EclipseLink/UserGuide/MOXy/Relationships/Shared Reference/Keys and Foreign Keys/Embedded Key Class

Example

• http://wiki.eclipse.org/EclipseLink/Examples/MOXy/JPA/EmbeddedIdClass

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Embedded Key Class

With JAXB, you can derive an XML representation from a set of JPA entities, when a JPA entity has an embedded ID class.

In the following code, the EmployeeId is the embedded ID of the Employee class:

@Entity
public class PhoneNumber {
 
    @ManyToOne
    @JoinColumns({
        @JoinColumn(name="E_ID", referencedColumnName = "E_ID"),
        @JoinColumn(name="E_COUNTRY", referencedColumnName = "COUNTRY")
    })
    private Employee contact;
 
}

@Entity
@IdClass(EmployeeId.class)
public class Employee {
 
    @EmbeddedId
    private EmployeeId id;
 
    @OneToMany(mappedBy="contact")
    private List<PhoneNumber> contactNumber;
 
}

@Embeddable
public class EmployeeId {
 
    @Column(name="E_ID")
    private BigDecimal eId;
 
    private String country;
 
}

For the JAXB bindings, the XML acessor type will be set to FIELD for all the model classes. This can be set as a package level JAXB annotation, as shown here:

@XmlAccessorType(XmlAccessType.FIELD)
package com.example.model;
 
import javax.xml.bind.annotation.XmlAccessType;
import javax.xml.bind.annotation.XmlAccessorType;

The following code uses the EclipseLink extension @XmlCustomizer which extends the JAXB specification. Because the contact attribute is a bidirectional relationship, it includes the EclipseLink extension @XmlInverseReference.

@Entity
@IdClass(EmployeeId.class)
@XmlCustomizer(EmployeeCustomizer.class)
public class Employee {
 
    @EmbeddedId
    private EmployeeId id;
 
    @OneToMany(mappedBy="contact")
    @XmlInverseReference(mappedBy="contact")
    private List<PhoneNumber> contactNumber;
 
}

To embed the content of the EmployeeId class in the complex type corresponding to the Employee class, change the XPath on the mapping for the id property to be self or .. Then specify the XPath to the XML nodes which represent the ID.

import org.eclipse.persistence.config.DescriptorCustomizer;
import org.eclipse.persistence.descriptors.ClassDescriptor;
import org.eclipse.persistence.oxm.mappings.XMLCompositeObjectMapping;
 
public class EmployeeCustomizer implements DescriptorCustomizer {
 
    public void customize(ClassDescriptor descriptor) throws Exception {
        XMLCompositeObjectMapping idMapping = 
            (XMLCompositeObjectMapping) descriptor.getMappingForAttributeName("id");
        idMapping.setXPath(".");
 
        descriptor.addPrimaryKeyFieldName("eId/text()");
        descriptor.addPrimaryKeyFieldName("country/text()");
    }
 
}

If the target object had a single ID then we would use @XmlIDREF. Since the target object has a compound key, we will mark the field @XmlTransient, and use the EclipseLink extension @XmlCustomizer to set up the mapping.

@Entity
@XmlCustomizer(PhoneNumberCustomizer.class)
public class PhoneNumber {
 
    @ManyToOne
    @JoinColumns({
        @JoinColumn(name="E_ID", referencedColumnName = "E_ID"),
        @JoinColumn(name="E_COUNTRY", referencedColumnName = "COUNTRY")
    })
    @XmlTransient
    private Employee contact;
 
}

An XMLObjectReferenceMapping will be created. The mapping will include multiple key mappings.

import org.eclipse.persistence.config.DescriptorCustomizer;
import org.eclipse.persistence.descriptors.ClassDescriptor;
import org.eclipse.persistence.oxm.mappings.XMLObjectReferenceMapping;
 
public class PhoneNumberCustomizer implements DescriptorCustomizer {
 
    public void customize(ClassDescriptor descriptor) throws Exception {
        XMLObjectReferenceMapping contactMapping = new XMLObjectReferenceMapping();
        contactMapping.setAttributeName("contact");
        contactMapping.setReferenceClass(Employee.class);
        contactMapping.addSourceToTargetKeyFieldAssociation("contact/@eID", "eId/text()");
        contactMapping.addSourceToTargetKeyFieldAssociation("contact/@country", "country/text()");
        descriptor.addMapping(contactMapping);
    }
 
}

Version: 2.2.0 DRAFT
Other versions...

Composite Key	Keys and Foreign Keys	Many-to-one
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