Collection instances are distinguished in the database by the foreign key of the entity that owns the collection. This foreign key is referred to as the collection key column (or columns) of the collection table. The collection key column is mapped by the <key> element.

There may be a nullability constraint on the foreign key column. For most collections, this is implied. For unidirectional one to many associations, the foreign key column is nullable by default, so you might need to specify not-null="true".

<key column="productSerialNumber" not-null="true"/>

The foreign key constraint may use ON DELETE CASCADE.

<key column="productSerialNumber" on-delete="cascade"/>

See the previous chapter for a full definition of the <key> element.

Collections may contain almost any other Hibernate type, including all basic types, custom types, components, and of course, references to other entities. This is an important distinction: an object in a collection might be handled with "value" semantics (its lifecycle fully depends on the collection owner) or it might be a reference to another entity, with its own lifecycle. In the latter case, only the "link" between the two objects is considered to be state held by the collection.

The contained type is referred to as the collection element type. Collection elements are mapped by <element> or <composite-element>, or in the case of entity references, with <one-to-many> or <many-to-many>. The first two map elements with value semantics, the next two are used to map entity associations.

All collection mappings, except those with set and bag semantics, need an index column in the collection table - a column that maps to an array index, or List index, or Map key. The index of a Map may be of any basic type, mapped with <map-key>, it may be an entity reference mapped with <map-key-many-to-many>, or it may be a composite type, mapped with <composite-map-key>. The index of an array or list is always of type integer and is mapped using the <list-index> element. The mapped column contains sequential integers (numbered from zero, by default).

<list-index 
        column="column_name"                (1)
        base="0|1|..."/>

<map-key 
        column="column_name"                (1)
        formula="any SQL expression"        (2)
        type="type_name"                    (3)
        node="@attribute-name"
        length="N"/>

<map-key-many-to-many
        column="column_name"                (1)
        formula="any SQL expression"        (2)(3)
        class="ClassName"
/>

If your table doesn't have an index column, and you still wish to use List as the property type, you should map the property as a Hibernate <bag>. A bag does not retain its order when it is retrieved from the database, but it may be optionally sorted or ordered.

Any collection of values or many-to-many association requires a dedicated collection table with a foreign key column or columns, collection element column or columns and possibly an index column or columns.

For a collection of values, we use the <element> tag.

<element
        column="column_name"                     (1)
        formula="any SQL expression"             (2)
        type="typename"                          (3)
        length="L"
        precision="P"
        scale="S"
        not-null="true|false"
        unique="true|false"
        node="element-name"
/>

A many-to-many association is specified using the <many-to-many> element.

<many-to-many
        column="column_name"                               (1)
        formula="any SQL expression"                       (2)
        class="ClassName"                                  (3)
        fetch="select|join"                                (4)
        unique="true|false"                                (5)
        not-found="ignore|exception"                       (6)
        entity-name="EntityName"                           (7)
        property-ref="propertyNameFromAssociatedClass"     (8)
        node="element-name"
        embed-xml="true|false"
    />

Some examples, first, a set of strings:

<set name="names" table="person_names">
    <key column="person_id"/>
    <element column="person_name" type="string"/>
</set>

A bag containing integers (with an iteration order determined by the order-by attribute):

<bag name="sizes" 
        table="item_sizes" 
        order-by="size asc">
    <key column="item_id"/>
    <element column="size" type="integer"/>
</bag>

An array of entities - in this case, a many to many association:

<array name="addresses" 
        table="PersonAddress" 
        cascade="persist">
    <key column="personId"/>
    <list-index column="sortOrder"/>
    <many-to-many column="addressId" class="Address"/>
</array>

A map from string indices to dates:

<map name="holidays" 
        table="holidays" 
        schema="dbo" 
        order-by="hol_name asc">
    <key column="id"/>
    <map-key column="hol_name" type="string"/>
    <element column="hol_date" type="date"/>
</map>

A list of components (discussed in the next chapter):

<list name="carComponents" 
        table="CarComponents">
    <key column="carId"/>
    <list-index column="sortOrder"/>
    <composite-element class="CarComponent">
        <property name="price"/>
        <property name="type"/>
        <property name="serialNumber" column="serialNum"/>
    </composite-element>
</list>

A one to many association links the tables of two classes via a foreign key, with no intervening collection table. This mapping loses certain semantics of normal Java collections:

An association from Product to Part requires existence of a foreign key column and possibly an index column to the Part table. A <one-to-many> tag indicates that this is a one to many association.

