What is the difference between:
#Entity
public class Company {
#OneToMany(cascade = CascadeType.ALL , fetch = FetchType.LAZY)
#JoinColumn(name = "companyIdRef", referencedColumnName = "companyId")
private List<Branch> branches;
...
}
and
#Entity
public class Company {
#OneToMany(cascade = CascadeType.ALL , fetch = FetchType.LAZY,
mappedBy = "companyIdRef")
private List<Branch> branches;
...
}
The annotation #JoinColumn indicates that this entity is the owner of the relationship (that is: the corresponding table has a column with a foreign key to the referenced table), whereas the attribute mappedBy indicates that the entity in this side is the inverse of the relationship, and the owner resides in the "other" entity. This also means that you can access the other table from the class which you've annotated with "mappedBy" (fully bidirectional relationship).
In particular, for the code in the question the correct annotations would look like this:
#Entity
public class Company {
#OneToMany(mappedBy = "company",
orphanRemoval = true,
fetch = FetchType.LAZY,
cascade = CascadeType.ALL)
private List<Branch> branches;
}
#Entity
public class Branch {
#ManyToOne(fetch = FetchType.LAZY)
#JoinColumn(name = "companyId")
private Company company;
}
#JoinColumn could be used on both sides of the relationship. The question was about using #JoinColumn on the #OneToMany side (rare case). And the point here is in physical information duplication (column name) along with not optimized SQL query that will produce some additional UPDATE statements.
According to documentation:
Since many to one are (almost) always the owner side of a bidirectional relationship in the JPA spec, the one to many association is annotated by #OneToMany(mappedBy=...)
#Entity
public class Troop {
#OneToMany(mappedBy="troop")
public Set<Soldier> getSoldiers() {
...
}
#Entity
public class Soldier {
#ManyToOne
#JoinColumn(name="troop_fk")
public Troop getTroop() {
...
}
Troop has a bidirectional one to many relationship with Soldier through the troop property. You don't have to (must not) define any physical mapping in the mappedBy side.
To map a bidirectional one to many, with the one-to-many side as the owning side, you have to remove the mappedBy element and set the many to one #JoinColumn as insertable and updatable to false. This solution is not optimized and will produce some additional UPDATE statements.
#Entity
public class Troop {
#OneToMany
#JoinColumn(name="troop_fk") //we need to duplicate the physical information
public Set<Soldier> getSoldiers() {
...
}
#Entity
public class Soldier {
#ManyToOne
#JoinColumn(name="troop_fk", insertable=false, updatable=false)
public Troop getTroop() {
...
}
Unidirectional one-to-many association
If you use the #OneToMany annotation with #JoinColumn, then you have a unidirectional association, like the one between the parent Post entity and the child PostComment in the following diagram:
When using a unidirectional one-to-many association, only the parent side maps the association.
In this example, only the Post entity will define a #OneToMany association to the child PostComment entity:
#OneToMany(cascade = CascadeType.ALL, orphanRemoval = true)
#JoinColumn(name = "post_id")
private List<PostComment> comments = new ArrayList<>();
Bidirectional one-to-many association
If you use the #OneToMany with the mappedBy attribute set, you have a bidirectional association. In our case, both the Post entity has a collection of PostComment child entities, and the child PostComment entity has a reference back to the parent Post entity, as illustrated by the following diagram:
In the PostComment entity, the post entity property is mapped as follows:
#ManyToOne(fetch = FetchType.LAZY)
private Post post;
The reason we explicitly set the fetch attribute to FetchType.LAZY is because, by default, all #ManyToOne and #OneToOne associations are fetched eagerly, which can cause N+1 query issues.
In the Post entity, the comments association is mapped as follows:
#OneToMany(
mappedBy = "post",
cascade = CascadeType.ALL,
orphanRemoval = true
)
private List<PostComment> comments = new ArrayList<>();
The mappedBy attribute of the #OneToMany annotation references the post property in the child PostComment entity, and, this way, Hibernate knows that the bidirectional association is controlled by the #ManyToOne side, which is in charge of managing the Foreign Key column value this table relationship is based on.
