Using entities with collections?

[sbalmos]

Hi all,

In 1.0.2, the WSDL generator now ignores datatypes that are collections. This was easy enough to fix with my wrapper SOAP interface. However, the complex datatypes that I return from my functions are entity beans, which themselves have member collections. I cannot replace these collections with arrays, since the EJB3 Persistence system needs collections to determine relationship mappings. And I can't create overridden getter methods in the entities that return arrays.

So, what am I supposed to do? On one hand, I must use collections in the entities for the persistence framework. Yet on the other hand, I can't for the SOAP framework. Am I supposed to create new wrapper entity datatypes for SOAP, which only use arrays? What about Map-type collections, where a flat array wouldn't really work?

Ideas are appreciated.

--Scott

[fheldt]

Here's what i did: The entity bean is field mapped and the getters/setters convert between Collection and Array.

A sample:

public class MyEntityBean implements java.io.Serializable {
 @Id
 @Column(name="id")
 private int id;
 ...
 @OneToMany(mappedBy = "abc")
 private Set<ColumnHeader> colHeaders;
 ...
 public ColumnHeader[] getColumns() {
 return this.colHeaders.toArray(new ColumnHeader[ this.colHeaders.size() ]);
 }
 public void setColumns(ColumnHeader[] colHeaders) {
 this.colHeaders.clear();
 for (int i = 0; i < colHeaders.length; i++) {
 this.colHeaders.add(colHeaders[ i ]);
 }
 }
}

[sbalmos]

Groan... Nothing like rewriting all those getters/setters, the annotations, etc. :) I'm guessing there's no real difference in using property vs field annotations.

What's worse is that some of my entities use Map-type collections, which there is no support at all for (I thought SOAP had some key-value type primitive???). I have no idea how I am going to fix that. I thought about writing XmlAdapters, like in http://weblogs.java.net/blog/kohsuke/archive/2005/04/xmladapter_in_j.html , but I just tried that. The WSDL generator doesn't pick up on the adapter, and continues to almost-silently ignore the Map.

Ideas for that one would be even more appreciated. Thanks!

--Scott