java - Embed hibernate hbm.xml mappings in jar

Question

Is it possible to embed the hibernate mapping hbm.xml’s to the jar and avoid manual reference in applicationContext.xml like

  <bean id="sessionFactory"
    class="org.springframework.orm.hibernate3.LocalSessionFactoryBean">
    <property name="dataSource">
      <ref bean="dataSource" />
    </property>
    <property name="hibernateProperties">
      <props>
        <prop key="hibernate.dialect">
          org.hibernate.dialect.MySQLDialect
        </prop>
      </props>
    </property>
    <property name="mappingResources">
      <list>
        <value>
          com/…/domain/Question.hbm.xml

and point it to a jar/etc?
Nhibernate has such an option to point to an assembly, from where it picks ups the hbm’s.
Annotations are not an option

Edit: Edit: My intention is to remove manual reference to hbm’s and point to a generic location from where hibernate can pick it up

  <list>
    <value>
      com/.../Question.hbm.xml
    </value>
    <value>com/.../Users.hbm.xml</value>
    <value>
      com/.../Answers.hbm.xml
    </value>

Answer 1

Just to clarify, as well: you're specifically talking about Spring and Hibernate together, since the configuration you're showing is Spring's configuration of Hibernate. Spring's LocalSessionFactoryBean accepts a multitude of different ways to set the location of your Hibernate mapping files; you only show using the mappingResources parameter, but there's also mappingLocations, mappingJarLocations, and mappingDirectoryLocations.

I'd think that for your example, you might want to use mappingDirectoryLocations and just point it to a specific directory within your JAR, such as:

<property name="mappingDirectoryLocations">
      <list>
        <value>
          com/…/domain/
        </value>
      </list>
</property>