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In the previous article, we have discussed a below three inheritance strategies:

Hibernate/JPA MappedSuperclass Inheritance Example

Hibernate/JPA Single Table Inheritance Example

Hibernate JPA Joined Table Inheritance Example

In this article, we’ll look into Hibernate/JPA table per class inheritance.

In a Table per class inheritance strategy, each concrete subclass has its own table containing both the subclass and the base class properties.

Let's demonstrates TABLE_PER_CLASS inheritance strategy with a complete hibernate example.

Technologies and tools used

Hibernate 5.3.7.Final
IDE - Eclipse Noen
Maven 3.5.3
JavaSE 1.8
MySQL - 8.0.13

Development Steps

Create a Simple Maven Project
Project Directory Structure
Add jar Dependencies to pom.xml
Creating the JPA Entities
Create a Hibernate configuration file - hibernate.cfg.xml
Create a Hibernate utility class
Create the Main class and Run an Application

1. Create a Simple Maven Project

Use How to Create a Simple Maven Project in Eclipse article to create simple Maven project in Eclipse IDE.

2. Project Directory Structure

The project directory structure for your reference -

3. Add jar Dependencies to pom.xml

<project
    xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0"
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
 xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd">
    <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
    <parent>
        <groupId>net.javaguides.hibernate</groupId>
        <artifactId>hibernate-tutorial</artifactId>
        <version>0.0.1-SNAPSHOT</version>
    </parent>
    <artifactId>hibernate-inheritance-tableperclass</artifactId>
    <properties>
        <project.build.sourceEncoding>UTF-8</project.build.sourceEncoding>
    </properties>
    <dependencies>
        <!-- https://mvnrepository.com/artifact/mysql/mysql-connector-java -->
        <dependency>
            <groupId>mysql</groupId>
            <artifactId>mysql-connector-java</artifactId>
            <version>8.0.13</version>
        </dependency>
        <!-- https://mvnrepository.com/artifact/org.hibernate/hibernate-core -->
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.hibernate</groupId>
            <artifactId>hibernate-core</artifactId>
            <version>5.3.7.Final</version>
        </dependency>
    </dependencies>
    <build>
        <sourceDirectory>src/main/java</sourceDirectory>
        <plugins>
            <plugin>
                <artifactId>maven-compiler-plugin</artifactId>
                <version>3.5.1</version>
                <configuration>
                    <source>1.8</source>
                    <target>1.8</target>
                </configuration>
            </plugin>
        </plugins>
    </build>
</project>

4. Creating the JPA Entities

Let's define the following Account base class:

Account.java

package net.javaguides.hibernate.entity;

import javax.persistence.GeneratedValue;
import javax.persistence.GenerationType;
import javax.persistence.Id;
import javax.persistence.MappedSuperclass;

@Entity(name = "Account")
@Inheritance(strategy = InheritanceType.TABLE_PER_CLASS)
public abstract class Account {

    @Id
    @GeneratedValue(strategy = GenerationType.IDENTITY)
    private Long id;

    private String owner;

    private double balance;

    private double interestRate;

    public Long getId() {
        return id;
    }

    public void setId(Long id) {
        this.id = id;
    }

    public String getOwner() {
        return owner;
    }

    public void setOwner(String owner) {
        this.owner = owner;
    }

    public double getBalance() {
        return balance;
    }

    public void setBalance(double balance) {
        this.balance = balance;
    }

    public double getInterestRate() {
        return interestRate;
    }

    public void setInterestRate(double interestRate) {
        this.interestRate = interestRate;
    }
}

CreditAccount.java

package net.javaguides.hibernate.entity;

import javax.persistence.Entity;

@Entity(name = "CreditAccount")
public class CreditAccount extends Account {

    private double creditLimit;

    public double getCreditLimit() {
        return creditLimit;
    }

    public void setCreditLimit(double creditLimit) {
        this.creditLimit = creditLimit;
    }
}

DebitAccount.java

package net.javaguides.hibernate.entity;

import javax.persistence.Entity;

@Entity(name = "DebitAccount")
public class DebitAccount extends Account {

    private double overdraftFee;

    public double getOverdraftFee() {
        return overdraftFee;
    }

    public void setOverdraftFee(double overdraftFee) {
        this.overdraftFee = overdraftFee;
    }
}

5. Create a Hibernate configuration file - hibernate.cfg.xml

The configuration file contains information about the database and mapping file. Conventionally, its name should be hibernate.cfg.xml.

Let's create an XML file named as hibernate.cfg.xml under resources folder and write the following code in it.

