Question

I have two classes, user and role, defined as:

public class User : Entity
{
    // other properties ...
    public virtual string Username
    public virtual ICollection<Role> Roles { get; set; }
}

public class Role : Entity
{
    public virtual string Name { get; set; }
    public virtual ICollection<User> Users { get; set; }
}

In my mapping code, I have the following:

mapper.Class<User>(map =>
{
    map.Bag(x=>x.Roles,
        cm=>
        {
            cm.Table("UserRole");
            cm.Cascade(Cascade.All);
            cm.Key(k => k.Column("[User]"));
        },
        em=>
        {
            em.ManyToMany(mm =>
            {
                mm.Column("[Role]");
            });
        });

});

mapper.Class<Role>(map =>
{
    map.Bag(x=>x.Users, 
        cm=>
        {
            cm.Inverse(true);
            cm.Table("UserRole");                        
            cm.Key(k=>k.Column("[Role]"));
        },
        em =>
        {
            em.ManyToMany(mm =>
            {
                mm.Column("[User]");
            });
        });
});

The mappings generate the expected schema, but the join table is never populated. Adding a new user with a new Role in its collection persists the role and then the user to the appropriate tables, but the join table is left empty. Why?

Edit: I still have not made any progress on this. I’m absolutely sure the mapping is correct, and the correct schema is generated, but the join table simply isn’t populated. For test purposes, I’m generating entities using NBuilder like so:

var roles = new Role[] 
{
    new Role("Admin"),
    new Role("Manager"),
    new Role("User")
};

var users = Builder<User>.CreateListOfSize(10)
    .TheFirst(1)
        .Do(x =>
            {
                x.Roles.Add(roles[0]);
                x.Roles.Add(roles[1]);
                roles[0].Users.Add(x);
                roles[1].Users.Add(x);
            })
    .All()
        .With(x => x.Id = 0)
        .And(x => x.Version = 0)
        .And(x => x.Username = "test user")
        .And(x => x.Password = "test password")
        .Do(x => 
        {
            x.Roles.Add(roles[2]);
            roles[2].Users.Add(x);
        }
    .Build();


foreach (var u in users) session.Save(u);

The User and Role entities are persisted correctly, but the join table remains empty. This means I cannot effective query the roles for a given user later, which nullifies the point.

Answer 1

I ended up downloading the NHibernate source and referencing that directly so I could step through it. It turns out that it had something to do with the fact that my code for generating the test data was not wrapped in an explicit session transaction. Once I added that, it was fine. I’d love to see some kind of explanation on this, as I wasn’t able to follow the code very clearly, but I’m at least satisfied that the problem is solved.