Raible's Wiki: HibernateRelationships

The Weblog object is used to indentify a person's blog. This class has the following properties:

The Entry object is used to contain a listing of a person's blog entries in their Weblog. This class contains the following properties:

Below is a class diagram of these two objects, as well as the others you'll create in this tutorial.

The first thing you need to do in this tutorial is these two object to persist. Create a Weblog.java class and an Entry.java class (in the src/dao/**/model directory). The necessary XDoclet tags for these entities is included on the getter method's javadoc. You can download these files using the links below. Note that javadocs have been eliminated for brevity.

Create a Category.java object to act as an entity for persisting category information about weblog entries. Each category can have many entries. This class contains the following properties:

Configure Spring

Add the 3 new mapping files (that will be generated) to the "sessionFactory" bean's mappingResources property in src/org/appfuse/dao/hibernate/applicationContext-hibernate.xml.




<property name="mappingResources"> 

    <list> 

        <value>org/appfuse/model/Role.hbm.xml</value>

        <value>org/appfuse/model/User.hbm.xml</value>

        <value>org/appfuse/model/Weblog.hbm.xml</value>

        <value>org/appfuse/model/Entry.hbm.xml</value>

        <value>org/appfuse/model/Category.hbm.xml</value>  

    </list> 

</property>

[Many-to-Many] A Weblogs can have many Users, a User can have many Weblogs [#2]

A Weblog can have many Users. Basically the idea is of a shared weblog that is a place where many users can express themselves about a particular topic of interest. For this bit of functionality the User object will be modified to have a many-to-many relationship with Weblog.




    private List users = new ArrayList();

    

    /**

     * @hibernate.bag table="weblog_user" cascade="save-update" lazy="true"

     * @hibernate.collection-key column="weblog_id"

     * @hibernate.collection-many-to-many class="org.appfuse.model.User" column="username"

     */

    public List getUsers() {

        return users;

    }



    public void addUser(User user) {

        getUsers().add(user);

    }



    public void setUsers(List users) {

        this.users = users;

    }

User modifications

To allow navigation from a User objec to a list of Weblogs, you need to add a List of Weblogs to the User object. Modify User.java to add a weblogs List and accessor methods.




    protected List weblogs;



    /**

     * @hibernate.bag table="weblog_user" cascade="save-update" lazy="true"

     * @hibernate.collection-key column="username"

     * @hibernate.collection-many-to-many class="org.appfuse.model.Weblog" column="weblog_id"

     */

    public List getWeblogs() {

        return weblogs;

    }



    public void setWeblogs(List weblogs) {

        this.weblogs = weblogs;

    }

Test it!

Create a unit test so you can verify that everything actually works. Create a WeblogDaoTest class in your test/dao/**/dao directory. This file should extend GenericDaoTest. If you're using anything less than AppFuse 1.9, you may have to modify GenericDAOTest's "dao" variable so its protected instead of private. Copy the code below into this test:




package org.appfuse.dao;



import java.util.Date;



import org.appfuse.model.User;

import org.appfuse.model.Weblog;



public class WeblogDaoTest extends GenericDAOTest {

    

    public void testWeblogAndUsers() throws Exception {

        Weblog w = new Weblog();

        w.setBlogTitle("My New Weblog");

        w.setDateCreated(new Date());

        

        // add it to the database

        dao.saveObject(w);

        

        w = (Weblog) dao.getObject(Weblog.class, w.getWeblogId());

        

        assertTrue(w.getUsers().isEmpty());

        

        // add a user

        User u = (User) dao.getObject(User.class, "mraible");

        w.addUser(u);

        

        dao.saveObject(w);

        

        w = (Weblog) dao.getObject(Weblog.class, w.getWeblogId());

        

        assertTrue(w.getUsers().size() == 1);

        

        // remove the user

        w.setUsers(null);

        dao.saveObject(w);

        

        w = (Weblog) dao.getObject(Weblog.class, w.getWeblogId());

        

        assertNull(w.getUsers());

    }

}

Make sure you run ant setup-db before running ant test-dao -Dtestcase=UserDAO. When running the test, you'll probably get a LazyInitializationException. To solve this, change BaseDaoTestCase to extend Spring's AbstractTransactionalDataSourceSpringContextTests

if it doesn't already. In additional, you'll need to make a few changes to the existing tests so all the tests pass. Here is a patch. At a minimum, you'll need to fix BaseDAOTestCase and GenericDAOTest (onSetUp() -> onSetupBeforeTransaction()).

