java - Hibernate - Foreign keys instead of Entities

Question

Currently, Hibernate allows me to load objects defined by *-to-one relationships directly with

entity1.getEntity2()

Is it possible to get the foreign key instead of the object?

The current approach which I see is having addint to my mapping:

@JoinColumn(name="message_key")
@ManyToOne(targetEntity=Message.class,fetch=FetchType.LAZY)
private Message message;  //these lines currently exist

@Column(name="message_key")
private Long message_fk; //the idea is to add those 2 lines

Is there a better approach to get the foreign key, or is this the only one?

Answer 1

Yes, you can do that. You just need to make it clear for hibernate which one is the mapping that it's supposed to maintain, like so:

@Column(name="message_key", updatable=false, insertable=false)
private Long message_fk;