With this example we are going to demonstrate how to use One to Many bidirectional mapping in JPA. The Java Persistence API provides Java developers with an object/relational mapping facility for managing relational data in Java applications.
Here, we are using the JPA to define a one to many bidirectional mapping between two entities.
The Employee class
The Employee class is an entity class, annotated with the javax.persistence.Entity annotation. It uses the @Id annotation to define its id property, and the @GeneratedValue annotation with strategy set to GenerationType.AUTO so that the id gets auto-generated values. In another property, it uses the @ManyToOne annotation to define a many-to-one relationship to another entity, that is Department class.
package com.javacodegeeks.snippets.enterprise;
import java.util.Date;
import javax.persistence.Entity;
import javax.persistence.GeneratedValue;
import javax.persistence.GenerationType;
import javax.persistence.Id;
import javax.persistence.ManyToOne;
@Entity
public class Employee {
@Id
@GeneratedValue(strategy=GenerationType.AUTO)
private Long id;
private String name;
private String surname;
private String title;
private Date created;
@ManyToOne
private Department department;
public Long getId() {
return id;
}
public void setId(Long id) {
this.id = id;
}
public String getName() {
return name;
}
public void setName(String name) {
this.name = name;
}
public String getSurname() {
return surname;
}
public void setSurname(String surname) {
this.surname = surname;
}
public String getTitle() {
return title;
}
public void setTitle(String title) {
this.title = title;
}
public Date getCreated() {
return created;
}
public void setCreated(Date created) {
this.created = created;
}
public Department getDepartment() {
return department;
}
public void setDepartment(Department department) {
this.department = department;
}
@Override
public String toString() {
return "Employee [id=" + id + ", name=" + name + ", surname=" + surname
+ ", title=" + title + "]";
}
}
The Department class
The Department class is also an entity class, annotated with the javax.persistence.Entity annotation. It also uses the @Id annotation to define its id property, and the @GeneratedValue annotation with strategy set to GenerationType.AUTO so that the id gets auto-generated values. In another property, it uses the @OneToMany annotation to define a one-to-many relationship to another entity, that is Employee class. The relationship is owned by the employee field in the Department entity, as defined in the annotation.
package com.javacodegeeks.snippets.enterprise;
import java.util.Collection;
import javax.persistence.Entity;
import javax.persistence.GeneratedValue;
import javax.persistence.GenerationType;
import javax.persistence.Id;
import javax.persistence.OneToMany;
@Entity
public class Department {
@Id @GeneratedValue(strategy=GenerationType.AUTO)
private int id;
private String name;
@OneToMany(mappedBy="employee")
private Collection employees;
public int getId() {
return id;
}
public void setId(int id) {
this.id = id;
}
public String getName() {
return name;
}
public void setName(String deptName) {
this.name = deptName;
}
public void addEmployee(Employee employee) {
if (!employees.contains(employee)) {
employees.add(employee);
}
}
public Collection getEmployees() {
return employees;
}
@Override
public String toString() {
return "Department [employees=" + employees + ", id=" + id + ", name="
+ name + "]";
}
}
The OneToManyBidirectionalMappingInJPA class
In the OneToManyBidirectionalMappingInJPA class we create an EntityManagerFactory interface to interact with the entity manager factory for MyPeristenceUnit, that is defined in persistence.xml file. We create an EntityManager, using the createEntityManager() API method. Then, we create new Employee and Department objects. The new objects are written to the database, using the persist(java.lang.Object entity) API method of EntityManager. The getTransaction().begin() and getTransaction().commit() methods are used before and after the EntityManager invokes a method so that a transaction begins and ends. The Employee and Department objects can be retrieved using the find(java.lang.Class<T> entityClass, java.lang.Object primaryKey) API method of EntityManager.
package com.javacodegeeks.snippets.enterprise;
import java.util.Date;
import javax.persistence.EntityManager;
import javax.persistence.EntityManagerFactory;
import javax.persistence.Persistence;
public class OneToManyBidirectionalMappingInJPA {
public static void main(String[] args) {
EntityManagerFactory emf = Persistence.createEntityManagerFactory("MyPersistenceUnit");
EntityManager em = emf.createEntityManager();
em.getTransaction().begin();
Department department1 = new Department();
department1.setName("Q/A");
Department department2 = new Department();
department2.setName("HR");
Employee employee1 = new Employee();
employee1.setName("Jack");
employee1.setSurname("Thomson");
employee1.setTitle("QA Engineer");
employee1.setCreated(new Date());
employee1.setDepartment(department1);
Employee employee2 = new Employee();
employee2.setName("Mary");
employee2.setSurname("Nickolson");
employee2.setTitle("QA Engineer");
employee2.setCreated(new Date());
employee2.setDepartment(department2);
em.persist(department1);
em.persist(department2);
em.persist(employee1);
em.persist(employee2);
long employeeId1 = employee1.getId();
long employeeId2 = employee2.getId();
em.getTransaction().commit();
em.getTransaction().begin();
Employee dbEmployee1 =em.find(Employee.class, employeeId1);
System.out.println("dbEmployee " + dbEmployee1);
Employee dbEmployee2 =em.find(Employee.class, employeeId2);
System.out.println("dbEmployee " + dbEmployee2);
em.getTransaction().commit();
em.close();
emf.close();
}
}
persistence.xml
<persistence xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/persistence"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/persistence http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/persistence/persistence_2_0.xsd"
version="2.0">
<persistence-unit name="MyPersistenceUnit" transaction-type="RESOURCE_LOCAL">
<provider>org.hibernate.ejb.HibernatePersistence</provider>
<properties>
<property name="hibernate.dialect" value="org.hibernate.dialect.MySQL5InnoDBDialect" />
<property name="hibernate.hbm2ddl.auto" value="update" />
<property name="hibernate.connection.driver_class" value="com.mysql.jdbc.Driver" />
<property name="hibernate.connection.username" value="jcg" />
<property name="hibernate.connection.password" value="jcg" />
<property name="hibernate.connection.url" value="jdbc:mysql://localhost/companydb" />
</properties>
</persistence-unit>
</persistence>
Output:
dbEmployee Employee [id=3, name=Jack, surname=Thomson, title=QA Engineer, phones=null]
dbEmployee Employee [id=4, name=Mary, surname=Nickolson, title=QA Engineer, phones=null]
This was an example of how to use One to Many bidirectional mapping in JPA.
addEmployee is never used
@OneToMany(mappedBy=”department”)