title: Spring JPA Hibernate and AttributeConverter
body: <p>I have a small application (spring 4.0, jpa 2.1, hibernate 5.0.2) and had been using "old" java.util.Date* classes as well as java.sql.Date*. Now I wanted to use java.time instead and read that it would work with an AttributeConverter.
  Unfortunately this doesn't seem to work. The moment I try to read the database object with a timestamp (the doa has an equivalent of java.time.localdatetime) I get an exception.
  It seems the Converter isn't being used at all even though the annotation is there. I only have an applicationContext.xml and no persistence.xml so where would I tell jpa to use the Converter (if the annotation isn't enough)?
  How can I see that the AttributeConverter is picked up by jpa at all?</p>
  
  <p>Thanks in advance,
     John.</p>