Our first persistent class is a simple JavaBean class with some properties:

package events;

import java.util.Date;

public class Event {
    private Long id;

    private String title;
    private Date date;

    public Event() {}

    public Long getId() {
        return id;
    }

    private void setId(Long id) {
        this.id = id;
    }

    public Date getDate() {
        return date;
    }

    public void setDate(Date date) {
        this.date = date;
    }

    public String getTitle() {
        return title;
    }

    public void setTitle(String title) {
        this.title = title;
    }
}

You can see that this class uses standard JavaBean naming conventions for property getter and setter methods, as well as private visibility for the fields. This is a recommended design - but not required. Hibernate can also access fields directly, the benefit of accessor methods is robustness for refactoring. The no-argument constructor is required to instantiate an object of this class through reflection.

The id property holds a unique identifier value for a particular event. All persistent entity classes (there are less important dependent classes as well) will need such an identifier property if we want to use the full feature set of Hibernate. In fact, most applications (esp. web applications) need to distinguish objects by identifier, so you should consider this a feature rather than a limitation. However, we usually don't manipulate the identity of an object, hence the setter method should be private. Only Hibernate will assign identifiers when an object is saved. You can see that Hibernate can access public, private, and protected accessor methods, as well as (public, private, protected) fields directly. The choice is up to you and you can match it to fit your application design.

The no-argument constructor is a requirement for all persistent classes; Hibernate has to create objects for you, using Java Reflection. The constructor can be private, however, package visibility is required for runtime proxy generation and efficient data retrieval without bytecode instrumentation.

Place this Java source file in a directory called src in the development folder, and in its correct package. The directory should now look like this:

.
+lib
  <Hibernate and third-party libraries>
+src
  +events
    Event.java

In the next step, we tell Hibernate about this persistent class.