<one-to-many 
        class="ClassName"                                  (1)
        not-found="ignore|exception"                       (2)
        entity-name="EntityName"                           (3)
        node="element-name"
        embed-xml="true|false"
    />

Notice that the <one-to-many> element does not need to declare any columns. Nor is it necessary to specify the table name anywhere.

Very important note: If the foreign key column of a <one-to-many> association is declared NOT NULL, you must declare the <key> mapping not-null="true" or use a bidirectional association with the collection mapping marked inverse="true". See the discussion of bidirectional associations later in this chapter.

This example shows a map of Part entities by name (where partName is a persistent property of Part). Notice the use of a formula-based index.

<map name="parts"
        cascade="all">
    <key column="productId" not-null="true"/>
    <map-key formula="partName"/>
    <one-to-many class="Part"/>
</map>

Hibernate supports collections implementing java.util.SortedMap and java.util.SortedSet. You must specify a comparator in the mapping file:

<set name="aliases" 
            table="person_aliases" 
            sort="natural">
    <key column="person"/>
    <element column="name" type="string"/>
</set>

<map name="holidays" sort="my.custom.HolidayComparator">
    <key column="year_id"/>
    <map-key column="hol_name" type="string"/>
    <element column="hol_date" type="date"/>
</map>

Allowed values of the sort attribute are unsorted, natural and the name of a class implementing java.util.Comparator.

Sorted collections actually behave like java.util.TreeSet or java.util.TreeMap.

If you want the database itself to order the collection elements use the order-by attribute of set, bag or map mappings. This solution is only available under JDK 1.4 or higher (it is implemented using LinkedHashSet or LinkedHashMap). This performs the ordering in the SQL query, not in memory.

<set name="aliases" table="person_aliases" order-by="lower(name) asc">
    <key column="person"/>
    <element column="name" type="string"/>
</set>

<map name="holidays" order-by="hol_date, hol_name">
    <key column="year_id"/>
    <map-key column="hol_name" type="string"/>
    <element column="hol_date type="date"/>
</map>

Note that the value of the order-by attribute is an SQL ordering, not a HQL ordering!

Associations may even be sorted by some arbitrary criteria at runtime using a collection filter().

sortedUsers = s.createFilter( group.getUsers(), "order by this.name" ).list();

A bidirectional association allows navigation from both "ends" of the association. Two kinds of bidirectional association are supported:

You may specify a bidirectional many-to-many association simply by mapping two many-to-many associations to the same database table and declaring one end as inverse (which one is your choice, but it can not be an indexed collection).

Here's an example of a bidirectional many-to-many association; each category can have many items and each item can be in many categories:

<class name="Category">
    <id name="id" column="CATEGORY_ID"/>
    ...
    <bag name="items" table="CATEGORY_ITEM">
        <key column="CATEGORY_ID"/>
        <many-to-many class="Item" column="ITEM_ID"/>
    </bag>
</class>

<class name="Item">
    <id name="id" column="CATEGORY_ID"/>
    ...

    <!-- inverse end -->
    <bag name="categories" table="CATEGORY_ITEM" inverse="true">
        <key column="ITEM_ID"/>
        <many-to-many class="Category" column="CATEGORY_ID"/>
    </bag>
</class>

Changes made only to the inverse end of the association are not persisted. This means that Hibernate has two representations in memory for every bidirectional association, one link from A to B and another link from B to A. This is easier to understand if you think about the Java object model and how we create a many-to-many relationship in Java:

category.getItems().add(item);          // The category now "knows" about the relationship
item.getCategories().add(category);     // The item now "knows" about the relationship

session.persist(item);                   // The relationship won't be saved!
session.persist(category);               // The relationship will be saved

The non-inverse side is used to save the in-memory representation to the database.

