Can I use Java 16 record with JPA entity?

Question

I am trying to do something similar like below.

@Entity
@Table(name="Sample")
public record Sample(Integer id, String name) {

    @Id
    @GeneratedValue(strategy = GenerationType.IDENTITY)
    @Column(name="user_id")
    private Integer id;

    @Column(name="username")
    private String name;

}

However, it gives me error "User declared non-static fields id are not permitted in a record" and same for name field as well.

Is there a way to use new java feature "record" with JPA annotation?

Answer 1

tl;dr

No support currently, but some support coming in 2024-2025.

Future

According to Jakarta EE 11: The Next Major Jakarta EE Update Is Shaping Up by Ivar Grimstad, 2023-08:

• In Jakarta Persistence 3.2, “Java Records will be usable as an embeddable type”.
• Jakarta Validation 3.1 will add support for Java Records.

Present

See the article, Using Records as Projections in JPA by Billy Korando. The following is a brief summary.

Records cannot be Entities

Jakarta Persistence (JPA; formerly Java Persistence API) implementations such as Hibernate depend on features either forbidden or not recommended by the JEP 395: Records spec: no-arg constructors, non-final fields, setters, etc.

➥ So, no, records cannot be used as JPA Entity.

Other uses of records

You can use records with:

• CriteriaBuilder
• TypedQuery
• NativeQuery
• Mapping definition

Spring data has some support as well.

See that article linked above for details, and for links to two other articles.