Red Hat Training

A Red Hat training course is available for Red Hat JBoss Web Server

6.3. Advanced collection Mappings

6.3.1. Sorted Collections

Hibernate supports collections implementing java.util.SortedMap and java.util.SortedSet. You must specify a comparator in the mapping file: 
<set name="aliases" 
            table="person_aliases" 
            sort="natural">
    <key column="person"/>
    <element column="name" type="string"/>
</set>

<map name="holidays" sort="my.custom.HolidayComparator">
    <key column="year_id"/>
    <map-key column="hol_name" type="string"/>
    <element column="hol_date" type="date"/>
</map>
Allowed values of the sort attribute are unsorted, natural and the name of a class implementing java.util.Comparator.
Sorted collections actually behave like java.util.TreeSet or java.util.TreeMap.
If you want the database itself to order the collection elements, use the order-by attribute of set, bag or map mappings. This solution is only available under JDK 1.4 or higher and is implemented using LinkedHashSet or LinkedHashMap. This performs the ordering in the SQL query and not in the memory. 
<set name="aliases" table="person_aliases" order-by="lower(name) asc">
    <key column="person"/>
    <element column="name" type="string"/>
</set>

<map name="holidays" order-by="hol_date, hol_name">
    <key column="year_id"/>
    <map-key column="hol_name" type="string"/>
    <element column="hol_date type="date"/>
</map>

Note

The value of the order-by attribute is an SQL ordering, not an HQL ordering.
Associations can even be sorted by arbitrary criteria at runtime using a collection filter(): 
sortedUsers = s.createFilter( group.getUsers(), "order by this.name" ).list();
Report a bug

6.3.2. Bidirectional Associations

A bidirectional association allows navigation from both "ends" of the association. Two kinds of bidirectional association are supported:
one-to-many
set or bag valued at one end and single-valued at the other
many-to-many
set or bag valued at both ends
You can specify a bidirectional many-to-many association by mapping two many-to-many associations to the same database table and declaring one end as inverse. You cannot select an indexed collection.
Here is an example of a bidirectional many-to-many association that illustrates how each category can have many items and each item can be in many categories: 
<class name="Category">
    <id name="id" column="CATEGORY_ID"/>
    ...
    <bag name="items" table="CATEGORY_ITEM">
        <key column="CATEGORY_ID"/>
        <many-to-many class="Item" column="ITEM_ID"/>
    </bag>
</class>

<class name="Item">
    <id name="id" column="ITEM_ID"/>
    ...

    <!-- inverse end -->
    <bag name="categories" table="CATEGORY_ITEM" inverse="true">
        <key column="ITEM_ID"/>
        <many-to-many class="Category" column="CATEGORY_ID"/>
    </bag>
</class>
Changes made only to the inverse end of the association are not persisted. This means that Hibernate has two representations in memory for every bidirectional association: one link from A to B and another link from B to A. This is easier to understand if you think about the Java object model and how a many-to-many relationship in Javais created: 
category.getItems().add(item);          // The category now "knows" about the relationship
item.getCategories().add(category);     // The item now "knows" about the relationship

session.persist(item);                   // The relationship won't be saved!
session.persist(category);               // The relationship will be saved
The non-inverse side is used to save the in-memory representation to the database.
You can define a bidirectional one-to-many association by mapping a one-to-many association to the same table column(s) as a many-to-one association and declaring the many-valued end inverse="true". 
<class name="Parent">
    <id name="id" column="parent_id"/>
    ....
    <set name="children" inverse="true">
        <key column="parent_id"/>
        <one-to-many class="Child"/>
    </set>
</class>

<class name="Child">
    <id name="id" column="child_id"/>
    ....
    <many-to-one name="parent" 
        class="Parent" 
        column="parent_id"
        not-null="true"/>
</class>
Mapping one end of an association with inverse="true" does not affect the operation of cascades as these are orthogonal concepts.
Report a bug

6.3.3. Bidirectional Associations with Indexed Collections

A bidirectional association where one end is represented as a <list> or <map>, requires special consideration. If there is a property of the child class that maps to the index column you can use inverse="true" on the collection mapping: 
<class name="Parent">
    <id name="id" column="parent_id"/>
    ....
    <map name="children" inverse="true">
        <key column="parent_id"/>
        <map-key column="name" 
            type="string"/>
        <one-to-many class="Child"/>
    </map>
</class>

<class name="Child">
    <id name="id" column="child_id"/>
    ....
    <property name="name" 
        not-null="true"/>
    <many-to-one name="parent" 
        class="Parent" 
        column="parent_id"
        not-null="true"/>
</class>
If there is no such property on the child class, the association cannot be considered truly bidirectional. That is, there is information available at one end of the association that is not available at the other end. In this case, you cannot map the collection inverse="true". Instead, you could use the following mapping: 
<class name="Parent">
    <id name="id" column="parent_id"/>
    ....
    <map name="children">
        <key column="parent_id"
            not-null="true"/>
        <map-key column="name" 
            type="string"/>
        <one-to-many class="Child"/>
    </map>
</class>

<class name="Child">
    <id name="id" column="child_id"/>
    ....
    <many-to-one name="parent" 
        class="Parent" 
        column="parent_id"
        insert="false"
        update="false"
        not-null="true"/>
</class>
Note that in this mapping, the collection-valued end of the association is responsible for updates to the foreign key.
Report a bug

6.3.4. Ternary Associations

There are three possible approaches to mapping a ternary association. One approach is to use a Map with an association as its index: 
<map name="contracts">
    <key column="employer_id" not-null="true"/>
    <map-key-many-to-many column="employee_id" class="Employee"/>
    <one-to-many class="Contract"/>
</map>
<map name="connections">
    <key column="incoming_node_id"/>
    <map-key-many-to-many column="outgoing_node_id" class="Node"/>
    <many-to-many column="connection_id" class="Connection"/>
</map>
A second approach is to remodel the association as an entity class. This is the most common approach.
A final alternative is to use composite elements, which will be discussed later.
Report a bug

6.3.5. Using an idbag

The majority of the many-to-many associations and collections of values shown previously all map to tables with composite keys, even though it has been have suggested that entities should have synthetic identifiers (surrogate keys). A pure association table does not seem to benefit much from a surrogate key, although a collection of composite values might. It is for this reason that Hibernate provides a feature that allows you to map many-to-many associations and collections of values to a table with a surrogate key.
The <idbag> element lets you map a List (or Collection) with bag semantics. For example: 
<idbag name="lovers" table="LOVERS">
    <collection-id column="ID" type="long">
        <generator class="sequence"/>
    </collection-id>
    <key column="PERSON1"/>
    <many-to-many column="PERSON2" class="Person" fetch="join"/>
</idbag>
An <idbag> has a synthetic id generator, just like an entity class. A different surrogate key is assigned to each collection row. Hibernate does not, however, provide any mechanism for discovering the surrogate key value of a particular row.
The update performance of an <idbag> supersedes a regular <bag>. Hibernate can locate individual rows efficiently and update or delete them individually, similar to a list, map or set.
In the current implementation, the native identifier generation strategy is not supported for <idbag> collection identifiers.
Report a bug