Hi I was wondering if it is possible to initialize child objects to non null values if they don't exist or their records are null?

Example:
Credit Union Object
{
Location location;
}

The location may actually not exist in the database, however for the sake of my webapp it calls cuobject.location.name, and if the location object gets loaded as null I'll get a null pointer exception, or I'll have to check to make sure location isn't null everywhere I want to check inside it. So is it possible to load the location object like Location location = new Location(); and its inner values just be null or whats the best way to do this?

Thanks,
David

I'm not sure but I think it is not doable.

If you will be returning new Location from getter (in the case actual location is null), or you will be substitute Location in setter (in the case parameter is null), sooner or later Hibernate will attempt to save your object to the database because from Hibernate's point of view there was a change - Location was null and it is not null anymore. This is because Hibernate uses the same getter as your code to obtain location.

Theoretically, if you tell Hibernate to use direct access to the location field (do not use getter/setter) and provide getter like



it will solve your particular problem and will not cause Hibernate to save transient locations. But this approach really sucks because each time you call getLocation you will be getting different objects. And you may forget about something like



To me it is better to check if returned location is null or not at every place neede.

You can add an unmapped getter checking the null condition and returning a "cached' new object.