For a bidirectional association, you also need to have two utility methods, like addChild and removeChild:
public void addComment(PostComment comment) {
comments.add(comment);
comment.setPost(this);
}
public void removeComment(PostComment comment) {
comments.remove(comment);
comment.setPost(null);
}
These two methods ensure that both sides of the bidirectional association are in sync. Without synchronizing both ends, Hibernate does not guarantee that association state changes will propagate to the database.
Which one to choose?
The unidirectional #OneToMany association does not perform very well, so you should avoid it.
You are better off using the bidirectional #OneToMany which is more efficient.
I disagree with the accepted answer here by Óscar López. That answer is inaccurate!
It is NOT #JoinColumn which indicates that this entity is the owner of the relationship. Instead, it is the #ManyToOne annotation which does this (in his example).
The relationship annotations such as #ManyToOne, #OneToMany and #ManyToMany tell JPA/Hibernate to create a mapping. By default, this is done through a seperate Join Table.
#JoinColumn
The purpose of #JoinColumn is to create a join column if one does
not already exist. If it does, then this annotation can be used to
name the join column.
MappedBy
The purpose of the MappedBy parameter is to instruct JPA: Do NOT
create another join table as the relationship is already being mapped
by the opposite entity of this relationship.
Remember: MappedBy is a property of the relationship annotations whose purpose is to generate a mechanism to relate two entities which by default they do by creating a join table. MappedBy halts that process in one direction.
The entity not using MappedBy is said to be the owner of the relationship because the mechanics of the mapping are dictated within its class through the use of one of the three mapping annotations against the foreign key field. This not only specifies the nature of the mapping but also instructs the creation of a join table. Furthermore, the option to suppress the join table also exists by applying #JoinColumn annotation over the foreign key which keeps it inside the table of the owner entity instead.
So in summary: #JoinColumn either creates a new join column or renames an existing one; whilst the MappedBy parameter works collaboratively with the relationship annotations of the other (child) class in order to create a mapping either through a join table or by creating a foreign key column in the associated table of the owner entity.
To illustrate how MapppedBy works, consider the code below. If MappedBy parameter were to be deleted, then Hibernate would actually create TWO join tables! Why? Because there is a symmetry in many-to-many relationships and Hibernate has no rationale for selecting one direction over the other.
We therefore use MappedBy to tell Hibernate, we have chosen the other entity to dictate the mapping of the relationship between the two entities.
#Entity
public class Driver {
#ManyToMany(mappedBy = "drivers")
private List<Cars> cars;
}
#Entity
public class Cars {
#ManyToMany
private List<Drivers> drivers;
}
Adding #JoinColumn(name = "driverID") in the owner class (see below), will prevent the creation of a join table and instead, create a driverID foreign key column in the Cars table to construct a mapping:
#Entity
public class Driver {
#ManyToMany(mappedBy = "drivers")
private List<Cars> cars;
}
#Entity
public class Cars {
#ManyToMany
#JoinColumn(name = "driverID")
private List<Drivers> drivers;
}
The annotation mappedBy ideally should always be used in the Parent side (Company class) of the bi directional relationship, in this case it should be in Company class pointing to the member variable 'company' of the Child class (Branch class)
The annotation #JoinColumn is used to specify a mapped column for joining an entity association, this annotation can be used in any class (Parent or Child) but it should ideally be used only in one side (either in parent class or in Child class not in both) here in this case i used it in the Child side (Branch class) of the bi directional relationship indicating the foreign key in the Branch class.
