Hibernate/JPA – Default Values

In this tutorial, we are going to see how to set default column values to entity properties and in schema generation using JPA columnDefinition and Hibernate @ColumnDefault.

1. Setting Default values in Entity

In JPA or Hibernate, we can set default column values to entity properties directly. Let’s see an example.

@Entity
public class Student {

	@Id
	@GeneratedValue(strategy = GenerationType.AUTO, generator = "native")
	@GenericGenerator(name = "native", strategy = "native")
	@Column(name = "ID")
	private Long studentId;

	@Column(name = "FNAME")
	private String firstName = "Alexander";

	@Column(name = "LNAME")
	private String lastName = "Fleming";

        @Column(name = "CONTACT_NO")	
	private String contactNo = "XX-XXX-XXX-XXXX";
	
	@Column(name= "STATUS")
	private Boolean active = true;

	// setters, gettres, toString() - omitted

}

Now, every time when you create new Student instance, default column values automatically set to properties. Let’s test that.

public static void main(String[] args) {
     ...
     Student student = new Student();
     entityManager.persist(student);
     ...
     Student s = entityManager.find(Student.class, student.getStudentId());
     System.out.println(s)
     ...
}

Output Results:

...
Hibernate: 
    insert 
    into
        STUDENT
        (STATUS, CONTACT_NO, FNAME, LNAME) 
    values
        (?, ?, ?, ?)
Student [studentId=5, firstName=Alexander, lastName=Fleming, contactNo=XX-XXX-XXX-XXXX, active=true]
...

2. Setting Default column values while Schema generation

2.1. Default column values in JPA

JPA allows to generate Schema definitions when you set hibernate.hbm2ddl.auto value to create or create-drop or update. If you would need to set columns defaults values in SQL tables directly, we can use JPA @Column annotation with columnDefinition attribute.

For testing, set hibernate.hbm2ddl.auto to create in configuration and then update entity like following example.

@Entity
public class Student {

	@Id
	@GeneratedValue(strategy = GenerationType.AUTO, generator = "native")
	@GenericGenerator(name = "native", strategy = "native")
	@Column(name = "ID")
	private Long studentId;

	@Column(name = "FNAME", columnDefinition = "varchar(50) default 'Alexander'")
	private String firstName;

	@Column(name = "LNAME", columnDefinition = "varchar(50) default 'Fleming'")
	private String lastName;

        @Column(name = "CONTACT_NO", columnDefinition = "varchar(15) default 'XX-XXX-XXX-XXXX'")	
	private String contactNo;
	
	@Column(name= "STATUS", columnDefinition = "tinyint(1) default true")
	private Boolean active = true;

	// setters, gettres, toString() - omitted

}

For testing, just initialize EntityManager instance.

public static void main(String[] args) {
        ...			
        EntityManagerFactory emf = Persistence.createEntityManagerFactory("jbd-pu");			
        EntityManager entityManager = emf.createEntityManager();
        ...
}

Output Results:

...
Hibernate: 
    
    create table STUDENT (
       ID bigint not null auto_increment,
        STATUS tinyint(1) default true,
        CONTACT_NO varchar(15) default 'XX-XXX-XXX-XXXX',
        FNAME varchar(50) default 'Alexander',
        LNAME varchar(50) default 'Fleming',
        primary key (ID)
    ) engine=InnoDB
...

2.2. Default column values in Hibernate

In Hibernate, @ColumnDefault annotation can be used to identify the DEFAULT value to apply to the associated column via DDL. Let’s see an example.

@Entity
public class Student {

	@Id
	@GeneratedValue(strategy = GenerationType.AUTO, generator = "native")
	@GenericGenerator(name = "native", strategy = "native")
	@Column(name = "ID")
	private Long studentId;

	@ColumnDefault("'Alexander'")
	@Column(name = "FNAME")
	private String firstName;

	@ColumnDefault("'Fleming'")
	@Column(name = "LNAME")
	private String lastName;

	@ColumnDefault("'XX-XXX-XXX-XXXX'")
       @Column(name = "CONTACT_NO")	
	private String contactNo;
	
	@ColumnDefault("true")
	@Column(name= "STATUS")
	private Boolean active = true;

	// setters, gettres, toString() - omitted

}

For testing, create HibernateSession. You will see following reults.

...

Hibernate: 
    
    create table STUDENT (
       ID bigint not null auto_increment,
        STATUS bit default true,
        CONTACT_NO varchar(255) default 'XX-XXX-XXX-XXXX',
        FNAME varchar(255) default 'Alexander',
        LNAME varchar(255) default 'Fleming',
        primary key (ID)
    ) engine=InnoDB
...

3. Conclusion

In this tutorial, we have learned how to set default column values using @Column annotation columnDefinition attribute and @ColumnDefault annotation while creating entity and in Schama definition in JPA and Hibernate.