nhibernate, 0 in foreign key column

Question

I got a legacy database where the value of 0 was used in FK columns to indicate that no relation have been specified.

This is not something that I can change in a trivial way. Is it possible to tell NHibernate to treat 0 as null in specified columns?

Edit

I know about not-found, but I just want to ignore those with 0.

Answer 1

This solution worked great for us: http://nhibernate.info/blog/2011/01/28/how-to-use-0-instead-of-null-for-foreign-keys.html

In short:

Add the following class:

public class NullableTuplizer : PocoEntityTuplizer
{
    public NullableTuplizer(EntityMetamodel entityMetamodel, PersistentClass mappedEntity)
        : base(entityMetamodel, mappedEntity)
    {
    }

    public override object[] GetPropertyValuesToInsert(
        object entity, IDictionary mergeMap, ISessionImplementor session)
    {
        object[] values = base.GetPropertyValuesToInsert(entity, mergeMap, session);
        //dirty hack 1
        for (int i = 0; i < values.Length; i++)
        {
            if (values[i ] == null && typeof (IEntity).IsAssignableFrom(getters[i ].ReturnType))
            {
                values[i ] = ProxyFactory.GetProxy(0, null);
            }
        }
        return values;
    }

    public override object[] GetPropertyValues(object entity)
    {
        object[] values = base.GetPropertyValues(entity);
        //dirty hack 2
        for (int i = 0; i < values.Length; i++)
        {
            if (values[i ] == null && typeof (IEntity).IsAssignableFrom(getters[i ].ReturnType))
            {
                values[i ] = ProxyFactory.GetProxy(0, null);
            }
        }
        return values;
    }


    public override void SetPropertyValues(object entity, object[] values)
    {
        //dirty hack 3.
        for (int i = 0; i < values.Length; i++)
        {
            if (typeof (IEntity).IsAssignableFrom(getters[i ].ReturnType)
                && ((IEntity) values[i ]).Id == 0)
            {
                values[i ] = null;
            }
        }
        base.SetPropertyValues(entity, values);
    }
}

Then register it for every relevant mapping:

foreach (var persistentClass in configuration.ClassMappings)
{
    persistentClass.AddTuplizer(EntityMode.Poco, typeof(NullableTuplizer).AssemblyQualifiedName);
}

Answer 2

There is a similar question: NHibernate Saving 0 to many-to-one column instead of null. There is an interesting, but a bit weird solution by Noel Kennedy.

I would probably store a record with the ID 0 in the database, which represents a Null Object.