.domain.User</class>
        <class>pl.michalmech.eventractor.domain.Address</class>
        <class>pl.michalmech.eventractor.domain.City</class>
        <class>pl.michalmech.eventractor.domain.Country</class>

        <properties>
            <property name="hibernate.hbm2ddl.auto" value="validate" />
            <property name="hibernate.show_sql" value="true" />
        </properties>
    </persistence-unit>

</persistence>

and it works.

But when I remove <class> elements application doesn't see entities (all classes are annotated with @Entity).

Is there any automatic mechanism to scan for @Entity classes?

Answer 1

You can provide for jar-file element path to a folder with compiled classes. For example I added something like that when I prepared persistence.xml to some integration tests:

 <jar-file>file:../target/classes</jar-file>

Answer 2

I'm not sure this solution is under the spec but I think I can share for others.

dependency tree

my-entities.jar

Contains entity classes only. No META-INF/persistence.xml.

my-services.jar

Depends on my-entities. Contains EJBs only.

my-resources.jar

Depends on my-services. Contains resource classes and META-INF/persistence.xml.

problems

• How can we specify <jar-file/> element in my-resources as the version-postfixed artifact name of a transient dependency?
• How can we sync the <jar-file/> element's value and the actual transient dependency's one?

solution

direct (redundant?) dependency and resource filtering

I put a property and a dependency in my-resources/pom.xml.

<properties>
  <my-entities.version>x.y.z-SNAPSHOT</my-entities.version>
</properties>
<dependencies>
  <dependency>
    <!-- this is actually a transitive dependency -->
    <groupId>...</groupId>
    <artifactId>my-entities</artifactId>
    <version>${my-entities.version}</version>
    <scope>compile</scope> <!-- other values won't work -->
  </dependency>
  <dependency>
    <groupId>...</groupId>
    <artifactId>my-services</artifactId>
    <version>some.very.sepecific</version>
    <scope>compile</scope>
  </dependency>
<dependencies>

Now get the persistence.xml ready for being filtered

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<persistence ...>
  <persistence-unit name="myPU" transaction-type="JTA">
    ...
    <jar-file>lib/my-entities-${my-entities.version}.jar</jar-file>
    ...
  </persistence-unit>
</persistence>

Maven Enforcer Plugin

With the dependencyConvergence rule, we can assure that the my-entities' version is same in both direct and transitive.

<plugin>
  <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
  <artifactId>maven-enforcer-plugin</artifactId>
  <version>1.4.1</version>
  <executions>
    <execution>
      <id>enforce</id>
      <configuration>
        <rules>
           <dependencyConvergence/>
        </rules>
      </configuration>
      <goals>
        <goal>enforce</goal>
      </goals>
    </execution>
  </executions>
</plugin>

Answer 3

The persistence.xml has a jar-file that you can use. From the Java EE 5 tutorial:

<persistence>
    <persistence-unit name="OrderManagement">
        <description>This unit manages orders and customers.
            It does not rely on any vendor-specific features and can
            therefore be deployed to any persistence provider.
        </description>
        <jta-data-source>jdbc/MyOrderDB</jta-data-source>
        <jar-file>MyOrderApp.jar</jar-file>
        <class>com.widgets.Order</class>
        <class>com.widgets.Customer</class>
    </persistence-unit>
</persistence>

This file defines a persistence unit named OrderManagement, which uses a JTA-aware data source jdbc/MyOrderDB. The jar-file and class elements specify managed persistence classes: entity classes, embeddable classes, and mapped superclasses. The jar-file element specifies JAR files that are visible to the packaged persistence unit that contain managed persistence classes, while the class element explicitly names managed persistence classes.

In the case of Hibernate, have a look at the Chapter2. Setup and configuration too for more details.

EDIT: Actually, If you don't mind not being spec compliant, Hibernate supports auto-detection even in Java SE. To do so, add the hibernate.archive.autodetection property:

<persistence-unit name="eventractor" transaction-type="RESOURCE_LOCAL">
  <!-- This is required to be spec compliant, Hibernate however supports
       auto-detection even in JSE.
  <class>pl.michalmech.eventractor.domain.User</class>
  <class>pl.michalmech.eventractor.domain.Address</class>
  <class>pl.michalmech.eventractor.domain.City</class>
  <class>pl.michalmech.eventractor.domain.Country</class>
   -->

  <properties>
    <!-- Scan for annotated classes and Hibernate mapping XML files -->
    <property name="hibernate.archive.autodetection" value="class, hbm"/>

    <property name="hibernate.hbm2ddl.auto" value="validate" />
    <property name="hibernate.show_sql" value="true" />
  </properties>
</persistence-unit>

Answer 4

For those running JPA in Spring, from version 3.1 onwards, you can set packagesToScan property under LocalContainerEntityManagerFactoryBean and get rid of persistence.xml altogether.

Here's the low-down