field or property based access

[Peter Curila]

What are pros and cons of using field or property based access in JPA entities? Which one is recommended?

[Mark Spritzler]

You basically mean the difference between mapping to the class attribute or a getter/setter

The main difference is if you need some extra code to run before you set or get the value, some extra validation if you need it to go above and beyond Hibernate's built in validation on fields.

Mark

[Peter Curila]

Thank you Mark,

I am about to start new project with EJB3 and I am new to that.
I am asking because many people choose property based access because of better encapsulation.

But I have an idea to make my entities with private fields so only entity manager can access them. Then write only necessary getters and setters for clients and business logic like validation store in entity listeners.

Peter