below is the working example :
parent class , Company
#Entity
public class Company {
private int companyId;
private String companyName;
private List<Branch> branches;
#Id
#GeneratedValue
#Column(name="COMPANY_ID")
public int getCompanyId() {
return companyId;
}
public void setCompanyId(int companyId) {
this.companyId = companyId;
}
#Column(name="COMPANY_NAME")
public String getCompanyName() {
return companyName;
}
public void setCompanyName(String companyName) {
this.companyName = companyName;
}
#OneToMany(fetch=FetchType.LAZY,cascade=CascadeType.ALL,mappedBy="company")
public List<Branch> getBranches() {
return branches;
}
public void setBranches(List<Branch> branches) {
this.branches = branches;
}
}
child class, Branch
#Entity
public class Branch {
private int branchId;
private String branchName;
private Company company;
#Id
#GeneratedValue
#Column(name="BRANCH_ID")
public int getBranchId() {
return branchId;
}
public void setBranchId(int branchId) {
this.branchId = branchId;
}
#Column(name="BRANCH_NAME")
public String getBranchName() {
return branchName;
}
public void setBranchName(String branchName) {
this.branchName = branchName;
}
#ManyToOne(fetch=FetchType.LAZY)
#JoinColumn(name="COMPANY_ID")
public Company getCompany() {
return company;
}
public void setCompany(Company company) {
this.company = company;
}
}
I'd just like to add that #JoinColumn does not always have to be related to the physical information location as this answer suggests. You can combine #JoinColumn with #OneToMany even if the parent table has no table data pointing to the child table.
How to define unidirectional OneToMany relationship in JPA
Unidirectional OneToMany, No Inverse ManyToOne, No Join Table
It seems to only be available in JPA 2.x+ though. It's useful for situations where you want the child class to just contain the ID of the parent, not a full on reference.
Let me make it simple.
You can use #JoinColumn on either sides irrespective of mapping.
Let's divide this into three cases.
1) Uni-directional mapping from Branch to Company.
2) Bi-direction mapping from Company to Branch.
3) Only Uni-directional mapping from Company to Branch.
So any use-case will fall under this three categories. So let me explain how to use #JoinColumn and mappedBy.
1) Uni-directional mapping from Branch to Company.
Use JoinColumn in Branch table.
2) Bi-direction mapping from Company to Branch.
Use mappedBy in Company table as describe by #Mykhaylo Adamovych's answer.
3)Uni-directional mapping from Company to Branch.
Just use #JoinColumn in Company table.
#Entity
public class Company {
#OneToMany(cascade = CascadeType.ALL , fetch = FetchType.LAZY)
#JoinColumn(name="courseId")
private List<Branch> branches;
...
}
This says that in based on the foreign key "courseId" mapping in branches table, get me list of all branches. NOTE: you can't fetch company from branch in this case, only uni-directional mapping exist from company to branch.
JPA is a layered API, the different levels have their own annotations. The highest level is the (1) Entity level which describes persistent classes then you have the (2) relational database level which assume the entities are mapped to a relational database and (3) the java model.
Level 1 annotations: #Entity, #Id, #OneToOne, #OneToMany, #ManyToOne, #ManyToMany.
You can introduce persistency in your application using these high level annotations alone. But then you have to create your database according to the assumptions JPA makes. These annotations specify the entity/relationship model.
Level 2 annotations: #Table, #Column, #JoinColumn, ...
Influence the mapping from entities/properties to the relational database tables/columns if you are not satisfied with JPA's defaults or if you need to map to an existing database. These annotations can be seen as implementation annotations, they specify how the mapping should be done.
In my opinion it is best to stick as much as possible to the high level annotations and then introduce the lower level annotations as needed.
To answer the questions: the #OneToMany/mappedBy is nicest because it only uses the annotations from the entity domain. The #oneToMany/#JoinColumn is also fine but it uses an implementation annotation where this is not strictly necessary.
#Entity
public class Company {
#OneToMany(cascade = CascadeType.ALL, fetch = FetchType.LAZY)
#JoinColumn(name = "company_id_ref", referencedColumnName = "company_id")
private List<Branch> branches;
...
