Do you have a common base class for Hibernate entities?

Question

Do you have a common base class for Hibernate entities, i.e. a MappedSuperclass with id, version and other common properties? Are there any drawbacks?

Example:

@MappedSuperclass()
public class BaseEntity {

    private Long id;
    private Long version;
    ...

    @Id @GeneratedValue(strategy = GenerationType.AUTO)
    public Long getId() {return id;}

    public void setId(Long id) {this.id = id;}

    @Version
    public Long getVersion() {return version;}
    ...

    // Common properties
    @Temporal(TemporalType.TIMESTAMP)
    public Date creationDate() {return creationDate;}
    ...
}

@Entity
public class Customer extends BaseEntity {
    private String customerName;
    ...
}

Answer 1

This works fine for us. As well as the ID and creation date, we also have a modified date. We also have an intermediate TaggedBaseEntity that implements a Taggable interface, because some of our web application's entities have tags, like questions on Stack Overflow.

Answer 2

The one that I use is primarily to implement hashCode() and equals(). I also added a method to pretty print the entity. In response to DR above, most of this can be overridden, but in my implementation you are stuck with an ID of type Long.

public abstract class BaseEntity implements Serializable {

    public abstract Long getId();
    public abstract void setId(Long id);

    /**
     * @see java.lang.Object#hashCode()
     */
    @Override
    public int hashCode() {
        final int prime = 31;
        int result = 1;
        result = prime * result + ((getId() == null) ? 0 : getId().hashCode());
        return result;
    }

    /**
     * @see java.lang.Object#equals(Object)
     */
    @Override
    public boolean equals(Object obj) {
        if (this == obj)
            return true;
        if (obj == null)
            return false;
        if (getClass() != obj.getClass())
            return false;
        BaseEntity other = (BaseEntity) obj;
        if (getId() == null) {
            if (other.getId() != null)
                return false;
        } else if (!getId().equals(other.getId()))
            return false;
        return true;
    }

    /**
     * @see java.lang.Object#toString()
     */
    @Override
    public String toString() {
        return new StringBuilder(getClass().getSimpleName()).append(":").append(getId()).toString();
    }

    /**
     * Prints complete information by calling all public getters on the entity.
     */
    public String print() {

        final String EQUALS = "=";
        final String DELIMITER = ", ";
        final String ENTITY_FORMAT = "(id={0})";

        StringBuffer sb = new StringBuffer("{");

        PropertyDescriptor[] properties = PropertyUtils.getPropertyDescriptors(this);
        PropertyDescriptor property = null;
        int i = 0;
        while ( i < properties.length) {

            property = properties[i];
            sb.append(property.getName());
            sb.append(EQUALS);

            try {
                Object value = PropertyUtils.getProperty(this, property.getName());
                if (value instanceof BaseEntity) {
                    BaseEntity entityValue = (BaseEntity) value;
                    String objectValueString = MessageFormat.format(ENTITY_FORMAT, entityValue.getId());
                    sb.append(objectValueString);
                } else {
                    sb.append(value);
                }
            } catch (IllegalAccessException e) {
                // do nothing
            } catch (InvocationTargetException e) {
                // do nothing
            } catch (NoSuchMethodException e) {
                // do nothing
            }

            i++;
            if (i < properties.length) {
                sb.append(DELIMITER);
            }
        }

        sb.append("}");

        return sb.toString();
    }
}

Answer 3

I wouldn't hesitate to use a common base class, after all that's the point of O/R mapping.

I use common base classes, too, but only if the entities share at least some common properties. I won't use it, if the ID is the only common property. Until now I did not encounter any problems.