hibernate-007: Bidirectional One-to-Many & Many-to-One in Hibernate (Department ↔ Employee)

Bidirectional One-to-Many & Many-to-One in Hibernate (Department ↔ Employee)

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🚀 1️⃣ Bidirectional One-to-Many & Many-to-One

✅ In a bidirectional relationship:

• The "many" side (Employee) owns the relationship (because it holds the foreign key).
• The "one" side (Department) is the inverse side and uses mappedBy to refer to the owning side.

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📌 Step 1: @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 column in Employee table
    private Department department;
}

✅ The Employee table gets a department_id foreign key.

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📌 Step 2: @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's `department` field
    private List<Employee> employees = new ArrayList<>();
}

✅ mappedBy = "department" tells Hibernate:

• "The foreign key is already in Employee.department."
• "Do not create an extra join table."

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🔥 Generated SQL (No 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)
);

✅ Correct design! The foreign key is stored in Employee.department_id, and no join table is created.

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🚀 2️⃣ How to Use the Bidirectional Relationship in Java

📌 Saving Data

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);

List<Employee> employees = new ArrayList<>();
employees.add(emp1);
employees.add(emp2);

department.setEmployees(employees); // ✅ Set reference in Department

entityManager.persist(department);
entityManager.persist(emp1);
entityManager.persist(emp2);

✅ Both Department and Employee are linked properly.

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📌 Querying the Relationship

Get Employees for a Department

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

Get Department for an Employee

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

✅ Both queries work because the relationship is bidirectional.

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🚀 3️⃣ Summary: Unidirectional vs. Bidirectional

Feature	Unidirectional @OneToMany	Unidirectional @ManyToOne	Bidirectional (@OneToMany + @ManyToOne)
@OneToMany used?	✅ Yes (But Creates Extra Table)	❌ No	✅ Yes (mappedBy prevents join table)
@ManyToOne used?	❌ No	✅ Yes (Owning Side)	✅ Yes (Owning Side)
Uses @JoinColumn?	❌ No	✅ Yes	✅ Yes (In @ManyToOne)
Foreign key in Employee table?	❌ No	✅ Yes	✅ Yes
Extra join table?	✅ Yes (Unwanted)	❌ No	❌ No

✅ Best Practice: Use Bidirectional @OneToMany + @ManyToOne

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