Setting Ordinal Enum values to start from 1 instead of 0

Question

I have a Enum with three values. It's being used as a property in an Entity bean.

Here's the property in the bean:

@Enumerated(EnumType.ORDINAL)
private BillingMethod billingMethod;

Here's the enum class:

public enum BillingMethod  {
    ONLINEBILL("enum.billingmethod.onlinebill"), // Should be 1, but is now 0 in the database
    PAPERBILL("enum.billingmethod.paperbill"), // Should be 2, but is now 1 in the database
    PRINT("enum.billingmethod.print"); // Should be 3, but is now 2 in the database

    private String tag;

    private BillingMethod(String tag){
        this.tag = tag;
    }

    @Override
    public String getTag() {
        return tag;
    }
}

There is a very rare, specific reason why I need those values to be 1, 2, 3. Instead of the usual 0, 1, 2 in the database.

Don't worry about the tag here, it is used to get the String presentation from a property file.

So, how can I set the ORDINAL to begin from 1 instead of 0?

Answer 1

I see two options :

1. The easiest: map an Integer for hibernate, do the decoding to an enum in the getter :

   @Column(...)
   private Integer billingMethod;
   
   public BillingMethod getBillingMethod() {
        // add here better error handling (logging additional info
        // to help diagnose array out of bound exceptions).
        return BillingMethod.values()[billingMethod - 1];
   }
   
   // add a setter doing a similar thing
   

   The issue is that searching with hql or criteria will not work without doing this same encoding / decoding. Not really great.

2. Create a custom UserType. More info in the reference documentation

   Then map the field this way :

   @Type("com.fully.qualified.class.name.of.MyUserType")
   private BillingMethod billingMethod;
   

   (when using the fully qualified name of the user type in the @Type annotation, you don't need to register it)

   A bit more complex to implement, but will work in every situations where a standard enum mapping would have worked

Answer 2

I had the same problem - look here the solution, that worked for me:

Better Enum Mapping with Hibernate

The author uses Hibernate-UserTypes for this problem. I've implemented it the same way and it works!