When running:

scaffold from-entity ~.domain.* --overwrite

The generated view Bean will always use an id field as a long, even if the entity uses a different type for the @Id. For instance, this code, in an Entity class called ValMealtype:

@Id
@GeneratedValue(strategy=GenerationType.IDENTITY)
@Column(unique=true, nullable=false, length=20)
private String meal;

Generates, in ValMealtypeBean:

private Long id;

<-- associated gettters and setters -->

And, later in the class:

return ValMealtypeBean.this.entityManager.find(ValMealtype.class, Long.valueOf(value));

That line in particular doesn't work at all, of course, since a Long can't be parsed out of a non-numeric String. I suppose I could name my meals with hex digits . . . CAFE . . . BEEF . . . but sadly, Chicken isn't going to fly.

Basically, scaffold probably needs to look at the type of @Id in the entity and use that to set the id field type in the generated bean.

As this is reported against a non-current release, I understand it may be fixed already. In this case, a new Beta of JBDS 5 is probably in order, as that's where I'm seeing this issue.