Session.get() return proxy?

Surprising, the object returned by session.get() is a proxy rather than the real object. What is going on?

Hibernate API said Session.load(id) return a proxy and Session.get(id) return a persistent object. But actually get() may return proxy if previously it is lazily loaded in the same session, e.g., as a property of other object. A proxy is a proxy even you have called its methods.

Typecasting and instanceof work well for proxy object, however, there is a pitfall, for super-class or interface, it will not give you the implementation class. e.g., it is instanceof Template, but not instanceof VnsTemplate.

To ensure we always get the real persistent object, I implement read() in Dao as follows:

public T read(int id) {
    T obj = (T)getSession().get(entityClass, id);  

    if (obj instanceof HibernateProxy) {
        return(T) ((HibernateProxy)obj).getHibernateLazyInitializer().getImplementation();
    }
  
    return obj;
}

Alternatively, HibernateProxyHelper.getClassWithoutInitializingProxy(o) could be used to get class info.

Note that we couldn't use session.evict() to detach old proxy object and call get() to retrieve the real object. The old proxy object will still be referenced by other object, and access to its member may throw LazyInitializationException even inside the transaction since it has been detached.