Sort hibernate collection when retrieving from database

Question

I have an object Foo with a list of Bar. Is there a way I can set up my class so that getBars() will return a List that has been sorted with Collections.sort? In other words, I would like to run Collections.sort when the list is first populated. Presently, I call sort when I retrieve the collection, which may be redundant and is easily forgotten.

Answer 1

Are you using J2EE-style mappings with Hibernate XML files, or are you using JPA-annotated JavaBeans?

If you're using JPA, you can use the @OrderBy annotation to let the database sort the collection for you. You could also use @Sort to do it on the Java side.

Last, if you're writing HQL - say, in a @NamedQuery - you can use the ORDER BY clause.

Lots of ways to do it!

Answer 2

I think if you annotate the property with @Sort it gets sorted automatically

You've also got the option to specify a custom Comparator class:

@Sort(comparator=MyComparator.class, type=SortType.COMPARATOR)

Reference:

• @Sort javadocs
• Hibernate Reference: Sorted Collections