Is it possible to effectively use Hibernate without declaring getter and setter functions?

I have recently moved over from C# .Net programming and find that getter and setter functions add noise to my code. So far my Hibernate entity classes have mostly public mapped fields.

For simple single object session.get(id) operations Hibernate works including dirty tracking, without get/set methods. However where a lazy @ManyToOne association is represented as a Hibernate proxy following a session.get(), I find that public mapped fields do not get populated even after tickling the proxy to perform a DB read by calling getVersion().

Can I do something to persuade the proxy to populate public fields?

The following link might be relevant but as a Hibernate beginner I cannot follow the details.

http://www.jdocs.com/page/AjaxSourceCode?oid=18464


Hibernate-Version: 3.2.0.ga

If you set the hibernate-mapping default-access="property", you can access the model class from Hibernate with out declaring getter and setter methods.

Hmm. After reading your post I re-read some pages in the 2007 Java Persistence book and think you meant access="field"?

All my entity classes dervive from a @MappedSuperclass annotated base class that has an Id declared as:



I believe this means that Hibernate will access my entities through direct field access.

Anyhow this leaves the original problem that a proxied entity instance does not backfill public mapped fields even after it performs a just-in-time hydration from the database. I am beginning to think this is by design and I will have to retrofit getters and setters into my domain model.

right access=field is the mapping for such a thing.
I noticed that in JP with Hibernate too, while reading Many to Many relationship mappings with a join table and a composite primary key with additional fields ... good catch though.

Regards
Vyas Anirudh