One to many relationship supporting reads & deletes but not inserts

Question

I would like to extend the requirements mentioned in the earlier post to support deletes. We have two data model object - Organization & Department sharing a one-to-many relationship. With the below mapping I am able to read the list of departments from the organization object. I have not added the cascade ALL property to restrict adding a department when creating an organization.

How should I modify the @OneToMany annotation (and possibly @ManyToOne) to restrict inserts of department but cascade the delete operation such that all associated departments are deleted when deleting an organization object?

@Entity
@Table(name="ORGANIZATIONS")
public class Organization{

    @Id
    @GeneratedValue
    Private long id;

    @Column(unique=true)
    Private String name;

    @OneToMany(mappedBy = "organization", fetch = FetchType.EAGER)
    private List<Department> departments;


}

@Entity
@Table(name="DEPARTMENTS")
Public class Department{

   @Id
   @GeneratedValue
   Private long id;

   @Column(unique=true)
   Private String name;


   @ManyToOne(fetch = FetchType.EAGER)
   private Organization organization;

}

The code to delete the organization is just a line

organizationRepository.deleteById(orgId);

The test case to validate this is as below

@RunWith(SpringJUnit4ClassRunner.class)
@DataJpaTest
@Transactional
public class OrganizationRepositoryTests {

    @Autowired
    private OrganizationRepository organizationRepository;

    @Autowired
    private DepartmentRepository departmentRepository;



    @Test
    public void testDeleteOrganization() {
        final organization organization = organizationRepository.findByName(organizationName).get(); //precondition

        Department d1 = new Department();
        d1.setName("d1");

        d1.setorganization(organization);

        Department d2 = new Department();
        d2.setName("d2");

        d2.setorganization(organization);

        departmentRepository.save(d1);
        departmentRepository.save(d2);

//        assertEquals(2, organizationRepository.getOne(organization.getId()).getDepartments().size()); //this assert is failing. For some reason organizations does not have a list of departments

        organizationRepository.deleteById(organization.getId());

        assertFalse(organizationRepository.findByName(organizationName).isPresent());
        assertEquals(0, departmentRepository.findAll().size()); //no departments should be found

    }

}

Answer 1

See code comments on why it fails:

@RunWith(SpringJUnit4ClassRunner.class)
@DataJpaTest
@Transactional
public class OrganizationRepositoryTests {

    @Autowired
    private OrganizationRepository organizationRepository;

    @Autowired
    private DepartmentRepository departmentRepository;

    @PersistenceContext
    private Entitymanager em;

    @Test
    public void testDeleteOrganization() {
        Organization organization = 
                organizationRepository.findByName(organizationName).get(); 

        Department d1 = new Department();
        d1.setName("d1");
        d1.setOrganization(organization);

        Department d2 = new Department();
        d2.setName("d2");
        d2.setOrganization(organization);

        departmentRepository.save(d1);
        departmentRepository.save(d2);

        // this fails because there is no trip to the database as Organization 
        // (the one loaded in the first line)
        // already exists in the current entityManager - and you have not 
        // updated its list of departments.
        // uncommenting the following line will trigger a reload and prove 
        // this to be the case: however it is not a fix for the issue.

        // em.clear();

         assertEquals(2,
             organizationRepository.getOne(
               organization.getId()).getDepartments().size()); 

        //similary this will execute without error with the em.clear() 
        //statement uncommented
        //however without that Hibernate knows nothing about the cascacding 
        //delete as there are no departments
        //associated with organisation as you have not added them to the list.
        organizationRepository.deleteById(organization.getId());

        assertFalse(organizationRepository.findByName(organizationName).isPresent());
        assertEquals(0, departmentRepository.findAll().size()); 
    }
}

The correct fix is to ensure that the in-memory model is always maintained correctly by encapsulating add/remove/set operations and preventing direct access to collections. e.g.

public class Department(){
    public void setOrganisation(Organisation organisation){
        this.organisation = organisation;

        if(! organisation.getDepartments().contains(department)){
            organisation.addDepartment(department);
        }
    }
}

public class Organisation(){

    public List<Department> getDepartments(){
        return Collections.unmodifiableList(departments);
    }

    public void addDepartment(Department departmenmt){
        departments.add(department);

        if(department.getOrganisation() != this){
            department.setOrganisation(this);
        }
    }
}

Answer 2

You can try to add to limit the cascade to delete operations only from Organization to department:

@OneToMany(mappedBy = "organization", fetch = FetchType.EAGER, cascade = CascadeType.REMOVE, orphanRemoval = true)
private List<Department> departments;

Please note that if you have dependents/foreign key constraints on the department entity, then you would need to cascade the delete operations to these dependent entities as well.

You can read this guide, it explains the cascade operations nicely: https://vladmihalcea.com/a-beginners-guide-to-jpa-and-hibernate-cascade-types/

Answer 3

Try this code,

    @OneToMany( fetch = FetchType.EAGER, cascade = CascadeType.ALL)
    @JoinColumn(name = "organisation_id", referencedColumnName = "id")
    private List<Department> departments;

    @ManyToOne(fetch = FetchType.EAGER,ascade = CascadeType.REFRESH,mappedBy = "departments")
    private Organization organization;

if any issue inform