I have several entities with a basic Long ID and other properties. These entities

Question

0

Asked: June 9, 20262026-06-09T02:13:44+00:00 2026-06-09T02:13:44+00:00

I have several entities with a basic Long ID and other properties. These entities

0

I have several entities with a basic Long ID and other properties. These entities have a one-to-many relationship with another entity that holds different custom (user-entered) translations for the first entities. There’s basically entity pairs with one holding all the non-translation stuff and the other holding multiple translations for text properties.

In order to reduce duplication of code and annotations, I want to create an abstract class for each entity in one of these pairs. For the multiple translations I created a class like this:

@MappedSuperclass
public abstract class CustomTranslations
{
    @Id
    protected Long id;
    @Id
    protected String locale;
}

For the primary entity I have this:

@MappedSuperclass
public abstract class CustomTranslationsHolder<T extends CustomTranslations>
{
    @OneToMany(fetch=FetchType.EAGER)
    @JoinColumn(name="ID")
    @MapKey(name="locale")
    protected Map<String, T> translationsByLocale;
}

So say one of the entity pairs is for Foo. I would have this:

@Entity
@Table(name="FOO_TRANSLATIONS")
public class FooTranslations extends CustomTranslations
{
    private String title;
    private String description;
    ....
}

and this:

@Entity
public class Foo extends CustomTranslationsHolder<FooTranslations>
{
    @Id
    private Long id;
    private String whatever;
    private Integer blah;
    ...
    public String getTitle(String locale)
    {
        return translationsByLocale.get(locale).getTitle();
    }
}

This all compiles just fine, but on server startup I get the following error:

Exception Description: Neither the instance method or field named [locale] exists for the item class [class java.lang.Void], and therefore cannot be used to create a key for the Map.
at org.eclipse.persistence.exceptions.ValidationException.mapKeyNotDeclaredInItemClass(ValidationException.java:1332)
at org.eclipse.persistence.internal.queries.MapContainerPolicy.initializeKey(MapContainerPolicy.java:517)
at org.eclipse.persistence.internal.queries.MapContainerPolicy.getKeyType(MapContainerPolicy.java:438)
at org.eclipse.persistence.internal.jpa.metamodel.MapAttributeImpl.<init>(MapAttributeImpl.java:167)
at org.eclipse.persistence.internal.jpa.metamodel.ManagedTypeImpl.initialize(ManagedTypeImpl.java:1158)
at org.eclipse.persistence.internal.jpa.metamodel.MetamodelImpl.initialize(MetamodelImpl.java:459)
at org.eclipse.persistence.internal.jpa.metamodel.MetamodelImpl.<init>(MetamodelImpl.java:111)
at org.eclipse.persistence.internal.jpa.metamodel.MetamodelImpl.<init>(MetamodelImpl.java:130)
at org.eclipse.persistence.internal.jpa.EntityManagerSetupImpl.getMetamodel(EntityManagerSetupImpl.java:2566)
at org.eclipse.persistence.internal.jpa.EntityManagerFactoryDelegate.getMetamodel(EntityManagerFactoryDelegate.java:592)
at org.eclipse.persistence.internal.jpa.EntityManagerFactoryImpl.getMetamodel(EntityManagerFactoryImpl.java:506)
at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:39)
at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:25)
at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:597)
at org.springframework.orm.jpa.AbstractEntityManagerFactoryBean.invokeProxyMethod(AbstractEntityManagerFactoryBean.java:376)
at org.springframework.orm.jpa.AbstractEntityManagerFactoryBean$ManagedEntityManagerFactoryInvocationHandler.invoke(AbstractEntityManagerFactoryBean.java:517)
at $Proxy8.getMetamodel(Unknown Source)
at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:39)
at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:25)
at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:597)
at org.springframework.orm.jpa.SharedEntityManagerCreator$SharedEntityManagerInvocationHandler.invoke(SharedEntityManagerCreator.java:176)
at $Proxy12.getMetamodel(Unknown Source)
at org.springframework.data.jpa.repository.support.JpaEntityInformationSupport.getMetadata(JpaEntityInformationSupport.java:60)
at org.springframework.data.jpa.repository.support.JpaRepositoryFactory.getEntityInformation(JpaRepositoryFactory.java:149)
at org.springframework.data.jpa.repository.support.JpaRepositoryFactory.getTargetRepository(JpaRepositoryFactory.java:87)
at org.springframework.data.jpa.repository.support.JpaRepositoryFactory.getTargetRepository(JpaRepositoryFactory.java:70)
at org.springframework.data.repository.core.support.RepositoryFactorySupport.getRepository(RepositoryFactorySupport.java:137)
at org.springframework.data.repository.core.support.RepositoryFactoryBeanSupport.getObject(RepositoryFactoryBeanSupport.java:125)
at org.springframework.data.repository.core.support.RepositoryFactoryBeanSupport.getObject(RepositoryFactoryBeanSupport.java:41)
at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.FactoryBeanRegistrySupport.doGetObjectFromFactoryBean(FactoryBeanRegistrySupport.java:142)
... 44 more

So, it sounds like it can find the property locale on T for the Map. It seems like it should know that T is a CustomTranslations and therefore know that there is a locale field on CustomTranslations.

Is this just an issue with EclipseLink? Or is there just no way I can do it like this? I’d be interested to know how Hibernate handles this exact same code. Any information or suggestions on this would be greatly appreciated.