NHibernate bi-directional association - nhibernate

Question

I am trying to model a parent/child association where a Parent class (Person) owns many instances of a child class (OwnedThing) - I want the OwnedThing instances to be saved automatically when the Person class is saved, and I want the association to be bi-directional.
public class Person
{
public class MAP_Person : ClassMap<Person>
{
public MAP_Person()
{
this.Table("People");
this.Id(x => x.ID).GeneratedBy.GuidComb().Access.BackingField();
this.Map(x => x.FirstName);
this.HasMany(x => x.OwnedThings).Cascade.AllDeleteOrphan().KeyColumn("OwnerID").Inverse();
}
}
public virtual Guid ID { get; private set; }
public virtual string FirstName { get; set; }
public virtual IList<OwnedThing> OwnedThings { get; set; }
public Person()
{
OwnedThings = new List<OwnedThing>();
}
}
public class OwnedThing
{
public class MAP_OwnedThing : ClassMap<OwnedThing>
{
public MAP_OwnedThing()
{
this.Table("OwnedThings");
this.Id(x => x.ID).GeneratedBy.GuidComb().Access.BackingField();
this.Map(x => x.Name);
this.References(x => x.Owner).Column("OwnerID").Access.BackingField();
}
}
public virtual Guid ID { get; private set; }
public virtual Person Owner { get; private set; }
public virtual string Name { get; set; }
}
If I set Person.OwnedThings to Inverse then the OwnedThing instances are not saved when I save the Person. If I do not add Inverse then the save is successful but person.OwnedThings[0].Owner is always null after I retrieve it from the DB.
UPDATE
When saving the data NHibernate will set the single association end in the database because it is set via the many-end of the association, so when I retrieve the OwnedThing from the DB it does have the link back to the Person set. My null reference was from Envers which doesn't seem to do the same thing.

Answer 1

Am I understanding you correctly that your problem only occur on "history" entities read by nhibernate envers?
If so, it might be caused by this bug
https://nhibernate.jira.com/browse/NHE-64
The workaround for now is to use Merge instead of (SaveOr)Update.

Answer 2

OwnedThings[0].Owner is most likely null because you are not setting it when you do the add. When using bidirectional relationships you have to do something like the below:
Person person = new Person();
OwnedThing pwnedThing = new OwnedThing();
pwnedThing.Owner = person;
person.OwnedThings.Add(pwnedThing);
If you do not explicity set the pwnedThing.Owner and you query that same object in the same ISession that you created it on it will be null. Typically I have add or remove methods that do this "extra" work for me. Take the below example:
public class Order : Entity
{
private IList<OrderLine> orderLines;
public virtual IEnumerable<OrderLine> OrderLines { get { return orderLines.Select(x => x); } }
public virtual void AddLine(OrderLine orderLine)
{
orderLine.Order = this;
this.orderLines.Add(orderLine);
}
public virtual void RemoveLine(OrderLine orderLine)
{
this.orderLines.Remove(orderLine);
}
}
public class OrderMap : ClassMap<Order>
{
public OrderMap()
{
DynamicUpdate();
Table("ORDER_HEADER");
Id(x => x.Id, "ORDER_ID");
HasMany(x => x.OrderLines)
.Access.CamelCaseField()
.KeyColumn("ORDER_ID")
.Inverse()
.Cascade.AllDeleteOrphan();
}
}