6.3.3. Bidirectional associations with indexed collections
A bidirectional association where one end is represented as a
<list> or <map>, requires special consideration. If there is a property of the child class that maps to the index column you can use inverse="true" on the collection mapping:
<class name="Parent">
<id name="id" column="parent_id"/>
....
<map name="children" inverse="true">
<key column="parent_id"/>
<map-key column="name"
type="string"/>
<one-to-many class="Child"/>
</map>
</class>
<class name="Child">
<id name="id" column="child_id"/>
....
<property name="name"
not-null="true"/>
<many-to-one name="parent"
class="Parent"
column="parent_id"
not-null="true"/>
</class>
If there is no such property on the child class, the association cannot be considered truly bidirectional. That is, there is information available at one end of the association that is not available at the other end. In this case, you cannot map the collection
inverse="true". Instead, you could use the following mapping:
<class name="Parent">
<id name="id" column="parent_id"/>
....
<map name="children">
<key column="parent_id"
not-null="true"/>
<map-key column="name"
type="string"/>
<one-to-many class="Child"/>
</map>
</class>
<class name="Child">
<id name="id" column="child_id"/>
....
<many-to-one name="parent"
class="Parent"
column="parent_id"
insert="false"
update="false"
not-null="true"/>
</class>
Note that in this mapping, the collection-valued end of the association is responsible for updates to the foreign key.
