"detached entity passed to persist error" with JPA/EJB code

Question

I am trying to run this basic JPA/EJB code:

public static void main(String[] args){
         UserBean user = new UserBean();
         user.setId(1);
         user.setUserName("name1");
         user.setPassword("passwd1");
         em.persist(user);
  }

I get this error:

javax.ejb.EJBException: javax.persistence.PersistenceException: org.hibernate.PersistentObjectException: detached entity passed to persist: com.JPA.Database

Any ideas?

I search on the internet and the reason I found was:

This was caused by how you created the objects, i.e. If you set the ID property explicitly. Removing ID assignment fixed it.

But I didn't get it, what will I have to modify to get the code working?

Answer 1

Let's say you have two entities Album and Photo. Album contains many photos, so it's a one to many relationship.

Album class

@Entity
public class Album {
    @Id
    @GeneratedValue(strategy=GenerationType.AUTO)
    Integer albumId;

    String albumName;

    @OneToMany(targetEntity=Photo.class,mappedBy="album",cascade={CascadeType.ALL},orphanRemoval=true)
    Set<Photo> photos = new HashSet<Photo>();
}

Photo class

@Entity
public class Photo{
    @Id
    @GeneratedValue(strategy=GenerationType.AUTO)
    Integer photo_id;

    String photoName;

    @ManyToOne(targetEntity=Album.class)
    @JoinColumn(name="album_id")
    Album album;

}

What you have to do before persist or merge is to set the Album reference in each photos.

        Album myAlbum = new Album();
        Photo photo1 = new Photo();
        Photo photo2 = new Photo();

        photo1.setAlbum(myAlbum);
        photo2.setAlbum(myAlbum);       

That is how to attach the related entity before you persist or merge.