I see from the 2.1.3 release notes that PersistentEnum is deprecated. The source code reveals that PersistentEnum will not be supported in 2.2.

Why is this? Are they being replaced by a new mechanism? Or perhaps it was decided that custom UserTypes are preferred, and that people should follow the pattern in the community area?
http://www.hibernate.org/172.html

Thanks,
- nate

custom UserTypes should now be used instead of PersistentEnums. This is much more transparent and flexible. Supporting existing PersistentEnums should not be too difficult, as they can all be handled by one UserType.

I'm about to move all my enums to a custom UserType. I just wanted to check in and make sure this is going to be the recommended approach with future versions of hibernate 2.2+ -- particularly with the addition of Enums in Java 1.5?

If a new mechanism is being contemplated to interact with enums in Java 1.5, we will probably wait to make this change pending what comes down the Hibernate roadmap.....

Thanks in advance,
Chris.....

There are no plans yet for Enums in 1.5, use a UserType.

If there will be enum support, it will surely be through the existing type mechanism. So using a custom UserType will surely be a safe migration path away from PersistentEnums. If you change your custom Enum classes to 1.5 Enums, it will be easy to support by changing the type of the property.

We are using typesafe enums for several fields. It looks like I have to have a single UserType implementation per enum class.

I have written a general purpose Integer enum UserType but in nullSafeGet, I don't know which enum class to create to return. Is there a way to get what class the caller is expecting to be return?

Thanks,

Colin Smith