}
That Will give below Hibernate logs
Hibernate: select nextval ('hibernate_sequence')
Hibernate: select nextval ('hibernate_sequence')
Hibernate: insert into company (name, company_id) values (?, ?)
Hibernate: insert into branch (company_id_ref, name, id) values (?, ?, ?)
Hibernate: update branch set company_id_ref=? where id=?
And
#Entity
public class Company {
#OneToMany(cascade = CascadeType.ALL , fetch = FetchType.LAZY,
mappedBy = "company")
private List<Branch> branches;
...
}
That will give below Hibernate logs
Hibernate: select nextval ('hibernate_sequence')
Hibernate: select nextval ('hibernate_sequence')
Hibernate: insert into company (name, company_id) values (?, ?)
Hibernate: insert into branch (company_id_ref, name, id) values (?, ?, ?)
We can clearly see that #joinColumn will cause additional update queries.
so you do not need to set parent entity explicitly to child entity,
That we have to do while using mappedBy
to save children with a parent
I have two entities, which we'll call A and B. B always has A as a parent with a ManyToOne relation.
However, I need A to have a OneToOne relation with the latest record inserted in table B.
This is because I need to save multiple versions of B but 99% of the time will only need to use the most recent one.
This looks something like this:
#Data
#Entity
public class A {
#Id
#GeneratedValue(strategy = GenerationType.IDENTITY)
#Setter(AccessLevel.NONE)
private Long id;
/* Properties
...
*/
#OneToOne(optional = false)
private B latest;
}
#Data
#Entity
public class B {
#Id
#GeneratedValue(strategy = GenerationType.IDENTITY)
#Setter(AccessLevel.NONE)
private Long id;
/* Properties
...
*/
#Column(nullable = false)
private Date lastModified;
#ManyToOne(optional = false)
private A parent;
}
Now, the issue at hand is that I cannot seem to persist these entities as one always appears to be transient:
A cannot be persisted because latest references B, yet B is not persisted.
B cannot be persisted because parent references A, yet A is not persisted.
Attempting to do so results in:
java.lang.IllegalStateException: org.hibernate.TransientPropertyValueException: Not-null property references a transient value - transient instance must be saved before current operation : B.parent -> A
I tried wrapping the code responsible for persisiting them in a #Transactional method but the same happens:
#Transactional
public void saveAB(A parent, B child) {
parent.setLatest(child);
child.setParent(parent);
Arepository.save(parent);
Brepository.save(child);
}
I also thought of disregarding the OneToOne relation from A to B, instead having latest as a transient #Formula field which would query B to take the most recent record. However, #Formula seems to be limited to primitives, not full entities.
What would be the proper way to do this with JPA? Am I approaching this the wrong way?
Since A and B depend on each other they should probably be considered a single aggregate with A being the aggregate root.
This means you'd have only an ARepository and also CascadeType.ALL on the relationships.
The solution was to apply #JoinFormula as explained here.
#Data
#Entity
public class A {
#Id
#GeneratedValue(strategy = GenerationType.IDENTITY)
#Setter(AccessLevel.NONE)
private Long id;
/* Properties
...
*/
#ManyToOne
#JoinFormula(value = "(SELECT b.id FROM b " +
"WHERE b.id = id ORDER BY b.lastModified DESC LIMIT 1)")
private B latest;
}
Then on B:
#ManyToOne(optional = false)
private A parent;
Lets say I have two entities, A and B. A has a #OneToMany relationship to B and I have audited all the properties in B. When I use Envers to obtain the revisions all I get are the changes in the relation between A and B but I also need to obtain the changes in B's properties. Is there a way todo this?
Thanks in advance!