Because the WeblogDaoTest is now extending AbstractTransactionalDataSourceSpringContextTests (ATDSSCT), there is a "jdbcTemplate" variable you can use to do additional querying. For instance, you could add the following at the end of your testWeblogAndUsers() method:

[One-to-Many] A Weblog object can have many Entries [#3]

Now you'll modify the Weblog object and Entry object to represent the multiplicity of a weblog that can have many entries. This relationship is set on the Weblog class using a java.util.List. XDoclet tags are used to establish this relationship using a bag as the Hibernate collection type. Add the following code to your Weblog.java class.




    private List entries;



    /**

     * @return Returns the entries.

     * 

     * @hibernate.bag name="entries" lazy="false" cascade="all"

     * @hibernate.collection-key column="weblog_id"

     * @hibernate.collection-one-to-many class="org.appfuse.model.Entry"

     */

    public List getEntries() {

        return entries;

    }



    public void setEntries(List entries) {

        this.entries = entries;

    }

Modify the Entry class is so it contains a foreign key to its parent Weblog class.

At this point, you could add an additional test method to WeblogDaoTest to test that this relationship works. Of course, you'll need to run ant setup-db to make sure your database knows about the relationship.

[Many-to-One] A Category object can be assigned to many entries [#4]

The many-to-one relationship between Category and Entry can be established using XDoclet tags. Hibernate relationships can be established on either side of the relationship or bi-directionally. For this tutorial, this relationship is maintained by a categoryId property and a Category object in Entry. The list of possible categories for a weblog entry will eventually be represented as a drop-down on the UI. Add the following code to your Entry.java class. Notice that the relationship to Category has insert="false" update="false". This is because the object is read-only. This can be useful for displaying a category's name on the UI when you're viewing an Entry.




    private Long categoryId;

    private Category category;



    /**

     * @hibernate.many-to-one insert="false" update="false" cascade="none"

     *  column="category_id" outer-join="true"

     */

    public Category getCategory() {

        return category;

    }



    public void setCategory(Category category) {

        this.category = category;

    }



    /**

     * @hibernate.property column="category_id"

     */

    public Long getCategoryId() {

        return categoryId;

    }



    public void setCategoryId(Long categoryId) {

        this.categoryId = categoryId;

    }

After making these changes, your WeblogDaoTest should still pass. Verify it does by running ant setup-db test-dao -Dtestcase=Weblog.

Before working on the UI, it's helpful to have some sample data so you don't have to do manual data entry. Add the following XML to the bottom of metadata/sql/sample-data.xml.

  <table name='weblog'>
    <column>weblog_id</column>
    <column>blog_title</column>
    <column>date_created</column>
    <row>
      <value>1</value>
      <value><![CDATA[Sponge Bob is Cool]]></value>
      <value>2004-03-31</value>
    </row>
    <row>
      <value>2</value>
      <value><![CDATA[Java Development = Fun]]></value>
      <value>2005-01-05</value>
    </row>
  </table>
  <table name='weblog_user'>
    <column>weblog_id</column>
    <column>username</column>
    <row>
      <value>1</value>
      <value>tomcat</value>
    </row>
    <row>
      <value>1</value>
      <value>mraible</value>
    </row>
    <row>
      <value>2</value>
      <value>mraible</value>
    </row>
  </table>
  <table name='category'>
    <column>category_id</column>
    <column>name</column>
    <column>description</column>
    <row>
      <value>1</value>
      <value><![CDATA[Struts vs. Spring MVC]]></value>
      <value><![CDATA[Comparing implementations of the MVC Design Pattern]]></value>
    </row>
    <row>
      <value>2</value>
      <value><![CDATA[Cycling Notes]]></value>
      <value><![CDATA[All about cycling in the US.]]></value>
    </row>
    <row>
      <value>3</value>
      <value><![CDATA[Cyclocross]]></value>
      <value><![CDATA[Bog Trotters Unite!]]></value>
    </row>
  </table>
  <table name='entry'>
    <column>entry_id</column>
    <column>entry_text</column>
    <column>time_created</column>
    <column>weblog_id</column>
    <column>category_id</column>
    <row>
      <value>1</value>
      <value><![CDATA[Testing]]></value>
      <value>2005-04-11 01:02:03.4</value>
      <value>1</value>
      <value>1</value>
    </row>
    <row>
      <value>2</value>
      <value><![CDATA[Test Value]]></value>
      <value>2005-04-12 01:02:03.4</value>
      <value>1</value>
      <value>1</value>
    </row>
    <row>
      <value>3</value>
      <value><![CDATA[Test Value 3]]></value>
      <value>2005-04-12 01:02:03.4</value>
      <value>2</value>
      <value>3</value>
    </row>
  </table>

Next Up: Part II: Create Weblog UI - Creating a UI to manage the relationships created in this tutorial.

Raible's Wiki

AppFuse

Other Applications

HibernateRelationships

About this tutorial

Table of Contents