hibernate.cfg.xml / hibernate.properties best practices

Tremelune · **Joined:** Fri Jul 15, 2005 12:26 pm **Posts:** 37

One of my projects has several environments, local devs, a test server, a QA server, staging, and production. This means there are 5 hibernate.cfg.xml files in our CVS repository, each with an identical list of mappings. If the mappings get updated, they need to be updated in five places, and then other developers need to figure out that they need to update there local machine config file, and in general it's a bit of pain.

My solution was to break out the database connection and other configs into various hibernate.properties files and to have ONLY mappings in a single hibernate.cfg.xml...That way, the mappings get updated with a regular CVS refresh, and I don't have to maintain them in five places.

Someone told me that Hibernate was "moving away" from using properties files...Can someone offer a better solution than mine? I'd be surprised if I'm the only one out there with this issue.

snpesnpe · **Joined:** Sat Jun 12, 2004 4:49 pm **Posts:** 915

you can have more *cfg.xml files, but You have to change HibernateUtil (or your class for session building)

see this thread http://forum.hibernate.org/viewtopic.php?t=947911 (for performance, but use 2 xml files)

Tremelune · **Joined:** Fri Jul 15, 2005 12:26 pm **Posts:** 37

That's pretty cool, I may try to implement that.

Can anyone tell me why properties files are being moved away from?

max · **Posted:** Wed Sep 21, 2005 9:12 pm

what people should avoid is having too much in a /hibernate.properties file if they want multiple configurations since /hibernate.properties is *always* read if it exists.

Using arbitrary mix of property and cfg.xml files is all ok.

Tremelune · **Joined:** Fri Jul 15, 2005 12:26 pm **Posts:** 37

But why is Hibernate "moving away" from properties files?

Since the mappings will ALWAYS be the same for the same application on different environments, it seems wise to keep them separate from database connection properties (etc) that will often be different for each environment.

ie, the mappings on my dev environment will be the same on the test and production server, but all the other stuff will change.

I'm surprised people aren't bothered by keeping so much identical stuff in more than one place.

max · **Posted:** Thu Sep 22, 2005 1:37 pm

eh ? as someone already wrote - you can call configure more than once so just keep the parts separate that you want separate.

And I expliciltly wrote that both properties and cfg.xml are all ok so why do keep saying we are moving away from it ? ;)

Tremelune · **Joined:** Fri Jul 15, 2005 12:26 pm **Posts:** 37

Sounds like my solution is fine...Probably better to just use two Configurations...Cool, thanks.

Tremelune · **Joined:** Fri Jul 15, 2005 12:26 pm **Posts:** 37

I'm having some trouble getting this working...If the mappings aren't in hibernate.cfg.xml, it doesn't seem to find them even after I load the separate mapping file. I don't know if I'm doing this the right way, but I want to get this figured out. Can anyone tell me why the mappings in mappings.cfg.xml aren't really being included in the session factory? When I try to run a simple query I get unexpected token errors that aren't there when I put the mappings in hibernate.cfg.xml.

hibernate.cfg.xml:

Code:

<?xml version='1.0' encoding='utf-8'?>
<!DOCTYPE hibernate-configuration PUBLIC
        "-//Hibernate/Hibernate Configuration DTD 2.0//EN"
 "http://hibernate.sourceforge.net/hibernate-configuration-2.0.dtd">

<hibernate-configuration>

    <!-- a SessionFactory instance listed as /jndi/name -->
    <session-factory name="java:comp/env/hibernate/SessionFactory">

        <!-- properties -->
        <property name="hibernate.connection.url">jdbc:oracle:thin:@192.168.1.61:1521:DB</property>
        <property name="hibernate.connection.username">login</property>
        <property name="hibernate.connection.password">pass</property>
        <property name="hibernate.connection.driver_class">oracle.jdbc.driver.OracleDriver</property>
        <property name="dialect">net.sf.hibernate.dialect.OracleDialect</property>
        <property name="show_sql">false</property>
        <property name="use_outer_join">true</property>
      
        <mapping resource="_Dummy.hbm.xml"/>

        </session-factory>

</hibernate-configuration>

It balks if there's no dummy mapping...Any way to avoid that?

mappings.cfg.xml:

Code:

<?xml version='1.0' encoding='utf-8'?>
<!DOCTYPE hibernate-configuration PUBLIC
      "-//Hibernate/Hibernate Configuration DTD 2.0//EN"
      "http://hibernate.sourceforge.net/hibernate-configuration-2.0.dtd">

