Question

I’m using Hibernate 4.1.0.Final and hibernate-jpa-2.0-api. I’m having a problem using an entity manager to update an entity with a OneToMany relationship. Here is the entity:

@GenericGenerator(name = "uuid-strategy", strategy = "uuid.hex")
@Entity
@Table(name = "cb_organization", uniqueConstraints = {@UniqueConstraint(columnNames={"organization_id"})})
public class Organization implements Serializable
{

    …
    @OneToMany(fetch = FetchType.EAGER, cascade = CascadeType.PERSIST)
    @JoinTable(name = "cb_organization_address",
              joinColumns = @JoinColumn(name = "organization_id"),
              inverseJoinColumns = @JoinColumn(name = "address_id"))
    private List<Address> addresses;

When I try and update the entity (using the entity manager’s merge method) with a new one-to-many list, the addresses aren’t getting saved. I create the list like so …

    List<Address> addresses = new ArrayList<Address>();
    addresses.add(address);
    ...
    org.setAddresses(addresses);
    m_orgDao.save(org);

and here’s the relevant DAO code …

@Autowired
private EntityManager entityManager;

@Override
public Organization save(Organization organization)
{
    if(StringUtils.isEmpty(organization.getId()))
    {
        entityManager.persist(organization);
    }
    else 
    {
        organization = entityManager.merge(organization);
    }

    return organization;
}

The returned organization has an address in which all of the fields are null. What can I do differently with my entity manager and entities to make sure the data is persisted properly?

Answer 1

 @OneToMany(fetch = FetchType.EAGER, cascade = {CascadeType.PERSIST, CascadeType.MERGE})  

instead of

@OneToMany(fetch = FetchType.EAGER, cascade = CascadeType.PERSIST)