Introduction

In this article, we are going to see how to customize the HibernateTypesContributor from Hypersistence Utils so that we can disable all or filter out certain Types.

What does HibernateTypesContributor does in Hypersistence Utils

The HibernateTypesContributor implements the TypeContributor Hibernate interface and registers several Types automatically. By doing this, the audited entities will be able to locate the Hypersistence Utils Types that you used in your JPA entities.

Hibernate ORM uses the Java Service Provider Interface mechanism to register custom implementations of various Hibernate APIs that allows you to customize the way Hibernate works.

To register a custom TypeContributor, you can provide the following file on your Java classpath:

META-INF/services/org.hibernate.boot.model.TypeContributor

And the org.hibernate.boot.model.TypeContributor file content should contain the fully-qualified class name of the Java class implementing the org.hibernate.boot.model.TypeContributor interface.

For instance, the Hypersistence Utils library provides the following org.hibernate.boot.model.TypeContributor file:

io.hypersistence.utils.hibernate.type.HibernateTypesContributor

By doing so, Hibernate will locate this file and initialize it at bootstrap time.

How to control the Types registered by HibernateTypesContributor

Since version 3.5, Hypersistence Utils now allows you to customize the automatic Type registration.

The customization is done via the standard Hibernate setting mechanism, which you can set using the spring.jpa.properties prefix in your application.properties file.

By default, The Hypersistence Utils Types are automatically registered, so if you want to disable this process, then you can set the following property:

spring.jpa.properties.hypersistence.utils.enable_types_contributor=false

This setting is useful when you suspect an issue due to a Hypersistence Utils Type that replaces a standard Hibernate ORM Type and changes the default data mapping behavior that you were expecting. By disabling the automatic registration for all Hypersistence Utils Types, you can validate whether the problem is caused by the Hypersistence Utils library or not.

If you don’t want to disable only some specific types, then you can use the hypersistence.utils.types_contributor_filter property, which can take the following values:

• a Java Object that implements the Predicate interface
• a Java class that implements the Predicate interface
• the fully-qualified name of the Java class that implements the Predicate interface

For instance, if you want to provide the Predicate programmatically using the Spring Java-based configuration, you can do it like this:

protected void additionalProperties(Properties properties) {
    properties.put(
        HibernateTypesContributor.TYPES_CONTRIBUTOR_FILTER,
        (Predicate<UserType>) userType -> 
            !(userType instanceof PostgreSQLInetType)
    );
}

The above Predicate will disable the automatic registration only for the PostgreSQLInetType from Hypersistence Utils.

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Conclusion

The automatic Type registration mechanism is very handy, especially on Hibernate 6, since you no longer have to specify the Hypersistence Utils Types manually for every entity property.

However, this automatic registration mechanism may also cause some unintended issues if a Hypersistence Utils Type replaces a custom Type that you planned on using. Being able to configure which Hypersistence Utils Types will be registered automatically will provide you more flexibility when deciding what Hibernate Type should be used to handle a certain DB column type or entity attribute Java type.

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