Question

I have 3 tables Role, User, and UserRole. The table UserRole contains the mapping between user and role along with the two corresponding index columns. I am using hibernate with annotations, and would like to be able to “Revoke” a role from the user, but this is turning out to be somewhat difficult.

In my User Class I have

@ManyToMany(fetch=FetchType.LAZY, cascade = {CascadeType.MERGE, CascadeType.PERSIST}, targetEntity = Role.class)
    @IndexColumn(name = "role_index", base = 0)
    @NotFound(action=NotFoundAction.IGNORE)
    @JoinTable(name = "tblUser_Role", joinColumns={
    @JoinColumn(name = "UID")}, inverseJoinColumns={
    @JoinColumn(name = "roleid", nullable = false)})
    private List<Role> roles = new ArrayList<Role>(0);

In my Role class I have

@ManyToMany(fetch=FetchType.LAZY, cascade = {CascadeType.MERGE, CascadeType.PERSIST}, mappedBy="roles")
    private List<User> users = new ArrayList<User>(0);

and the DAO method I am calling to “Revoke” the role(s) is

@Override
    public boolean revokeRolesFromUserAccount(User user, List<Role> userRoles) {
        if (log.isInfoEnabled()) {
            log.info("Roles revoked from the User " + user.getUsername());
        }
        if (user == null) {
            return false;
        }
        if (userRoles == null) {
            return false;
        }

        Iterator<Role> iter = userRoles.iterator();
        List<Role> newroles = new ArrayList<Role>(0);
        Role role = null;
        while (iter.hasNext()) {
            role = (Role) this.sessionFactory.getCurrentSession().load(
                    Role.class, iter.next().getRoleid());
            newroles.add(role);
        }

        User newUser = null;
        newUser = (User) this.sessionFactory.getCurrentSession().load(User.class, user.getUid());
        newUser.getRoles().removeAll(newroles);
        this.sessionFactory.getCurrentSession().saveOrUpdate(newUser);
        return true;

    }

for some reason this does not work as expected, when breaking through I noticed the roles were not being initialized I guess due to the LazyLoading, and I tried doing something like Hibernate.initialize(newUser.getRoles()) but this did not change anything. I am still learning the ropes with hibernate and am not sure what I am missing, maybe something very obvious?? Thank you so much for your time and thoughts in advance!

UPDATE: After trying the fixes suggested by Paujo and Matin Kh and doing further debugging I still have not seen any differences in the Roles being loaded in after line newUser = (User) this.sessionFactory.getCurrentSession().load(User.class, user.getUid());

Here is a copy of my tblUser_Role, not sure if this helps. Thanks again!

(Adding roles works just fine)

Answer 1

Finally got this working, mostly by sheer luck, this is what I ended up with in my RoleDaoImpl class.

@Override
    @Transactional
    public boolean revokeRolesFromUserAccount(User user, List<Role> userRoles) {        
        if (user == null) {
            return false;
        }
        if (userRoles == null) {
            return false;
        }   

        User newUser = null;
        newUser = (User) this.sessionFactory.getCurrentSession().load(User.class, user.getUid());   

        List<Role> newRoleList = newUser.getRoles();

        newRoleList.removeAll(userRoles);

        if(newUser.getRoles().retainAll(newRoleList)){
            if (log.isInfoEnabled()) {
                log.info("Roles revoked from the User " + user.getUsername());
            }
            this.sessionFactory.getCurrentSession().saveOrUpdate(newUser);          
            return true;
        }else{
            return false;
    }

Hope this can be of some use to others in the future!

Thanks again for everyone’s help!