Persist java.time.Instant (JDK8) with JPA2/Hibernate

Question

Neither JPA nor Hibernate currently support the new date/time classes brought by JSR-310 in JDK8 (JPA ticket, Hibernate ticket). Nonetheless, I'd like to code with the JDK8 date/time classes as they are finally well designed. In particular, I'm interested in java.time.Instant, not in full support for all java.time.* types, as all my entities will use this particular class (or so I think now, at least :-)

One option is to write a type converter, as defined by JPA 2.1. However, our app server is JBoss EAP 6.3 which is JPA 2.0 but not 2.1 compatible, so this is out of the question for now.

The next option is to use a Hibernate user type (a blog post about converting other JSR-310 classes here).

Are there better options? Thanks.

Answer 1

Either use Hibernate 5.2.0+ or for earlier Hibernate 5 add the following dependency:

    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.hibernate</groupId>
        <artifactId>hibernate-java8</artifactId>
        <version>${hibernate.version}</version>
    </dependency>