Question

In my Entity objects I put all JPA annotations on fields. They work well with Project Lombok which generates all getters and setters for me, greatly simplifying my code.

EDIT:

This seems to also be happening when I move the annotation down to the method

@OneToMany(targetEntity = ChannelDAOHb.class, mappedBy = "server", orphanRemoval = true)
@org.hibernate.annotations.Cascade({org.hibernate.annotations.CascadeType.ALL, org.hibernate.annotations.CascadeType.DELETE})
public Set<ChannelDAO> getChannels() {
    System.out.println("Getting some channels");
    ...
}

getChannels().add(new Channel("someChannel")); //Nothing printed here

However it seems the custom getter for one of my OneToMany association fields isn’t being called. Even something destructive like this

public Set<ChannelDAO> getChannels() {
    throw new RuntimeException("Take that, Hibernate");
}

getChannels().add(new Channel("someChannel"));

That exception NEVER gets thrown.

What’s going on here? Why isn’t my getter being called?

Answer 1

Hibernate uses reflection by default. Methods are only for your own API. This reduces scaffolding needed for setting up persistent layer.