<!DOCTYPE hibernate-configuration PUBLIC
        "-//Hibernate/Hibernate Configuration DTD 3.0//EN"
        "http://www.hibernate.org/dtd/hibernate-configuration-3.0.dtd">
<hibernate-configuration>
    <session-factory>
        <!-- JDBC Database connection settings -->
        <property name="connection.driver_class">com.mysql.cj.jdbc.Driver</property>
        <property name="connection.url">jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/hibernate_db?useSSL=false</property>
        <property name="connection.username">root</property>
        <property name="connection.password">root</property>
        <!-- JDBC connection pool settings ... using built-in test pool -->
        <property name="connection.pool_size">1</property>
        <!-- Select our SQL dialect -->
        <property name="dialect">org.hibernate.dialect.MySQL5Dialect</property>
        <!-- Echo the SQL to stdout -->
        <property name="show_sql">true</property>
        <!-- Set the current session context -->
        <property name="current_session_context_class">thread</property>
        <!-- Drop and re-create the database schema on startup -->
        <property name="hbm2ddl.auto">create-drop</property>
        <!-- dbcp connection pool configuration -->
        <property name="hibernate.dbcp.initialSize">5</property>
        <property name="hibernate.dbcp.maxTotal">20</property>
        <property name="hibernate.dbcp.maxIdle">10</property>
        <property name="hibernate.dbcp.minIdle">5</property>
        <property name="hibernate.dbcp.maxWaitMillis">-1</property>
        <mapping class="net.javaguides.hibernate.entity.CreditAccount" />
 <mapping class="net.javaguides.hibernate.entity.DebitAccount" />
    </session-factory>
</hibernate-configuration>

6. Create a Hibernate utility Class

Create a helper class to bootstrap hibernate SessionFactory. In most Hibernate applications, the SessionFactory should be instantiated once during application initialization. The single instance should then be used by all code in a particular process, and any Session should be created using this single SessionFactory. The SessionFactory is thread-safe and can be shared; a Session is a single-threaded object.

The bootstrapping API is quite flexible, but in most cases, it makes the most sense to think of it as a 3 step process:

Build the StandardServiceRegistry
Build the Metadata
Use those 2 to build the SessionFactory

package net.javaguides.hibernate.util;

import org.hibernate.SessionFactory;
import org.hibernate.boot.Metadata;
import org.hibernate.boot.MetadataSources;
import org.hibernate.boot.registry.StandardServiceRegistry;
import org.hibernate.boot.registry.StandardServiceRegistryBuilder;

public class HibernateUtil {
    private static StandardServiceRegistry registry;
    private static SessionFactory sessionFactory;

    public static SessionFactory getSessionFactory() {
        if (sessionFactory == null) {
            try {
                // Create registry
                registry = new StandardServiceRegistryBuilder().configure().build();

                // Create MetadataSources
                MetadataSources sources = new MetadataSources(registry);

                // Create Metadata
                Metadata metadata = sources.getMetadataBuilder().build();

                // Create SessionFactory
                sessionFactory = metadata.getSessionFactoryBuilder().build();

            } catch (Exception e) {
                e.printStackTrace();
                if (registry != null) {
                    StandardServiceRegistryBuilder.destroy(registry);
                }
            }
        }
        return sessionFactory;
    }

    public static void shutdown() {
        if (registry != null) {
            StandardServiceRegistryBuilder.destroy(registry);
        }
    }
}

7. Create the main App class and Run an Application

package net.javaguides.hibernate;

import org.hibernate.Session;
import org.hibernate.Transaction;

import net.javaguides.hibernate.entity.Account;
import net.javaguides.hibernate.util.HibernateUtil;

public class App {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        Transaction transaction = null;
        try (Session session = HibernateUtil.getSessionFactory().openSession()) {
            // start a transaction
            transaction = session.beginTransaction();
            // save the account object
            Account account = new Account();
            account.setBalance(10000.0);
            account.setInterestRate(10.0);
            account.setOwner("Ramesh");
            session.save(account);

            // commit transaction
            transaction.commit();
        }
        HibernateUtil.shutdown();
    }
}

Since we used the JOINED inheritance strategy, all subclasses and superclass have their own table.

CREATE TABLE Account (
    id BIGINT NOT NULL ,
    balance NUMERIC(19, 2) ,
    interestRate NUMERIC(19, 2) ,
    owner VARCHAR(255) ,
    PRIMARY KEY ( id )
)

CREATE TABLE CreditAccount (
    id BIGINT NOT NULL ,
    balance NUMERIC(19, 2) ,
    interestRate NUMERIC(19, 2) ,
    owner VARCHAR(255) ,
    creditLimit NUMERIC(19, 2) ,
    PRIMARY KEY ( id )
)

CREATE TABLE DebitAccount (
    id BIGINT NOT NULL ,
    balance NUMERIC(19, 2) ,
    interestRate NUMERIC(19, 2) ,
    owner VARCHAR(255) ,
    overdraftFee NUMERIC(19, 2) ,
    PRIMARY KEY ( id )
)

GitHub Repository

The complete source code of this article available on my GitHub Repository - https://github.com/RameshMF/Hibernate-ORM-Tutorials

Conclusion

In this article, we have looked into Hibernate/JPA table per class inheritance. You can check out below remaining three inheritance strategies:

Hibernate/JPA MappedSuperclass Inheritance Example

Hibernate/JPA Single Table Inheritance Example

Hibernate JPA Joined Table Inheritance Example

You can learn more about Hibernate ORM Framework at Hibernate Tutorial

References

Hibernate ORM 5.4.0.Final User Guide

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Hibernate/JPA Table Per Class Inheritance Example