Hibernate force timestamp to persist/load as UTC

Question

I'm using java, mysql, hibernate (3.6.x). On the java side I'm using java.sql.Timestamp objects. On the mysql side I'm using datetime columns.

I want hibernate to save/load these Timestamp objects using UTC time zone regardless of system/java/mysql time zone.

I found " How to store date/time and timestamps in UTC time zone with JPA and Hibernate " which was informative but lacking some final implementation info which I'm struggling to find.

I want to implement a UtcTimestampTypeDescriptor as shown in that thread and configure hibernate to use this instead of the normal TimestampTypeDescriptor.

How can I configure hibernate to use the UtcTimestamp type instead of the default Timestamp type?

Solution 1

For MySQL only, an alternative to implementing custom Hibernate types is to add the following JDBC options to your JDBC connection URL:

useTimezone=true
serverTimezone=UTC

This will force your JDBC connection into the UTC timezone and ask MySQL to perform conversions from the JVM timezone. The net effect is that you can keep a local timezone on your JVM (e.g. for printing out log messages and so forth), while DATETIME columns will be persisted as UTC.

For example:

<bean id="hibernateAnalysisSessionFactory" class="org.springframework.orm.hibernate4.LocalSessionFactoryBean">
    <property name="hibernateProperties">
        <props>
            <!-- Connection parameters -->
            <prop key="hibernate.connection.driver_class">com.mysql.jdbc.Driver</prop>
            <prop key="hibernate.connection.url">jdbc:mysql://hostname/databaseName?useTimezone=true&amp;serverTimezone=UTC</prop>
            ...

Solution 2

get class public class UtcTimestampType extends TimestampType from your link
and make this code

@org.hibernate.annotations.Type(type = "yourPackage.UtcTimestampType")   
public java.util.Date date;    

using annotations

or

<property name="date" column="yourColumn" type="yourPackage.UtcTimestampType" />  

using *.hbm.xml

Comments

[ManuPK]

Why don't you try implementing community.jboss.org/wiki/UserTypeForNon-defaultTimeZone and then come up with the specific questions.

[samz]

I don't want to annotate every date/timestamp property I have. I want hibernate to always use the UTCTimestampType instead of the default type.

[Ilya]

It is impossible. UTCTimestampType is custom user type. If you want, you can unpack Hibernate's library and hack it.

[samz]

Look under that example, at the hibernate 3.6 example. There's an example of a descriptor, not a type. Then it says that when the app starts you can register this type instead of the default one but it doesn't say how/where.. That's basically my question.

[Ilya]

You can do this, using class Configuration cfg = new Configuration().configure("your.cfg.xml"); cfg.registerTypeOverride(new UtcTimestampType());

[fl4l]

I followed your trick using annotation but hibernate seems to ignore UtcTimestampType, Why? (even debugger breakpoints not hit) I have Hibernate 3.6.10