Revision as of 14:53, 19 April 2011

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Key API

• XmlInverseReference

Bidirectional Relationships

In order to map bidirectional relationships in EclipseLink MOXy, the back-pointer must be annotated as an @XmlInverseReference. Without this annotation, the cyclic relationship will result in an infinite loop during marshalling.

@XmlInverseReferences must specify the mappedBy attribute, which indicates the property on the opposite side of the relationship.

In this example, an Employee has a collection of PhoneNumbers, and each PhoneNumber has a back-pointer back to its Employee:

@XmlAccessorType(XmlAccessType.FIELD)
public class Employee {
   private String name;
   private List<PhoneNumber> phones = new ArrayList<PhoneNumber>();
   ...
}
 
@XmlAccessorType(XmlAccessType.FIELD)
public class PhoneNumber {
   private String number;
   @XmlInverseReference(mappedBy="phones")
   private Employee employee;
   ...
}

In addition, when using @XmlInverseReference, it is not necessary to explicitly set the back-pointer in your Java code; EclipseLink will do this for you automatically:

Employee emp = new Employee();
emp.setName("Bob Smith");
 
PhoneNumber p = new PhoneNumber();
p.setNumber("555-1212");
 
emp.getPhones().add(p);
 
// Not Necessary
// p.setEmployee(emp);

@XmlInverseReference back-pointers can be used with the following types of mappings:

• One-To-One Relationships
• One-To-Many Relationships
• Single Key Relationships
• Composite Key Relationships

@XmlInverseReference can be particularly useful when mapping JPA entities to XML. For an example, please see Binding JPA Relationships to XML.

Collections and Maps	Relationships	Advanced XML Schema Concepts
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