Question

i have a Question about referencing ParentEntities from Child Entites ir
If i have something like this:

Parent.java:

@Entity(name ="Parent")
public class Parent {
    @Id
    @Generate.....
    @Column
    private int id;
   
    @OneToMany(cascade = CascadeType.ALL, fetch = FetchType.LAZY, mappedBy = "parent")
    private Set<Child> children;

    simple ... getter and setter ...
}

And the Child.java:

@Entity(name ="Child")
public class Child{
    @Id
    @Generate....
    @Column
    private int id;

    @ManyToOne
    private Parent parent;

    ... simple getter an setter
}

Following Tables are going to be created:

Parent:
     int id

Child:
     int id
     int parent_id (foreign key: parent.id)

Ok, so far, everthings fine. But when it comes to using this Reference from Java, i would think, you can do something like this.

@Transactional
public void test() {
    Parent parent = new Parent();
    Child child = new Child();

    Set<Child> children = new HashSet<Child>();
    children.add(child);
    parent.setChildren(children);
    entityManager.persist(parent);
}

which leads to this in Database:

Parent:
     id
     100

Child
     id     paren_id
     101    100

But thats not the case, you have to explicity set the Parent to the Child (which, i would think, the framework could probably do by itself).

So whats really in the database is this:

Parent:
     id
     100

Child
     id     paren_id
     101    (null)

cause i haven’t set the Parent to the Child. So my Question:

Do I really have to do sth. like this?

Parent.java:

...
setChildren(Set<Child> children) {
    for (Child child : children) {
        child.setParent.(this);
    }

    this.children = children;
}
...

---

Edit:

According to the fast Replies i was able to solve this Problem by using the @JoinColumn on the Reference-Owning Entity. If we take the Example from above, i did sth. like this:

Parent.java:

@Entity(name ="Parent")
public class Parent {
    @Id
    @Generate.....
    @Column
    private int id;
    
    @OneToMany(cascade = CascadeType.ALL, fetch = FetchType.LAZY)
    @JoinColumn(name= "paren_id")
    private Set<Child> children;
    
    simple ... getter and setter ...
}

And the Child.java:

@Entity(name ="Child")
public class Child{
    @Id
    @Generate....
    @Column
    private int id;

    ... simple getter an setter
}

Now if we do this:

@Transactional
public void test() {
    Parent parent = new Parent();
    Child child = new Child();

    Set<Child> children = new HashSet<Child>();
    children.add(child);

    parent.setChildren(children);
    entityManager.persist(parent);
}

The Reference is correctly set by the Parent:

Parent:
     id
     100

Child
     id     paren_id
     101    100

Answer 1

Do I really have to do sth. like this?

That is one strategy, yes.

On bi-directional relationships there is an “owning” and a “non-owning” side of the relationship. Because the owning side in your case is on Child, you need to set the relationship there for it to be persisted. The owning side is usually determined by where you specify @JoinColumn, but it doesn’t look like you’re using that annotation, so it’s likely being inferred from the fact that you used mappedBy in the Parent annotation.

You can read a lot more about this here.