enum within a class causes illegalAccessException

Helmut Faasch · **Joined:** Thu Dec 13, 2007 6:16 pm **Posts:** 2

I am using Hibernate 3 with Annotations and got a problem mapping enums.
I have declared an enum. This enum is used as a type in another class for a single variable.
The variable is mapped into its own column as a number or a string, depending how I specify the mapping - and it works wonderful!

Everything works excellent as long as I keep the enum IN A SEPARATE java-file. When I use an inner enum, which makes logically sense because it belongs exactly to this one class, I get an IllegalAccessExceptionException when I try to export the schema to the MySql database.

The message passed by the exception is 'Class org.hibernate.type.EnumType can not access a member of class erm.enumeration.TK1 with modifiers "public static"' (TK1 is the enum type).

Why must the enum be in a separate file ? Did I oversee something ?

emmanuel · **Posted:** Sat Dec 15, 2007 9:50 pm

I would appreciate a test case, can you post it to JIRA

Helmut Faasch · **Joined:** Thu Dec 13, 2007 6:16 pm **Posts:** 2

Thank you for your quick reply, emmanuel.
Fortunately, I found the reason for the exception - it was just my error!

I forgot to mark the inner class (the enum) to be public.
This is the (reduced) corrected code:

Code:

@Entity
public class Transport {
  
   public static enum TKind{
    SHIP,
    PLANE;
    };
  }

@Id
long pk;

  TKind kind; // enum must be public
.....

If I do not mark the inner class as being public I receive the exception. What was a bit irritating was the exception message itself which stated

can not access a member of class enumeration.TKind with modifiers "public static".

In fact the enum MUST be public static. However, Hibernate stays the most important and fascinating tool for me for more than 5 years now! That's why my students have to learn hibernate.