Question

I have an enumerated type field current_status in a table history in a PostgreSQL database. The enumeration is defined as:

CREATE TYPE et_status AS ENUM
   ('PENDING', 'SUCCESS', 'LATE', 'EARLY', 'FAILED', 'IN_PROGRESS', 'EXPIRED');

I added an enumerated type on the server side and made some changes to the type on the relevant field and the getter and setter. This looks like:

@Entity
@Table(name = "history")
@XmlRootElement
@NamedQueries({ ... })
public class History implements Serializable {
    public enum StatusType implements Serializable
        {PENDING, SUCCESS, SUCCESS_LATE, SUCCESS_EARLY,
         FAILED, IN_PROGRESS, EXPIRED};

...

    @Lob
    @Column(name = "current_status")
    private StatusType currentStatus;

...

    public StatusType getCurrentStatus() {
        return currentStatus;
    }

    public void setCurrentStatus(StatusType currentStatus) {
        this.currentStatus = currentStatus;
    }
}

When testing the web service, I get the following error:

The object [PENDING], of class [class org.postgresql.util.PGobject], from mapping
[org.eclipse.persistence.mappings.DirectToFieldMapping[currentStatus-->history.current_status]]
with descriptor [RelationalDescriptor(entities.History --> [DatabaseTable(history)])],
could not be converted to [class java.lang.Integer].

Searching the Internet yielded this solution, but it appears to require the use of org.hibernate.annotations.TypeDef which I don’t seem to have in my installation.

Question: What is the proper method of converting from a PostgreSQL enumerated type into a Java enumerated type via a RESTful Web Service?

Database: PostgreSQL 8.4
App Server: Glassfish 3.1.2.2
IDE: NetBeans 7.2
JDK: 7 update 7

Answer 1

Don’t use @Lob, try @Enumerated(EnumType.STRING) instead.

However you have to make sure then that the names in java exactly match those in postgresql (which they don’t in your current code).