How do I delete orphan entities using hibernate and JPA on a many-to-many relationship?

Question

I want to delete orphan entities using hibernate and JPA on a many-to-many relationship but all that I found was this attribute the attribute. org.hibernate.annotations.Casc

Answer 1

Actually, I did a test with the following entities:

@Entity
public class Person {
    @Id
    @GeneratedValue
    private Long id;
    private String firstName;
    private String lastName;

    @ManyToMany
    @Cascade(value = org.hibernate.annotations.CascadeType.DELETE_ORPHAN)
    private Set roles = new HashSet();

    //...
}

@Entity
public class Role {
    @Id
    @GeneratedValue
    private Long id;

    private String name;

    @ManyToMany(mappedBy = "roles")
    private Set persons = new HashSet();

    //...
}

And with the following dataset:

The following test method:

@Test
public void testCascadeDeleteOrphanOnDelete() {
    Person person = entityManager.find(Person.class, 1L);
    entityManager.remove(person);
    ReflectionAssert.assertPropertyLenientEquals("id", Arrays.asList(2, 3), findAllPersons());
    ReflectionAssert.assertPropertyLenientEquals("id", Arrays.asList(3, 4), findAllRoles());

}

private List findAllPersons() {
    return entityManager.createQuery("from Person").getResultList();
}

private List findAllRoles() {
    return entityManager.createQuery("from Role").getResultList();
}

Just passes. Below the produced output:

Hibernate: select personx0_.id as id17_0_, personx0_.firstName as firstName17_0_, personx0_.lastName as lastName17_0_ from Person personx0_ where personx0_.id=?
Hibernate: select roles0_.persons_id as persons1_1_, roles0_.roles_id as roles2_1_, rolex1_.id as id18_0_, rolex1_.name as name18_0_ from Person_Role roles0_ left outer join Role rolex1_ on roles0_.roles_id=rolex1_.id where roles0_.persons_id=?
Hibernate: delete from Person_Role where persons_id=?
Hibernate: delete from Role where id=?
Hibernate: delete from Role where id=?
Hibernate: delete from Person where id=?
Hibernate: select personx0_.id as id17_, personx0_.firstName as firstName17_, personx0_.lastName as lastName17_ from Person personx0_
Hibernate: select rolex0_.id as id18_, rolex0_.name as name18_ from Role rolex0_