I'd like to pass some configuration data from the mapping file to a custom user type (an implementation of CompositeUserType). The dtd has provisions for <meta> tags to carry extra information, but I can't access the meta data at runtime. I traced through the code to find that all this meta info is discarded after Hibernate finishes configuring itself from the mapping file. Is there any way to get meta information at runtime? Is there another way to configure custom persistent types?

go look for getMetaAttributes() ...they should be there ;)

(note: that currently the core does not implement the meta inheritance which hbm2java utilizes....will be there some day ;)

Thanks for your response. I see that the meta attributes get stored in the Configuration as members of the PersistentClasses, but it appears that the Configuration object is discarded after it's used to configure the SessionFactory. (It occurs to me as I type this that I can just keep a reference to the Configuration used to create the SessionFactory . . . Feeling sheepish now.)

Out of curiosity and momentum, is there any way to get back to the Configuration via the Session or SessionFactory?

Dave

No, there is no way - just store your configuration object somewhere in a singleton or something.

There is a good reason for this: The internal metamodel used by the SessionFactory is different to the mapping metadata model, so there is no way to "go back".