Hibernate version: 2.1.6

Mapping documents:
<class name="Cat">
<id name="name" type="UStringType">
<generator class="assigned"/>
</id>
<version name="version"/>
<property name="age"/>
</class>

----
public class UString implements Serializable {

private final String value;

public UString (String value) {
this.value = (value!=null ? value.toUpperCase() : null);
}

public String toString() {
return value;
}

public boolean equals(Object o) {
return ((UString)o).toString().equals(value);
}

public int hashCode() {
return value.hashCode();
}

}

------
public class UStringType implements UserType {

private static final int[] SQL_TYPES = {Types.VARCHAR};

public int[] sqlTypes() {
return SQL_TYPES;
}

public Class returnedClass() {
return UString.class;
}

public boolean equals(Object x, Object y) {
if (x==y) return true;
if ((x==null) || (y==null)) return false;
return x.equals(y);
}

public Object deepCopy(Object value) {
return value;
}

public boolean isMutable() {
return false;
}

public Object nullSafeGet(ResultSet resultSet, String[] names, Object owner)
throws HibernateException, SQLException {

if (resultSet.wasNull()) return null;
String value = resultSet.getString(names[0]);
return new UString(value);
}

public void nullSafeSet(PreparedStatement statement, Object value, int index)
throws HibernateException, SQLException {

if (value==null) {
statement.setNull(index, Types.VARCHAR);
} else {
UString ustring = (UString)value;
statement.setString(index, ustring.toString());
}

}

}




Code between sessionFactory.openSession() and session.close():
List cats = session.find("from Cat as cat where cat.name like ?", new UString("FU%"), Hibernate.custom(UStringType.class));
Iterator iter = cats.iterator();


Name and version of the database you are using: MySQL 4


I perfectly know that there's always a great debate on custom types (UerType and CompositeUserType).
I've read all the documentation (quite carefully, I suppose...) and a large number of posts in the forum, but...

1) I still don't understand if it's legal to have a mapping similar to that I've
posted: it seems to work perfectly but, who knows, ...

and

2) trying to query with a partial match, similar to the example:
SELECT * FROM cat WHERE name LIKE 'FU%'
It works!!

Now: could someone answer me to 1 and 2 ?

Thank you

1) This works if you are sure, that there's no application writing lower case ids into this column. Else you can get unwanted conversions from lower case to upercase.

2) Anybody else knows the answer?

HTH
Ernst

Sure its legal.

You can even auto-generate custom type ids by writing your own IdentifierGenerator.

Thank you Ernst, thank you Gavin; and congratulations to Gavin for Hibernate: really a good product!
And a good community...