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The <daoGenerator> Element

The <daoGenerator> element is used to define properties of the DAO generator. The DAO Generator builds DAOs in a variety of different formats - one DAO interface and implementation class for each introspected table. This element is a optional child element of the <ibatorContext> element. If you do not specify this element, then Ibator will not generate DAO interfaces and classes.

Required Attributes

Attribute Description
type This attribute is used to select one of the predefined DAO templates, or to specify a user provided DAO template. Any user provided DAO template must extend the class org.apache.ibatis.ibator.generator.ibatis2.dao.templates.AbstractDAOTemplate class, and must have a public default constructor.

The attribute accepts the following four values for selecting one of the predefined DAO generators:

IBATIS The generated DAO objects will conform to the (now deprecated) iBATIS DAO framework.
GENERIC-CI The generated DAO objects will rely only on the SqlMapClient. The SqlMapClient will be supplied by constructor dependency injection.
GENERIC-SI The generated DAO objects will rely only on the SqlMapClient. The SqlMapClient will be supplied by setter dependency injection.
SPRING The generated DAO objects will conform to the Spring DAO framework.
targetPackage This is the package where the generated DAO interfaces and implementation classes will be placed. In the default generators, the property "enableSubPackages" controls how the actual package is calculated. If true, then the calculated package will be the targetPackage plus sub packages for the table's catalog and schema if they exist. If "enableSubPackages" is false (the default) then the calculated package will be exactly what is specified in the targetPackage attribute. Ibator will create folders as required for the generated packages.

Note: the package for DAO implementation classes may be overridden by specifying the optional implementationPackage attribute as shown below.
targetProject This is used to specify a target project for the generated DAO interfaces and classes. When running in the Eclipse environment, this specifies the project and source folder where the objects will be saved. In other environments, this value should be an existing directory on the local file system. Ibator will not create this directory if it does not exist.

Optional Attributes

Attribute Description
implementationPackage If specified, DAO implementation classes will be placed in this package. In the default generators, the property "enableSubPackages" controls how the actual package is calculated. If true, then the calculated package will be the implementationPackage plus sub packages for the table's catalog and schema if they exist. If "enableSubPackages" is false (the default) then the calculated package will be exactly what is specified in the implementationPackage attribute. Ibator will create folders as required for the generated packages.

Child Elements

Supported Properties

This table lists the properties of the default SQL Map generators that can be specified with the <property> child element:

Property Name Property Values
enableSubPackages This property is used to select whether Ibator will generate different Java packages for the objects based on the catalog and schema of the introspected table.

For example, suppose a table MYTABLE in schema MYSCHMA. Also suppose that the targetPackage attribute is set to "com.mycompany". If this property is true, the generated DAO interface and class for the table will be placed in the package "com.mycompany.myschema". If the property is false, the generated SQL Map will be placed in the "com.mycompany" schema.

The default value is false.
exampleMethodVisibility This property is used to set the visibility of the different "ByExample" methods - selectByExample, deleteByExample, etc. If not specified, the methods will be public and will be declared in the DAO interface. This property allows you to hide these methods if you only want to use them to implement other specialized DAO methods.
public This is the default value
The generated methods in the implementation class will be public, and the methods will be declared in the DAO interface.
private The generated methods in the implementation class will be private, and the methods will not be declared in the DAO interface
protected The generated methods in the implementation class will be protected, and the methods will not be declared in the DAO interface
default The generated methods in the implementation class will have default (package) visibility, and the methods will not be declared in the DAO interface
methodNameCalculator This property is used to select a method name calculator. A method name calculator can be used to provide different names for the DAO methods. You can select one of the predefined values, or you can specify the fully qualified name of a class that implements the org.apache.ibatis.ibator.api.DAOMethodNameCalculator interface if neither of the supplied options are appropriate in your environment.
default This is the default value
The generated methods names will be very simple ("insert", "updateByPrimaryKey", etc.) This is the same behavior as earlier versions of Ibator.
extended The generated method names will include the name of the domain object associated with the method ("insertWidget", "updateWidgetByPrimaryKey", etc.)
rootInterface This property can be used to specify a super interface for all generated DAO interface objects. This value may be overridden by specifying the rootInterface property on a Table configuration.

Important: Ibator does not verify that the interface exists, or is a valid Java interface.

If specified, the value of this property should be a fully qualified interface name (like com.mycompany.MyRootInterface).

Example

This element specifies that we always want to place generated DAO interfaces and objects in the "'test.model" package and that we want to use subpackages based on the table schema and catalog. It also specifies that we want the generated DAO class to be compatible with the iBATIS DAO framework.

<daoGenerator targetPackage="test.model"
     targetProject="\MyProject\src" type="IBATIS">
  <property name="enableSubPackages" value="true" />
</daoGenerator>