We will use the LicenseBean and LicenseBeanFacade classes from the ValidationApplication as discussed in the Validating persistent fields and properties recipe.

The @Temporal annotation designates a field as a time unit. JPA permits three basic mappings:

This annotation is used to annotate a Date or Calendar field as temporal data for a database column.

@Temporal(javax.persistence.TemporalType.DATE)
private Date dateOfBirth;

The @Temporal annotation can be used in conjunction with the @Future or @Past annotations to establish a constraint on the value of a field. The @Future requires the value of the field to be in the future. The use of the @Past requires the value of the field to be in the past which is expected for a field such as a birth date.

@Past
@Temporal(javax.persistence.TemporalType.DATE)
private Date dateOfBirth;

Below, we use the @Future annotation with the dateOfBirth field. While we would normally use the @Past annotation for this type of field, we will use it to illustrate a temporal constraint violation in the Using Validator class recipe.

@Future
@Temporal(javax.persistence.TemporalType.DATE)
private Date dateOfBirth;

These annotations are used to control the assignment of temporal values to time-based fields. The javax.validation.Validator class is used in conjunction with these annotations to detect and handle violations. This technique is illustrated in the Using the Validator class recipe.

The Using the Validator class recipe illustrates the use of this annotation.