What is the use of the @Temporal annotation in Hibernate?

java hibernate
Chaitanya picture Chaitanya · Aug 15, 2014 · Viewed 205k times · Source

The Hibernate Documentation has the information below for the @Temporal annotation:

In plain Java APIs, the temporal precision of time is not defined. When dealing with temporal data you might want to describe the expected precision in database. Temporal data can have DATE, TIME, or TIMESTAMP precision (ie the actual date, only the time, or both). Use the @Temporal annotation to fine tune that.

What does temporal precision of time is not defined mean? What is temporal data and its precision? How does it fine tune?

Answer

Ankur Singhal picture Ankur Singhal · Aug 16, 2014

This annotation must be specified for persistent fields or properties of type java.util.Date and java.util.Calendar. It may only be specified for fields or properties of these types.

The Temporal annotation may be used in conjunction with the Basic annotation, the Id annotation, or the ElementCollection annotation (when the element collection value is of such a temporal type.

In plain Java APIs, the temporal precision of time is not defined. When dealing with temporal data, you might want to describe the expected precision in database. Temporal data can have DATE, TIME, or TIMESTAMP precision (i.e., the actual date, only the time, or both). Use the @Temporal annotation to fine tune that.

The temporal data is the data related to time. For example, in a content management system, the creation-date and last-updated date of an article are temporal data. In some cases, temporal data needs precision and you want to store precise date/time or both (TIMESTAMP) in database table.

The temporal precision is not specified in core Java APIs. @Temporal is a JPA annotation that converts back and forth between timestamp and java.util.Date. It also converts time-stamp into time. For example, in the snippet below, @Temporal(TemporalType.DATE) drops the time value and only preserves the date.

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