Include Java 8 time classes in the Entity Class Creation Wizard

[cpramirez]

Description

The Wizard that creates the Entity Classes from Database uses the java.util.Date by default.

It would good if could be updated to work with the more modern Java8 Time classes, basically because they are the updated versions of it and have less problems with the handling of the time-zones and conversions of them when retrieving/storing the information in the database.

Use case/motivation

I do not know how difficult would be, but probably the best option would be to allow the user to choose if they want to use java.util.Date or java.time classes, in a similar way to how they choose if they want to use Collection, Set or List for the relationships.

I want to remove the uses of Date from my projects and it is time consuming have to review all new entities to replace it for its best equivalent, but that is my particular case. Other people may need to use it for compatibility reasons, for example.

Related issues

No response

Are you willing to submit a PR?

• Yes I am willing to submit a PR!

Code of Conduct

• I agree to follow the Apache Software Foundation's Code of Conduct

[renatsaf]

Hi @mbien !
I've opened #9448 to address this.

It adds a Date/Time API option to the Entity Classes from Database wizard, right next to the existing Collection Type dropdown (the UI pattern suggested in the description). The default stays java.util.Date for backward compatibility; choosing java.time (Java 8+) maps temporal columns as:

SQL column	java.time
java.sql.Date	java.time.LocalDate
java.sql.Time	java.time.LocalTime
java.sql.Timestamp	java.time.LocalDateTime

Since java.time types are mapped natively by JPA 2.2+, no @Temporal annotation is emitted for them.

One open question for reviewers: TIMESTAMP is mapped to LocalDateTime (the straightforward reverse-engineering choice). Instant/OffsetDateTime would handle timezones better but aren't a pure column mapping — happy to switch if maintainers prefer.