FluentNhibernate Eager loading Many-To-Many child objects - nhibernate

Question

I try to query data using FluentNhibernate and I get this error: "Sequence contains more than one matching element"
Here are my classes and mappings:
public class Course
{
public virtual int Id { get; private set; }
public virtual string Name { get; set; }
public virtual IList<Instructor> Instructors { get; set; }
}
public class Instructor
{
public virtual int Id { get; private set; }
public virtual string Name { get; set; }
public virtual ImageData Portrait { get; set; }
public virtual ImageData PortraitThumb { get; set; }
public virtual IList<Course> TeachingCourses { get; private set; }
}
public class ImageData : Entity
{
public virtual int Id { get; private set; }
public virtual byte[] Data { get; set; }
}
public class CourseMap : ClassMap<Course>
{
public CourseMap()
{
Id(x => x.Id);
Map(x => x.Name);
HasManyToMany(x => x.Instructors)
.Cascade.All()
.Table("CourseInstructor");
}
}
public class InstructorMap : ClassMap<Instructor>
{
public InstructorMap()
{
Id(x => x.Id);
Map(x=> x.Name);
References(x => x.Portrait)
.Nullable()
.Cascade.All();
References(x => x.PortraitThumb)
.Nullable()
.Cascade.All();
HasManyToMany(x => x.TeachingCourses)
.Cascade.All()
.Inverse()
.Table("CourseInstructor");
}
}
public class ImageDataMap : ClassMap<ImageData>
{
public ImageDataMap()
{
Id(x => x.Id);
Map(x => x.Data);
}
}
Then I try to get data using below code:
var course = session.CreateCriteria(typeof(Course))
.SetFetchMode("Instructors", FetchMode.Eager)
.SetFetchMode("Instructors.Portrait", FetchMode.Eager)
.SetFetchMode("Instructors.PortraitThumb", FetchMode.Eager)
.List<Course>();
But I get the following error: "Sequence contains more than one matching element"
Also, when I try this
var course = session.CreateCriteria(typeof(Course))
.SetFetchMode("Instructors", FetchMode.Eager)
.SetFetchMode("Instructors.Portrait", FetchMode.Eager)
.SetFetchMode("Instructors.PortraitThumb", FetchMode.Eager)
.SetResultTransformer(new DistinctRootEntityResultTransformer())
.List<Course>();
No error occurs but I get duplicate Instructor objects.
I did try below posts and some others as well. But it doesn't help.
NHibernate Eager loading multi-level child objects
Eager Loading Using Fluent NHibernate/Nhibernate & Automapping

Answer 1

FluentNhibernate uses a bag-mapping for many-to-many relations, if the mapped property is of type IList.
A bag mapping has a few major drawbacks Performance of Collections / hibernate. The one that currently bites you is that NH does not permit duplicate element values and, as they have no index column, no primary key can be defined.
Simply said NH does not know to which bag do they belong to when you join them all together.
Instead of a bag I would use a indexed variant a set, assuming that an Instructor does not has the same persistent Course assigned twice.
You can fix your query results by amending your domain classes, this tells FluentNhibernate to use a set instead of a bag by convention:
public class Course
{
public virtual int Id { get; private set; }
public virtual string Name { get; set; }
public virtual Iesi.Collections.Generic.ISet<Instructor> Instructors { get; set; }
}
public class Instructor
{
public virtual int Id { get; private set; }
public virtual string Name { get; set; }
public virtual ImageData Portrait { get; set; }
public virtual ImageData PortraitThumb { get; set; }
public virtual Iesi.Collections.Generic.ISet<Course> TeachingCourses { get; private set; }
}
In addition you can amend your mapping by using .AsSet(). FluentNHibernate: What is the effect of AsSet()?