How do I test if an object is transient? How do I update the object from the database only if it is transient or disconnected?

I save a Hibernate object representing the active logged in user in my web session. I'm getting sporadic TransientObjectException errors when I access it. I don't want to do a database hit every time I access that value.

Hibernate 3.2CR3

Accessing a detached entity shouldn't be a problem in most cases. The one situation where it will fail is if you have lazy-loaded relationships on that entity.

In any case, perhaps these will help you (from the hibby docs):

"The lock() method also allows an application to reassociate an object with a new session. However, the detached instance has to be unmodified!"

"It is possible to re-load an object and all its collections at any time, using the refresh() method. This is useful when database triggers are used to initialize some of the properties of the object." (It sound like you don't want to be reloading though.)

You might want to track down the exact cause of this TransientObjectException, because that doesn't strike me as something that would occur when using a detached instance.