Cayenne User Documentation
Extended Types

JDBC specification defines a set of "standard" database column types (defined in java.sql.Types class) and a very specific mapping of these types to Java Object Types, such as java.lang.String, java.math.BigDecimal, etc. Sometimes there is a need to use a custom Java type not known to JDBC driver. CayenneModeler allows to configure an arbitrary Java class as an `org.apache.cayenne.map.ObjAttribute` type by simply entering a fully-qualified name such class in the type column of an ObjAttribute. However there is more to it than just that. Cayenne needs to know how to instantiate this type from a database "primitive" value, and conversly, how to transform an object of the custom type to a JDBC-compatible object.

### Supporting Non-Standard Types

`org.apache.cayenne.access.types.ExtendedType` interface serves to integrate a custom attribute type to Cayenne. An implementation must provide `ExtendedType.getClassName()` method that returns a fully qualified Java class name for the supported custom type, and a number of methods that convert data between JDBC and custom type. Installing an ExtendedType currently has to be done in the code, some time during Cayenne startup (modeler support will be added in the future). The following code sample demonstrates this procedure:

    // create custom ExtendedType instance
    ExtendedType customType = new MyCustomType();

    // Find DataNode
    DataDomain domain = Configuration.getSharedConfiguration().getDomain();
    // replace 'node_name' with the name of the DataNode you've entered in the Modeler.
    DataNode node = domain.getNode("node_name");

    // install ExtendedType
    node.getAdapter().getExtendedTypes().registerType(customType);

### DbAdapters and Extended Types

As shown in the example above, ExtendedTypes are stored by DbAdapter. In fact DbAdapters often install their own extended types to address incompatibilities, incompletness and differences between JDBC drivers in handling "standard" JDBC types. For instance some drivers support reading large character columns (CLOB) as java.sql.Clob, but some other - as "character stream", etc. Adapters provided with Cayenne override `configureExtendedTypes()` method to install their own types, possibly substituting Cayenne defaults. Custom DbAdapters can use the same technique.

### Three tier considerations

If you are using Cayenne in a three tier (ROP) environment, serialization of the extended type becomes important. More information can be found here.

### Mapping Java Enums

Note that custom enums are supported by Cayenne natively. Cayenne stores an enum name in the database if the corresponding database column is a character column, and enum ordinal, if the column is numeric. So in a simple case no special ExtendedType is needed to map enums. Still often you may need one when you want to store a non-standard enum property in the database.

Take for example the following enum:

    public enum MyEnum {

    	E1(55), E2(97), E3(101);

    	private int code;

    	private MyEnum(int code) {
    		this.code = code;
    	}

    	public int getCode() {
    		return code;
    	}
    }

To store and retrieve string values "E1", "E2", "E3" no ExtendedType is needed. To store "code" value a custom ExtendedType is needed.

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