I am working off the presumption of the following mappings:
#Entity
#Audited
public class EntityA {
/* other properties & getters/setters */
#OneToMany(mappedBy = "a", cascade = CascadeType.ALL)
private List<EntityB> bList;
}
#Entity
#Audited
public class EntityB {
/* other properties & getters/setters */
#ManyToOne
private EntityA a;
}
Anytime you add/remove an EntityB from EntityA, this will trigger a revision change associated with EntityA as well as the associated EntityB that is added/removed due to the relationship.
But if you decide you want to modify some attribute of EntityB that has no direct impact upon EntityA, there will only be a revision generated for EntityB and not EntityA, see below.
entityManager.getTransaction().begin();
final EntityA a = entityManager.find( EntityA.class, aId );
for ( EntityB b : a.getbList() ) {
b.setName( b.getName() + "-modified" );
}
entityManager.merge( a );
entityManager.getTransaction().commit();
If you need the individual revisions of EntityB in this case, you'll need to actually specifically query for EntityB through the AuditReader interface instead.
my problem is that I cannot save my entity because it contains another entity, mapped by a key that is also a part of this table's primary key. The table looks like this:
table C:
+-----+------+
| id_A | id_B |
+-----+------+
..where idA is the primary key of table A with EntityA and idB the primary key of table B with EntityB.
so its basically a n-to-m relation. This is the entity I'm using for table C:
#Entity
public class EntityC {
private long idA;
private EntityB b;
#Id
#Column(name = "id_A")
public long getIdA() {
return idA;
}
#Id
#OneToOne(cascade = CascadeType.ALL)
#JoinColumn(name = "id_B")
public EntityB getB() {
return b;
}
...setters are here...
}
Please note that id_A is mapped as is (the id), while id_B is mapped as its object representation, EntityB. This is what I want to do with it:
EntityC c = new EntityC();
c.setIdA(123);
c.setB(new EntityB());
em.persist(c);
tx.commit();
em.close();
I want to persist EntityB ONLY IF I can persist EntityC.
on tx.commit() I get this exception: org.hibernate.TransientObjectException: object references an unsaved transient instance
I suppose this happens because part of the primary key, id_B, is not saved. But i set cascading to all so there should be no problem!
Why is this not working?
EDIT:
When I do this:
em.persist(c.getB());
em.persist(c);
it works. But can't Hibernate/JPA do that automatically? I thought that's what cascading is good for.
EDIT2:
added an embeddedId instead of id_A and id_B:
#Embeddable
public class EntityCID implements Serializable {
public long idA;
#OneToOne(cascade = CascadeType.ALL)
#JoinColumn(name = "id_B", referencedColumnName = "id")
public EntryB b;
}
EntityC now looks like:
#Entity
public class EntityC implements Serializable {
private EntityCID id;
...
#EmbeddedId
public void getId() {
return id;
}
}
but I still get the transient object exception if I don't em.persist(c.getId().b); before em.persist(c). Sticking to that, although it is ugly.
#Trein: it is not bidirectional. EntityB code:
#Entity
public class EntityB implements Serializable {
public long id;
public String text;
}
If you think about it what you are seeing makes perfect sense.
EntityC is is the 'owning side' of the relationship C<>B: it defines the JoinColumn and EntityB has the 'mappedBy' attribute.
So on saving C, order of events would normally be:
insert into C/update C
insert into B/update B
Now in your case this causes issues as obviously C can only be saved if B has been persisted first.
In terms of your statement above: I want to persist "EntityB ONLY IF I can persist EntityC." How can this ever be the case?
JPA has a concept of 'Derived Identifiers', which I am not overly familiar with however is defined in the book Pro JPA as occurring when:
When an identifier in one entity includes a foreign key to another
entity, we call it a derived identifier. Because the entity containing
the derived identifier depends upon another entity for its identity,
we call the first the dependent entity. The entity that it depends
upon is the target of a many-to-one or one-toone relationship from the
dependent entity, and is called the parent entity
Now, despite the original advice that you had two #Id attributes defined and this was wrong it would however appear that having an additional #Id on a 1-2-m is in fact valid in JPA 2 for precisely this case.
