I've created a class called LuceneInterceptor that implements org.hibernate.Interceptor. It's basically the same as the second example here:

http://www.hibernate.org/138.html

What I'm trying to do is populate the Lucene directory with a document every time an object is loaded. I've implemented onLoad but this method is called just before an object is initialized. This seems to mean that the id (primary key) of the object is set but every other parameter is null. What I want is a method that's called just after an object is initialized. Then I can return a fully populated org.apache.lucene.document.Document from the object and add it to my Lucene directory.

Has anyone else done this? It must be a common requirement to populate a directory when objects are loaded from the database.

Ok, I've given up on the idea of using an Interceptor for this and I'm going to do it manually. I even tried iterating through the objects after I load them and saving them (since nothing will have changed it won't hit the database) but it appears onSave will only be called if it's actually going to save the object to the database.

I really think org.hibernate.Interceptor needs to be enhanced since onLoad as it is implemented now is basically useless. There needs to be an onPostLoad method and onSave/onFlushDirty methods that get called regardless of whether the object has changed and therefore is actually going to be saved to the database.