M:N association not fetched with Hibernate query

Question

I have a Many-to-Many relationship between Thread and Participant through a ThreadParticipant entity (because the association has an additional field). I have the following mapping.

Thread entity

@Entity
@Table(name = "thread")
public class Thread {
    @Id
    @GeneratedValue(strategy = GenerationType.IDENTITY)
    @Column
    private int id;

    @OneToMany(fetch = FetchType.LAZY, mappedBy = "thread", cascade = { CascadeType.PERSIST, CascadeType.MERGE })
    private Collection<ThreadParticipant> threadParticipants = new HashSet<>();

    // Getters and setters
}

Participant entity

@Entity
@Table(name = "participant")
public class Participant {
    @Id
    @GeneratedValue(strategy = GenerationType.IDENTITY)
    @Column
    private int id;

    @ManyToOne(fetch = FetchType.LAZY, optional = true, targetEntity = Account.class, cascade = { CascadeType.PERSIST })
    @JoinColumn(name = "account_id")
    private Account account;

    @ManyToOne(fetch = FetchType.LAZY, optional = true, targetEntity = Company.class)
    @JoinColumn(name = "company_id")
    private Company company;

    // Getters and setters
}

ThreadParticipant entity

@Entity
@Table(name = "thread_participant")
@IdClass(ThreadParticipantPK.class)
public class ThreadParticipant implements Serializable {
    @Id
    @ManyToOne(fetch = FetchType.LAZY, targetEntity = Participant.class, cascade = { CascadeType.PERSIST, CascadeType.MERGE })
    @JoinColumn(name = "participant_id")
    private Participant participant;

    @Id
    @ManyToOne(fetch = FetchType.LAZY, targetEntity = Thread.class)
    @JoinColumn(name = "thread_id")
    private Thread thread;

    @Column(name = "last_viewed", nullable = true)
    private Date lastViewed;


    // Getters and setters
}

ThreadParticipantPK

public class ThreadParticipantPK implements Serializable {
    private Thread thread;
    private Participant participant;

    public ThreadParticipantPK() { }

    public ThreadParticipantPK(Thread thread, Participant participant) {
        this.thread = thread;
        this.participant = participant;
    }

    @Override
    public boolean equals(Object o) {
        if (this == o) return true;
        if (!(o instanceof ThreadParticipantPK)) return false;

        ThreadParticipantPK that = (ThreadParticipantPK) o;

        if (!participant.equals(that.participant)) return false;
        if (!thread.equals(that.thread)) return false;

        return true;
    }

    @Override
    public int hashCode() {
        int result = thread.hashCode();
        result = 31 * result + participant.hashCode();
        return result;
    }

    // Getters and setters
}

Now, I am trying to fetch threads with the following query (using Spring Data JPA) and Hibernate as my JPA provider.

@Repository
public interface ThreadRepository extends JpaRepository<Thread, Integer> {
    @Query("select distinct t from Thread t inner join fetch t.threadParticipants tp inner join fetch tp.participant p left join fetch p.account a left join fetch p.company c")
    public List<Thread> test();
}

The problem is that when the fetch type for the associations within ThreadParticipants are set to FetchType.LAZY, the Thread.threadParticipants collection is empty. Consequently, if I set the associations to FetchType.EAGER, Thread.threadParticipants contains two elements (as it should). In this case, however, Hibernate goes nuts and executes four SQL queries for fetching a single thread.

Hibernate: select thread0_.id as id1_18_0_, threadpart1_.participant_id as particip2_19_1_, threadpart1_.thread_id as thread_i3_19_1_, participan2_.id as id1_12_2_, account3_.id as id1_0_3_, company4_.id as id1_6_4_, thread0_.created as created2_18_0_, thread0_.last_activity as last_act3_18_0_, thread0_.subject as subject4_18_0_, threadpart1_.last_viewed as last_vie1_19_1_, threadpart1_.thread_id as thread_i3_18_0__, threadpart1_.participant_id as particip2_19_0__, threadpart1_.thread_id as thread_i3_19_0__, participan2_.account_id as account_2_12_2_, participan2_.company_id as company_3_12_2_, account3_.email as email2_0_3_, account3_.facebook_profile_id as facebook3_0_3_, account3_.first_name as first_na4_0_3_, account3_.last_name as last_nam5_0_3_, account3_.middle_name as middle_n6_0_3_, company4_.additional_address_text as addition2_6_4_, company4_.banner_name as banner_n3_6_4_, company4_.ci_number as ci_numbe4_6_4_, company4_.city_id as city_id22_6_4_, company4_.co_name as co_name5_6_4_, company4_.company_type_code as company_6_6_4_, company4_.created as created7_6_4_, company4_.description as descript8_6_4_, company4_.email as email9_6_4_, company4_.last_modified as last_mo10_6_4_, company4_.logo_name as logo_na11_6_4_, company4_.name as name12_6_4_, company4_.number_of_reviews as number_13_6_4_, company4_.phone_number as phone_n14_6_4_, company4_.postal_box as postal_15_6_4_, company4_.rating as rating16_6_4_, company4_.second_phone_number as second_17_6_4_, company4_.street_name as street_18_6_4_, company4_.street_number as street_19_6_4_, company4_.teaser as teaser20_6_4_, company4_.website as website21_6_4_ from thread thread0_ inner join thread_participant threadpart1_ on thread0_.id=threadpart1_.thread_id inner join participant participan2_ on threadpart1_.participant_id=participan2_.id left outer join account account3_ on participan2_.account_id=account3_.id left outer join company company4_ on participan2_.company_id=company4_.id
Hibernate: select participan0_.id as id1_12_0_, participan0_.account_id as account_2_12_0_, participan0_.company_id as company_3_12_0_ from participant participan0_ where participan0_.id=?
Hibernate: select thread0_.id as id1_18_0_, thread0_.created as created2_18_0_, thread0_.last_activity as last_act3_18_0_, thread0_.subject as subject4_18_0_ from thread thread0_ where thread0_.id=?
Hibernate: select participan0_.id as id1_12_0_, participan0_.account_id as account_2_12_0_, participan0_.company_id as company_3_12_0_ from participant participan0_ where participan0_.id=?

Apparently it's executing a query for each participant, and two queries for each thread. So, without FetchType.EAGER, my code is simply not working, but with it, my database will get killed. I tried adding a @OneToMany association between Participant and ThreadParticipant (similar to the one from Thread to ThreadParticipant), but with the same results. I also tried to add all of the aliases to my query's field list, but to no avail.

Why is this happening? Is my mapping or query wrong? Thank you in advance!

Answer 1

Try changing the the one-to-many collection to a Set:

@OneToMany(
    mappedBy = "thread", 
    cascade = {CascadeType.PERSIST, CascadeType.MERGE}
)
private Set<ThreadParticipant> threadParticipants = new HashSet<>();

The additional queries should NEVER be generated if you only have LAZY associations. That may be because the many-to-one and one-to-one relationships are EAGER by default. Try setting those to LAZY instead.