Saving bidirectional ManyToMany

Question

I have two entity classes annotated in the following way

@Entity
class A {
   @ManyToMany(mappedBy=\"A\", cascade=CascadeType.ALL)
   private List b         


        

Answer 1

Maybe there is a small mistake in A_M's answer. In my opinion it should be:

   @Entity
   class B { 
   @ManyToMany 
   @JoinTable (
       name="A_B",
       joinColumns = {@JoinColumn(name="B_ID")},
       inverseJoinColumns = {@JoinColumn(name="A_ID")}
   )
   private List a; 
   .. 
}

Answer 2

The shortest answer seems to be you cannot and it makes sense. In a bidirectional many-to-many association one side must be master and is used to persist changes to the underlying join table. As JPA will not maintain both side of the association, you could end up with a memory situation that could not be reloaded once stored in the database. Example:

A a1 = new A();
A a2 = new A();
B b = new B();
a1.getB().add(b);
b.getA().add(a2);

If this state could be persisted, you would end up with the following entries in the join table:

a1_id, b_id
a2_id, b_id

But upon loading, how would JPA know that you intended to only let b know about a2 and not a1 ? and what about a2 that should not know about b ?

This is why you have to maintain the bidirectional association yourself (and make the above example impossible to get to, even in memory) and JPA will only persist based on the state of one side of it.

Answer 3

Have you specified the inverse join columns?

@Entity
class A {
   @ManyToMany(mappedBy="A", cascade=CascadeType.ALL)
   private List <B> b;
   ..
}

@Entity 
class B { 
   @ManyToMany 
   @JoinTable (
       name="A_B",
       joinColumns = {@JoinColumn(name="A_ID")},
       inverseJoinColumns = {@JoinColumn(name="B_ID")}
   )
   private List<A> a; 
   .. 
} 

That's assuming a join table called A_B with columns A_ID and B_ID.

Answer 4

Have you tryed adding the mappedBy parameter onto the A field in class B like so

@Entity
class B {
   @ManyToMany(cascade=CascadeType.ALL, mappedBy = "b")
   private List<A> a;
 ..
}

Answer 5

As the relationship is bi-directional so as the application updates one side of the relationship, the other side should also get updated, and be in synch. In JPA, as in Java in general it is the responsibility of the application, or the object model to maintain relationships. If your application adds to one side of a relationship, then it must add to the other side.

This can be resolved through add or set methods in the object model that handle both sides of the relationships, so the application code does not need to worry about it. There are two ways to go about this, you can either only add the relationship maintenance code to one side of the relationship, and only use the setter from one side (such as making the other side protected), or add it to both sides and ensure you avoid a infinite loop.

Source: OneToMany#Getters_and_Setters