Fluent NHibernate: How to create one-to-many bidirectional mapping?

Question

Basic question: How to I create a bidirectional one-to-many map in Fluent NHibernate?

Details:

I have a parent object with many children. In my case, it is meaningless for the child to not have a parent, so in the database, I would like the foreign key to the parent to have NOT NULL constraint. I am auto-generating my database from the Fluent NHibernate mapping.

I have a parent with many child objects like so:

public class Summary
{
   public int id {get; protected set;}

   public IList<Detail> Details {get; protected set;}
}

public  class Detail
{
   public int id {get; protected set;}

   public string ItemName {get; set;}

  /* public Summary Owner {get; protected set;} */ //I think this might be needed for bidirectional mapping?
}

Here is the mapping I started with:

public class SummaryMap : ClassMap<Summary>
{
    public SummaryMap()
    {
        Id(x => x.ID);

        HasMany<Detail>(x => x.Details);
    }
}

public class DetailMap : ClassMap<Detail>
{
    public DetailMap()
    {
        Id(x => x.ID);

        Map(x => x.ItemName).CanNotBeNull();
    }
}

In the Detail table, the Summary_id should be Not Null, because in my case it is meaningless to have a Detail object not attached to the summary object. However, just using the HasMany() map leaves the Summary_id foreign key nullable.

I found in the NHibernate docs (http://www.hibernate.org/hib_docs/nhibernate/html/collections.html) that "If the parent is required, use a bidirectional one-to-many association".

So how do I create the bidirectional one-to-many map in Fluent NHibernate?

Richy

Answer 1

To get a bidirectional association with a not-null foreign key column in the Details table you can add the suggested Owner property, a References(...).CanNotBeNull() mapping in the DetailsMap class, and make the Summary end inverse.

To avoid having two different foreign key columns for the two association directions, you can either specify the column names manually or name the properties in a way that gives the same column name for both directions. In this case you I suggest renaming the Details.Owner property to Details.Summary.

I made the Summary id generated by increment to avoid problems when inserting into the table since Summary currenty has no columns besides id.

Domain:

public class Detail
{
    public int id { get; protected set; }
    public string ItemName { get; set; }

    // Renamed to use same column name as specified in the mapping of Summary.Details
    public Summary Summary {get; set;} 
}

public class Summary
{
    public Summary()
    {
        Details = new List<Detail>();
    }

    public int id { get; protected set; }
    public IList<Detail> Details { get; protected set; }
}

Mapping:

public class DetailMap : ClassMap<Detail>
{
    public DetailMap()
    {
        Id(x => x.id)
            .GeneratedBy.Native();

        Map(x => x.ItemName)
            .CanNotBeNull();

        References<Summary>(x => x.Summary)
            // If you don't want to rename the property in Summary,
            // you can do this instead:
            // .TheColumnNameIs("Summary_id")
            .CanNotBeNull();
    }
}

public class SummaryMap : ClassMap<Summary>
{
    public SummaryMap()
    {
        Id(x => x.id)
            .GeneratedBy.Increment();

        HasMany<Detail>(x => x.Details)
            .IsInverse()
            .AsBag(); // Use bag instead of list to avoid index updating issues
    }
}

Labret

Is there really no way to make the foreign key column "not nullable" without adding a reference to the parent on the child? – Sacramentalist