[FIXED] PersistentObjectException: detached entity passed to persist thrown by JPA and Hibernate

Issue

I have a JPA-persisted object model that contains a many-to-one relationship: an Account has many Transactions. A Transaction has one Account.

Here's a snippet of the code:

@Entity
public class Transaction {
    @Id
    @GeneratedValue(strategy = GenerationType.AUTO)
    private Long id;

    @ManyToOne(cascade = {CascadeType.ALL},fetch= FetchType.EAGER)
    private Account fromAccount;
....

@Entity
public class Account {
    @Id
    @GeneratedValue(strategy = GenerationType.AUTO)
    private Long id;
    @OneToMany(cascade = {CascadeType.ALL},fetch= FetchType.EAGER, mappedBy = "fromAccount")
    private Set<Transaction> transactions;

I am able to create an Account object, add transactions to it, and persist the Account object correctly. But, when I create a transaction, using an existing already persisted Account, and persisting the the Transaction, I get an exception:

Caused by: org.hibernate.PersistentObjectException: detached entity passed to persist: com.paulsanwald.Account at org.hibernate.event.internal.DefaultPersistEventListener.onPersist(DefaultPersistEventListener.java:141)

So, I am able to persist an Account that contains transactions, but not a Transaction that has an Account. I thought this was because the Account might not be attached, but this code still gives me the same exception:

if (account.getId()!=null) {
    account = entityManager.merge(account);
}
Transaction transaction = new Transaction(account,"other stuff");
 // the below fails with a "detached entity" message. why?
entityManager.persist(transaction);

How can I correctly save a Transaction, associated with an already persisted Account object?

Solution

This is a typical bidirectional consistency problem. It is well discussed in this link as well as this link.

As per the articles in the previous 2 links you need to fix your setters in both sides of the bidirectional relationship. An example setter for the One side is in this link.

An example setter for the Many side is in this link.

After you correct your setters you want to declare the Entity access type to be "Property". Best practice to declare "Property" access type is to move ALL the annotations from the member properties to the corresponding getters. A big word of caution is not to mix "Field" and "Property" access types within the entity class otherwise the behavior is undefined by the JSR-317 specifications.

Answered By - Sym-Sym
Answer Checked By - Willingham (JavaFixing Volunteer)