CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javajpaspring-mvc
balteo
balteo

Reputation: 24679

Persisting/saving a JPA entity's relationships before that entity itself

I have a @OneToMany JPA association with an instance of Curriculum having several instances of WorkExperience.

The Curriculum JPA entity:

@Entity
public class Curriculum {
    ...
    @OneToMany
    private Set<WorkExperience> workExperiences;
    ...

The WorkExperience JPA entity:

@Entity
public class WorkExperience {
...

I originally wanted to persist the Curriculum together with its WorkExperiences in one entityManager call of the persist method.

However, given how I designed the flow of actions of the web UI, I am now wondering whether another scenario might not be possible i.e. to:

Does that make sense? I thought of several cons, e.g. what happens if the user chooses not to persist the Curriculum instance? How do I clean up the dangling lines in the WorkExperience table?

Are there alternatives or better patterns? For instance would that be a good idea to pre-save the curriculum instance before the user validates the form?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 1104

Answers (1)

kostja
kostja

Reputation: 61558

I would define a cascade on the Curriculum, since WorkExperience seems to be a dependent entity.

Then work with new/detached entities in the UI/Controllers until the user decides to submit the (last) form. Then persist the Curriculum and the related WorkExperience entities will be persisted as well during the same transaction commit. 

@OneToMany(cascade=CascadeType.ALL)
private Set<WorkExperience> workExperiences;

Upvotes: 2

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