Hibernate version: 3.0

Some tables in my database contain binary data. So, in my configuration file, you might find something like:



In my class, I have a field named "BinaryData", which is a "byte[]" This receives the bytes properly, and everything is fine.

But I also need to turn my class into an XML document. So, I create a session, with the entity-mode set to DOM4J.



Then I use the Dom4J stuff to create an XMLWriter, and all of the XML gets output just as I'd expect. Except that the binary field (as byte[]) gets generated as the hex-value of the bytes. What I'd really like to do is have that field export the base64 representation of those bytes, and I'm not sure the best way to do this.

Any help in this would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
-Dan.

I've used this for encoding/decoding base64 from byte[] to String and back.

org.apache.xerces.utils.Base64

It's worked well for me -

You might have a look at Jakarta Commons Codec.
http://jakarta.apache.org/commons/codec/

Best regards
Sven

Thanks, this will be useful. But this is a collection of static routines. But it's not exactly what I'm trying to do. What I'd like to do is have a class, then reads/writes bytes to the database. But when asked for it's textual representation, (which Dom4j does so it can output it to XML) returns the bytes as Base64 encoded, instead of as a hex-string.

From doing more reading, it looks like I should make a custom type. I guess I could just make a sub-class of "BinaryType" and just override it's "toString" and "fromStringValue" calls? Does that sound like the right way to go?

-Dan