Hibernate: deletes not cascading for self-referencing entities
- by jwaddell
I have the following (simplified) Hibernate entities:
@Entity
@Table(name = "package")
public abstract class Package {
protected Content content;
@ManyToOne(cascade = {javax.persistence.CascadeType.ALL})
@JoinColumn(name = "content_id")
@Fetch(value = FetchMode.JOIN)
public Content getContent() {
return content;
}
public void setContent(Content content) {
this.content = content;
}
}
@Entity
@Table(name = "content")
public class Content {
private Set<Content> subContents = new HashSet<Content>();
@ManyToMany(fetch = FetchType.EAGER)
@JoinTable(name = "subcontents", joinColumns = {@JoinColumn(name = "content_id")}, inverseJoinColumns = {@JoinColumn(name = "elt")})
@Cascade(value = {org.hibernate.annotations.CascadeType.DELETE, org.hibernate.annotations.CascadeType.REPLICATE})
@Fetch(value = FetchMode.SUBSELECT)
public Set<Content> getSubContents() {
return subContents;
}
public void setSubContents(Set<Content> subContents) {
this.subContents = subContents;
}
}
So a Package has a Content, and a Content is self-referencing in that it has many sub-Contents (which may contain sub-Contents of their own etc).
The relationships are required to be ManyToOne (Package to Content) and ManyToMany (Content to sub-Contents) but for the case I am currently testing each sub-Content only relates to one Package or Content.
The problem is that when I delete a Package and flush the session, I get a Hibernate error stating that I'm violating a foreign key constraint on table subcontents, with a particular content_id still referenced from table subcontents.
I've tried specifically (recursively) deleting the Contents before deleting the Package but I get the same error.
Is there a reason why this entity tree is not being deleted properly?
