Hi,

According to http://www.hibernate.org/hib_docs/refer ... tions.html one should never store properties in subclasses such as HashMap. Rather "Map" should be used instead.

I've got the following line of code:

public Map getChildren()
{
return (Map) new HashMap(children).clone();
}

Is it possible this line of code causes problems for Hibernate? If so, is there a workaround for returning a copy of a HashMap instead of the original?

Thanks,
Gili

Ok, this issue seems related to the user of Collections under Hibernate. It seems to be caused by the fact that I return a clone() from Theme.getChildren(). Hibernate doesn't seem to like that. The question is, is there a way to return a clone() from getChildren()? "Good coding practices" call for returning either clones from getChildren() or a constant Map. The latter is not possible under Java. Is there no way to do this?

Thanks,
Gili

You must not exchange the collection originally set by Hibernate against another instance. the get method should return exactly the collection which was handed to the set method

Thanks Michael,

I was afraid you'd say that. So there is no way for me to protect my internal data from external users modifying it? Just curious.

Thanks,
Gili

Let Hibernate access the field directly by using access=field, then you can do whatever you want in your get/set pair

Good idea. Thanks a lot!

Gili