How to map a MySQL JSON column to a Java entity property using JPA and Hibernate

Question

I have a MySQL column declared as type JSON and I have problems to map it with JPA/Hibernate. I'm using Spring Boot on back-end.

Here is small part of my code:

@Entity
@Table(name = "some_table_name")
public class MyCustomEntity implements Serializable {

private static final long serialVersionUID = 1L;

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

@Column(name = "json_value")
private JSONArray jsonValue;

The program returns me an error and tells me that I can't map the column.

In mysql table the column is defined as:

json_value JSON NOT NULL;

Answer 1

I prefer to do this way:

• Creating converter (attribute converter) from Map to String and vice versa.
• Using Map to map mysql JSON column type in domain (entity) class

The code is bellow.

JsonToMapConverted.java

@Converter
public class JsonToMapConverter 
                    implements AttributeConverter<String, Map<String, Object>> 
{
    private static final Logger LOGGER = LoggerFactory.getLogger(JsonToMapConverter.class);

    @Override
    @SuppressWarnings("unchecked")
    public Map<String, Object> convertToDatabaseColumn(String attribute)
    {
        if (attribute == null) {
           return new HashMap<>();
        }
        try
        {
            ObjectMapper objectMapper = new ObjectMapper();
            return objectMapper.readValue(attribute, HashMap.class);
        }
        catch (IOException e) {
            LOGGER.error("Convert error while trying to convert string(JSON) to map data structure.");
        }
        return new HashMap<>();
    }

    @Override
    public String convertToEntityAttribute(Map<String, Object> dbData)
    {
        try
        {
            ObjectMapper objectMapper = new ObjectMapper();
            return objectMapper.writeValueAsString(dbData);
        }
        catch (JsonProcessingException e)
        {
            LOGGER.error("Could not convert map to json string.");
            return null;
        }
    }
}

Part of domain (entity-mapping) class

...

@Column(name = "meta_data", columnDefinition = "json")
@Convert(attributeName = "data", converter = JsonToMapConverter.class)
private Map<String, Object> metaData = new HashMap<>();

...

This solution perfectly works for me.