It is relatively easy for developers to create their own value types. For example, you might want to persist properties of type java.lang.BigInteger to VARCHAR columns. Hibernate does not provide a built-in type for this. Custom types are not limited to mapping a property, or collection element, to a single table column. So, for example, you might have a Java property getName()/setName() of type java.lang.String that is persisted to the columns FIRST_NAME, INITIAL, SURNAME.

To implement a custom type, implement either org.hibernate.UserType or org.hibernate.CompositeUserType and declare properties using the fully qualified classname of the type. View org.hibernate.test.DoubleStringType to see the kind of things that are possible.

<property name="twoStrings" type="org.hibernate.test.DoubleStringType">
    <column name="first_string"/>
    <column name="second_string"/>
</property>

Notice the use of <column> tags to map a property to multiple columns.

The CompositeUserType, EnhancedUserType, UserCollectionType, and UserVersionType interfaces provide support for more specialized uses.

You can even supply parameters to a UserType in the mapping file. To do this, your UserType must implement the org.hibernate.usertype.ParameterizedType interface. To supply parameters to your custom type, you can use the <type> element in your mapping files.

<property name="priority">
    <type name="com.mycompany.usertypes.DefaultValueIntegerType">
        <param name="default">0</param>
    </type>
</property>

The UserType can now retrieve the value for the parameter named default from the Properties object passed to it.

If you regularly use a certain UserType, it is useful to define a shorter name for it. You can do this using the <typedef> element. Typedefs assign a name to a custom type, and can also contain a list of default parameter values if the type is parameterized.

<typedef class="com.mycompany.usertypes.DefaultValueIntegerType" name="default_zero">
    <param name="default">0</param>
</typedef>

<property name="priority" type="default_zero"/>

It is also possible to override the parameters supplied in a typedef on a case-by-case basis by using type parameters on the property mapping.

Even though Hibernate's rich range of built-in types and support for components means you will rarely need to use a custom type, it is considered good practice to use custom types for non-entity classes that occur frequently in your application. For example, a MonetaryAmount class is a good candidate for a CompositeUserType, even though it could be mapped as a component. One reason for this is abstraction. With a custom type, your mapping documents would be protected against changes to the way monetary values are represented.