<hibernate-configuration>

   <!-- a SessionFactory instance listed as /jndi/name -->
   <session-factory name="java:comp/env/hibernate/SessionFactory">

      <!-- mapping files -->
      <mapping resource="Content.hbm.xml"/>
      ...
      <mapping resource="User.hbm.xml"/>

   </session-factory>

</hibernate-configuration>

Here's the session initialization from the servlet listener class:

Code:

    public SessionFactory createSessionFactory() throws Exception {
        SessionFactory sessions = null;
        Configuration cfg = null;
        
        try {
            log.info("Loading hibernate.cfg.xml from classpath.");
            cfg = new Configuration().configure();
         
            log.info( "Adding mappings to Hibernate configuration..." );
            mappings = getClass().getClassLoader().getResourceAsStream( "mappings.cfg.xml" );
            cfg.addInputStream( mappings );

            sessions = cfg.buildSessionFactory();
        } catch (Exception e) {
            log.error("Could not initialize webapp:", e);
        }

        return sessions;
    }

Do I need to do my own parsing like in the thread posting above? I'm kinda boggled by all this.

snpesnpe · **Joined:** Sat Jun 12, 2004 4:49 pm **Posts:** 915

Code:

 cfg = new Configuration().configure();
         
            log.info( "Adding mappings to Hibernate configuration..." );
            mappings = getClass().getClassLoader().getResourceAsStream( "mappings.cfg.xml" );
            cfg.addInputStream( mappings );

            sessions = cfg.buildSessionFactory(); 

change to

Code:

 cfg = new Configuration();
         
            log.info( "Adding mappings to Hibernate configuration..." );
            mappings = getClass().getClassLoader().getResourceAsStream( "mappings.cfg.xml" );
            cfg.addInputStream( mappings );
             cfg.configure();
            sessions = cfg.buildSessionFactory(); 

cfg = new Configuration();

will load standard *cfg.xml or properties if you have one

Tremelune · **Joined:** Fri Jul 15, 2005 12:26 pm **Posts:** 37

Is this true in 2.x? After adding cfg.configure() after adding the input stream, I'm still getting the same issue (bad token in "from User as user", etc)...I'm gonna see if the docs can give me a better understanding of what question to ask...

max · **Posted:** Mon Sep 26, 2005 11:15 am

could it be your underlying db does not like User as a unquoted tablename/keyword ?

Tremelune · **Joined:** Fri Jul 15, 2005 12:26 pm **Posts:** 37

Heh, well, that was just a dummy query. The query that's bonking works when I put the mappings in hibernate.cfg.xml, but not when I put them in mappings.cfg.xml and try to load both files...

max · **Posted:** Mon Sep 26, 2005 11:31 am

would be good if you started by showing a stacktrace and more info rather than guessing it has something to do with the order of cfg.xml adding ;)

Tremelune · **Joined:** Fri Jul 15, 2005 12:26 pm **Posts:** 37

This is what I'm seeing from the first query that's run:

net.sf.hibernate.QueryException: unexpected token: as [from SystemInfo as systeminfo]
at net.sf.hibernate.hql.FromParser.token(FromParser.java:94)
at net.sf.hibernate.hql.ClauseParser.token(ClauseParser.java:87)
at net.sf.hibernate.hql.PreprocessingParser.token(PreprocessingParser.java:120)
at net.sf.hibernate.hql.ParserHelper.parse(ParserHelper.java:29)
at net.sf.hibernate.hql.QueryTranslator.compile(QueryTranslator.java:146)
at net.sf.hibernate.hql.QueryTranslator.compile(QueryTranslator.java:133)
at net.sf.hibernate.impl.SessionFactoryImpl.getQuery(SessionFactoryImpl.java:352)
at net.sf.hibernate.impl.SessionFactoryImpl.getQuery(SessionFactoryImpl.java:330)
at net.sf.hibernate.impl.SessionImpl.getQueries(SessionImpl.java:1368)
at net.sf.hibernate.impl.SessionImpl.find(SessionImpl.java:1332)
at net.sf.hibernate.impl.SessionImpl.find(SessionImpl.java:1322)
at net.sf.hibernate.impl.SessionImpl.find(SessionImpl.java:1314)

I just don't think it's finding the SystemInfo mapping...

max · **Posted:** Mon Sep 26, 2005 11:58 am

no i would expect "SystemInfo is not mapped" if that was the case...but that is H3.

you can see in the logs what classes it has mapped.

you can also call cfg.getClassMapping(fqcn) to see if it knows about it.

/max