Spring, JPA, Postgresql - cannot use custom type as ID

Question

I'm getting exception:

org.postgresql.util.PSQLException: ERROR: operator does not exist: uuid = bytea
Hint: No operator matches the given name and argument type(s). You might need to add explicit type casts.

I have JPA entity

@Entity(name = "products")
class JpaProductEntity {

    @Id
    private ProductId id;

    private String payload;

    private Integer version;

    public JpaProductEntity() {
    }

    public void setId(ProductId id) {
        this.id = id;
    }

    public String getPayload() {
        return payload;
    }

    public void setPayload(String payload) {
        this.payload = payload;
    }

    public Integer getVersion() {
        return version;
    }

    public void setVersion(Integer version) {
        this.version = version;
    }
}

Id class

 public class ProductId  implements Serializable {

    private static final long serialVersionUID = -6110163899364126142L;

    private String identifier;

    public ProductId(String identifier) {
        this.identifier = identifier;
    }

    public static ProductId from(String identifier) {
        Assert.notNull(identifier, "Identifier cannot be null");
        return new ProductId(identifier);
    }

    public static ProductId generate() {
        return new ProductId(Id.generateIdentifier());
    }
}

Also, converter:

@Converter(autoApply = true)
public class ProductIdPostgresUuidConverter implements AttributeConverter<ProductId, UUID> {

    @Override
    public UUID convertToDatabaseColumn(ProductId attribute) {
        return UUID.fromString(attribute.toString());
    }

    @Override
    public ProductId convertToEntityAttribute(UUID dbData) {
        return ProductId.from(dbData.toString());
    }
}

It seems, converter does not work at all (I've put break points in converter methods, but nothing happens, debugger does not enter there).

Is your JPA provider supporting JPA 2.1? Does the converter work for you on non-PK fields? Which JPA provider? Have you included the converter explicitly in persistence.xml? — Neil Stockton
You could try annotating the ProductId class with @Embeddable and the id in JpaProductEntity as @Embedded. No conversion would be required then. Of course ProductId will need a getter and setter for identifier and a no-argument constructor. — coladict

Adrian Colomitchi Adrian Colomitchi · Accepted Answer · 2016-10-06T00:07:29

Try this:

@Entity(name = "products")
class JpaProductEntity {

  @Type(type = "pg-uuid") // tells what type will be internally used by DB
  // Definitely need to instruct JPA to use your converter
  @Convert(converter = ProductIdPostgresUuidConverter.class)
  @Id
  private ProductId id;

}

Hint: you may have multiple converters for the same type, to be used at your discretion. You do need to tell JPA explicitly which one to use.

Spring, JPA, Postgresql - cannot use custom type as ID

1 Answers