Can someone explain mappedBy in JPA and Hibernate?

Question

I am new to hibernate and need to use one-to-many and many-to-one relations. It is a bi-directional relationship in my objects, so that I can traverse from either direction. mappedBy is the recommended way to go about it, however, I couldn't understand it. Can someone explain:

• what is the recommended way to use it?
• what purpose does it solve?

For the sake of my example, here are my classes with annotations:

• Airline OWNS many AirlineFlights
• Many AirlineFlights belong to ONE Airline

Airline:

@Entity 
@Table(name="Airline")
public class Airline {
    private Integer idAirline;
    private String name;

    private String code;

    private String aliasName;
    private Set<AirlineFlight> airlineFlights = new HashSet<AirlineFlight>(0);

    public Airline(){}

    public Airline(String name, String code, String aliasName, Set<AirlineFlight> flights) {
        setName(name);
        setCode(code);
        setAliasName(aliasName);
        setAirlineFlights(flights);
    }

    @Id
    @GeneratedValue(strategy=GenerationType.IDENTITY)
    @Column(name="IDAIRLINE", nullable=false)
    public Integer getIdAirline() {
        return idAirline;
    }

    private void setIdAirline(Integer idAirline) {
        this.idAirline = idAirline;
    }

    @Column(name="NAME", nullable=false)
    public String getName() {
        return name;
    }
    public void setName(String name) {
        this.name = DAOUtil.convertToDBString(name);
    }

    @Column(name="CODE", nullable=false, length=3)
    public String getCode() {
        return code;
    }
    public void setCode(String code) {
        this.code = DAOUtil.convertToDBString(code);
    }

    @Column(name="ALIAS", nullable=true)
    public String getAliasName() {
        return aliasName;
    }
    public void setAliasName(String aliasName) {
        if(aliasName != null)
            this.aliasName = DAOUtil.convertToDBString(aliasName);
    }

    @OneToMany(fetch=FetchType.LAZY, cascade = {CascadeType.ALL})
    @JoinColumn(name="IDAIRLINE")
    public Set<AirlineFlight> getAirlineFlights() {
        return airlineFlights;
    }

    public void setAirlineFlights(Set<AirlineFlight> flights) {
        this.airlineFlights = flights;
    }
}

AirlineFlights:

@Entity
@Table(name="AirlineFlight")
public class AirlineFlight {
    private Integer idAirlineFlight;
    private Airline airline;
    private String flightNumber;

    public AirlineFlight(){}

    public AirlineFlight(Airline airline, String flightNumber) {
        setAirline(airline);
        setFlightNumber(flightNumber);
    }

    @Id
    @GeneratedValue(generator="identity")
    @GenericGenerator(name="identity", strategy="identity")
    @Column(name="IDAIRLINEFLIGHT", nullable=false)
    public Integer getIdAirlineFlight() {
        return idAirlineFlight;
    }
    private void setIdAirlineFlight(Integer idAirlineFlight) {
        this.idAirlineFlight = idAirlineFlight;
    }

    @ManyToOne(fetch=FetchType.LAZY)
    @JoinColumn(name="IDAIRLINE", nullable=false)
    public Airline getAirline() {
        return airline;
    }
    public void setAirline(Airline airline) {
        this.airline = airline;
    }

    @Column(name="FLIGHTNUMBER", nullable=false)
    public String getFlightNumber() {
        return flightNumber;
    }
    public void setFlightNumber(String flightNumber) {
        this.flightNumber = DAOUtil.convertToDBString(flightNumber);
    }
}

EDIT:

Database schema:

AirlineFlights has the idAirline as ForeignKey and Airline has no idAirlineFlights. This makes, AirlineFlights as the owner/identifying entity ?

Theoretically, I would like airline to be the owner of airlineFlights.

Answer 1

MappedBy signals hibernate that the key for the relationship is on the other side.

This means that although you link 2 tables together, only 1 of those tables has a foreign key constraint to the other one. MappedBy allows you to still link from the table not containing the constraint to the other table.