The book gives a number of ways of dealing with Derived Identifiers however one example given below looks fairly similar to your case. So you may want to investigate further the #MapsId attribute.
#Entity
public class Project {
#EmbeddedId private ProjectId id;
#MapsId("dept")
#ManyToOne
#JoinColumns({
#JoinColumn(name="DEPT_NUM", referencedColumnName="NUM"),
#JoinColumn(name="DEPT_CTRY", referencedColumnName="CTRY")})
private Department department;
// ...
}
#Embeddable
public class ProjectId implements Serializable {
#Column(name="P_NAME")
private String name;
#Embedded
private DeptId dept;
// ...
}
See further:
How do I properly cascade save a one-to-one, bidirectional relationship on primary key in Hibernate 3.6
Is it a bidirectional relationship? I would suggest you to remove #Id getB() and perform the modifications:
#OneToOne(cascade = CascadeType.ALL, mappedBy = "id_B")
#PrimaryKeyJoinColumn(name = "id_B")
public EntityB getB() {
return b;
}
Your entity class must have only one attribute annotated with #Id. Usually when you need this, you create a class that will store both properties and this will act as a Id Class.
You can not pass new Entity() for reference. Because it won't have any values in it(even primary key). So how can hibernate will insert it as foreign key to the table. And cascade will save your parent object if its not saved,no need to call save method for all. But when you passing new object it won't do.
For the context, client-side I use the MVP pattern, so the view with the One list knows only the ID, and when my new Many is received on the server, I want to be able to just update the One's foreign key, with a "setOneId" or an empty One object with an ID set to the wanted value.
So I try to create a many-to-one unidirectional in DataNucleus, and I'm struggling a bit. I'm ok to use JDO or JPA, I don't really care. In JPA, I tried this :
#Entity
public class Many {
#Id
String id;
#ManyToOne
#Join(name = "idOne")
One one;
}
#Entity
public class One {
#Id
String id;
}
It's almost what I want. The one-to-many is created but with a join table. I want to have a direct relation. And when I insert/update a Many, I don't want to insert/update the related One, just update the idOne with the good id in my Many object.
I found this blogpost, but it's with Hibernate, and I think it still use a join table :
#Entity
public class Many {
#Id
public String id;
#Column(name="idOne")
private String idOne;
#ManyToOne
#JoinColumn(name="idOne", nullable=false, insertable=false, updatable=false)
private One one;
}
I tried it, but I got exactly this error.
I don't understand how I am struggling with that. My goal is to have a table that keep some reference data (like a list of country as the class One), and a list of "working item" (like a town as the class Many) that I create/update without create/update the reference data, just its foreign key in the Many object.
If its a unidirectional association, and Many is the owning side (as per your second example), you are heading in the wrong direction. It doesn't make much sense to delegate the update and insert responsibility on the owning side of a unidirectional relationship (as done with the insertable=false and updateable=false).
EDIT: updated answer
So what you want is a many-to-one, with a foreign key column on the owning side. Try this
#Entity
public class Many {
#Id
String id;
#ManyToOne
#JoinColumn(name = "foreignKeyColumn")
One one;
}
#Entity
public class A {
#Id
String id;
#OneToOne(cascade=CascadeType.ALL)
B b;
}
#Entity
public class B {
#Id
String id;
}
and then if you persisted initial objects as
tx.begin();
A a = new A("FirstA");
B b1 = new B("FirstB");
B b2 = new B("SecondB");
a.setB(b1);
em.persist(a);
em.persist(b2);
tx.commit();
... (some time later)
tx.begin();
A a = em.find(A.class, "FirstA");
B b2 = em.getReference(B.class, "SecondB");
// update the B in A to the second one
a.setB(b2);
tx.commit();
This updates the FK between A and B. Can't get simpler