Want to store Object in MySQL database

Question

I have a variable in java which return type is Object(java.lang.Object). I want to store this variable value in MySQL database without casting in any other primitive data type. Is there any data type available in MySQL related to Object?

Annisannissa

Note that it's generally not a good idea to store a serialized object in a database (other than maybe temporarily) because a change to the class of the object could make the serialized object stored in the database incompatible with it. – Digester

That sure would make things easy. Look into ORM or OODBMS. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object-relational_mapping and en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object_database – Triumvir

Answer 1

You can use a BLOB to store the raw data, but otherwise no, MySQL does not have a datatype specifically for a java object.

As a side note: You probably shouldn't be storing a raw object into the database, that kind of prevents you from doing any sort of queries on it.

Aldredge

Answer 2

You must serialize the Object anyway, so you could serialize to XML or JSON aswell. A human readable storage form is what I would prefer. Have a look at Xstream for example. A great, threadsafe tool for marshalling/unmarshalling.

I assume of course, that your Object is a Bean/POJO.

Siloa

Answer 3

BLOB could do it. Serialize the object into a byte array and INSERT that as a BLOB.

Waggoner

Answer 4

I'm not sure what do you mean by Object(java.lang.Object). but I think if you tried JSON datatype in MySQL it'll work fine.

create table person (name JSON );
INSERT INTO person VALUES ('{"pid": 101, "name": "name1"}');
INSERT INTO person VALUES ('{"pid": 102, "name": "name2"}');

or

INSERT INTO person VALUES (JSON_OBJECT("pid",103,"name", "name3"));

Galton