How to define unidirectional OneToMany relationship in JPA
JavaJpaJpa 2.0Java Problem Overview
I have a following problem with entity mapping in JPA. I have two entities, first one is Lookup and the second is Text which represents translations for entities. Now I need to bound Lookup to the Text but I don't want Text to have reference to Lookup. To make this more complicated, Text does not use its primary key in this relationship but a metacode defined in a TXTHEAD_CODE
column.
Lookup.java
@Entity
@Table(name = "DATREG")
public class Lookup implements PersistableEntity {
@Id
@Column(name = "DATREG_META_CODE")
private String metaCode;
@OneToMany
@JoinTable(name="TXT",
joinColumns=@JoinColumn(name="DATREG_META_CODE", referencedColumnName="TXTHEAD_CODE"),
inverseJoinColumns=@JoinColumn(name="DATREG_META_CODE"))
private List<Text> text;
Text.java
@Entity
@Table(name = "TXT")
public class Text {
@Id
@Column(name = "TXT_ID")
private Long id;
@Column(name = "TXTHEAD_CODE")
private String code;
So I have tried this (and few other variations) but with no result. I also can't create join table in the DB and I don't want bound Lookup to my Text class. So can anyone please tell me if there is some other way?
Java Solutions
Solution 1 - Java
My bible for JPA work is the Java Persistence wikibook. It has a section on unidirectional OneToMany
which explains how to do this with a @JoinColumn
annotation. In your case, i think you would want:
@OneToMany
@JoinColumn(name="TXTHEAD_CODE")
private Set<Text> text;
I've used a Set
rather than a List
, because the data itself is not ordered.
The above is using a defaulted referencedColumnName
, unlike the example in the wikibook. If that doesn't work, try an explicit one:
@OneToMany
@JoinColumn(name="TXTHEAD_CODE", referencedColumnName="DATREG_META_CODE")
private Set<Text> text;