hibernate-010: Bidirectional One-to-Many & Many-to-One in Hibernate

🚀 Bidirectional One-to-Many & Many-to-One in Hibernate

Now, let’s fully explore bidirectional One-to-Many and Many-to-One relationships with real examples, database schema, and queries.

📌 1️⃣ What is a Bidirectional One-to-Many & Many-to-One?

• One parent entity has multiple child entities (One-to-Many).
• Each child entity belongs to one parent entity (Many-to-One).
• The "Many" side owns the foreign key, and the "One" side is mapped using mappedBy.

✅ Best Practice

• The child (Many) owns the relationship (@ManyToOne with @JoinColumn).
• The parent (One) just references it (@OneToMany(mappedBy = "field")).

📌 2️⃣ Example: Department ↔ Employee

• One Department has many Employees (@OneToMany).
• Each Employee belongs to one Department (@ManyToOne).

✅ Step 1: Define @ManyToOne (Owning Side - Employee)

@Entity public class Employee { @Id @GeneratedValue(strategy = GenerationType.IDENTITY) private Long id; private String name; @ManyToOne @JoinColumn(name = "department_id") // ✅ Foreign key in Employee table private Department department; } 

✅ The department_id foreign key is stored in Employee.

✅ Step 2: Define @OneToMany(mappedBy = "department") (Inverse Side - Department)

@Entity public class Department { @Id @GeneratedValue(strategy = GenerationType.IDENTITY) private Long id; private String name; @OneToMany(mappedBy = "department") // ✅ Refers to Employee.department private List<Employee> employees = new ArrayList<>(); } 

✅ mappedBy = "department" tells Hibernate:

• "The foreign key is already in Employee.department_id."
• "Don’t create an extra join table."

📌 3️⃣ Database Schema (No Extra Join Table!)

CREATE TABLE department ( id BIGINT AUTO_INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY, name VARCHAR(255) ); CREATE TABLE employee ( id BIGINT AUTO_INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY, name VARCHAR(255), department_id BIGINT, -- ✅ Foreign key column FOREIGN KEY (department_id) REFERENCES department(id) ); 

✅ The foreign key is only in Employee.department_id, keeping the relationship correct.

📌 4️⃣ Saving Data in Hibernate

Department department = new Department(); department.setName("IT Department"); Employee emp1 = new Employee(); emp1.setName("Alice"); emp1.setDepartment(department); // ✅ Set reference in Employee Employee emp2 = new Employee(); emp2.setName("Bob"); emp2.setDepartment(department); department.getEmployees().add(emp1); // ✅ Set reference in Department department.getEmployees().add(emp2); entityManager.persist(department); entityManager.persist(emp1); entityManager.persist(emp2); 

🚀 Now both Department and Employee are correctly linked!

📌 5️⃣ Querying Both Directions

✅ Get Employees from Department

Department dept = entityManager.find(Department.class, 1L); List<Employee> employees = dept.getEmployees(); employees.forEach(emp -> System.out.println(emp.getName())); // ✅ Works! 

✅ Get Department from Employee

Employee emp = entityManager.find(Employee.class, 10L); System.out.println(emp.getDepartment().getName()); // ✅ Works! 

✅ Both queries work because the relationship is bidirectional.

📌 6️⃣ Summary: One-to-Many & Many-to-One

✅ Best Practice: Use bidirectional @OneToMany + @ManyToOne to avoid unnecessary join tables and keep data consistent.

Happy coding! 🚀