You may define a bidirectional one-to-many association by mapping a one-to-many association to the same table column(s) as a many-to-one association and declaring the many-valued end inverse="true".

<class name="Parent">
    <id name="id" column="parent_id"/>
    ....
    <set name="children" inverse="true">
        <key column="parent_id"/>
        <one-to-many class="Child"/>
    </set>
</class>

<class name="Child">
    <id name="id" column="child_id"/>
    ....
    <many-to-one name="parent" 
        class="Parent" 
        column="parent_id"
        not-null="true"/>
</class>

Mapping one end of an association with inverse="true" doesn't affect the operation of cascades, these are orthogonal concepts!

A bidirectional association where one end is represented as a <list> or <map> requires special consideration. If there is a property of the child class which maps to the index column, no problem, we can continue using inverse="true" on the collection mapping:

<class name="Parent">
    <id name="id" column="parent_id"/>
    ....
    <map name="children" inverse="true">
        <key column="parent_id"/>
        <map-key column="name" 
            type="string"/>
        <one-to-many class="Child"/>
    </map>
</class>

<class name="Child">
    <id name="id" column="child_id"/>
    ....
    <property name="name" 
        not-null="true"/>
    <many-to-one name="parent" 
        class="Parent" 
        column="parent_id"
        not-null="true"/>
</class>

But, if there is no such property on the child class, we can't think of the association as truly bidirectional (there is information available at one end of the association that is not available at the other end). In this case, we can't map the collection inverse="true". Instead, we could use the following mapping:

<class name="Parent">
    <id name="id" column="parent_id"/>
    ....
    <map name="children">
        <key column="parent_id"
            not-null="true"/>
        <map-key column="name" 
            type="string"/>
        <one-to-many class="Child"/>
    </map>
</class>

<class name="Child">
    <id name="id" column="child_id"/>
    ....
    <many-to-one name="parent" 
        class="Parent" 
        column="parent_id"
        insert="false"
        update="false"
        not-null="true"/>
</class>

Note that in this mapping, the collection-valued end of the association is responsible for updates to the foreign key. TODO: Does this really result in some unnecessary update statements?

There are three possible approaches to mapping a ternary association. One is to use a Map with an association as its index:

<map name="contracts">
    <key column="employer_id" not-null="true"/>
    <map-key-many-to-many column="employee_id" class="Employee"/>
    <one-to-many class="Contract"/>
</map>

<map name="connections">
    <key column="incoming_node_id"/>
    <map-key-many-to-many column="outgoing_node_id" class="Node"/>
    <many-to-many column="connection_id" class="Connection"/>
</map>

A second approach is to simply remodel the association as an entity class. This is the approach we use most commonly.

A final alternative is to use composite elements, which we will discuss later.

If you've fully embraced our view that composite keys are a bad thing and that entities should have synthetic identifiers (surrogate keys), then you might find it a bit odd that the many to many associations and collections of values that we've shown so far all map to tables with composite keys! Now, this point is quite arguable; a pure association table doesn't seem to benefit much from a surrogate key (though a collection of composite values might). Nevertheless, Hibernate provides a feature that allows you to map many to many associations and collections of values to a table with a surrogate key.

The <idbag> element lets you map a List (or Collection) with bag semantics.

<idbag name="lovers" table="LOVERS">
    <collection-id column="ID" type="long">
        <generator class="sequence"/>
    </collection-id>
    <key column="PERSON1"/>
    <many-to-many column="PERSON2" class="Person" fetch="join"/>
</idbag>

As you can see, an <idbag> has a synthetic id generator, just like an entity class! A different surrogate key is assigned to each collection row. Hibernate does not provide any mechanism to discover the surrogate key value of a particular row, however.

Note that the update performance of an <idbag> is much better than a regular <bag>! Hibernate can locate individual rows efficiently and update or delete them individually, just like a list, map or set.

In the current implementation, the native identifier generation strategy is not supported for <idbag> collection identifiers.