Persisting a Collection class with ORMLite in android

Question

I have two classes setup like the following. I am confused as to when I need to annotate something as an foreign collection and when I do not. This may also sound silly, but n

Answer 1

@Robert is correct. When hibernate persists a collection (or even an array), it does so with hidden extra tables with foreign ids -- in other words hidden foreign collections. ORMLite tries to adhere to the KISS principle and so has you define the foreign collections "by hand" instead.

I've added more details about storing collections.

http://ormlite.com/docs/foreign-collection

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This means that you cannot persist an Integer type because there is no foreign-id. Also, your code can define a foreign collection Collection<Order> or ForeignCollection<Order>. Either one will be set with a ForeignCollection. ORMLite does not support lists or other collection types.

Answer 2

If you want to save a Collection (such as an ArrayList) of objects to ORMLite the easiest way is this:

@DatabaseField(dataType = DataType.SERIALIZABLE)
private SerializedList<MyObject> myObjects;

and to get my list of objects:

public List<MyObject> getMyObjects() {
  return myObjects;
}