In this post, we will discuss the usage of JPA CascadeType.ALL with an example.

Cascading is the way to achieve this. When we perform some action on the target entity, the same action will be applied to the associated entity.

JPA Cascade Types:

All JPA-specific cascade operations are represented by the javax.persistence.CascadeType enum containing entries:

• ALL - cascades all entity state transitions
• PERSIST - cascades the entity persist operation.
• MERGE - cascades the entity merge operation.
• REMOVE - cascades the entity to remove operation.
• REFRESH - cascades the entity refresh operation.
• DETACH - cascades the entity detach operation.

Hibernate Cascade Types:

Hibernate supports three additional Cascade Types along with those specified by JPA. These Hibernate-specific Cascade Types are available in org.hibernate.annotations.CascadeType:

• SAVE_UPDATE - cascades the entity saveOrUpdate operation.
• REPLICATE - cascades the entity replicate operation.
• LOCK - cascades the entity lock operation.

JPA / Hibernate Cascade Types - CascadeType.ALL

Cascade.ALL propagates all operations — including Hibernate-specific ones — from a parent to a child entity.

Consider we have Person and Address JPA entities:

Person.java

@Entity
public class Person {
    @Id
    @GeneratedValue(strategy = GenerationType.AUTO)
    private int id;
    private String name;
    @OneToMany(mappedBy = "person", cascade = CascadeType.ALL)
    private List<Address> addresses;
    // getters and setters
}

Address.java

@Entity
public class Address {
    @Id
    @GeneratedValue(strategy = GenerationType.AUTO)
    private int id;
    private String street;
    private int houseNumber;
    private String city;
    private int zipCode;
    @ManyToOne(fetch = FetchType.LAZY)
    private Person person;
   
    // getter and setter methods
}

Using CascadeType.ALL

Note that in OneToMany associations, we've mentioned cascade type in the annotation:

@OneToMany(mappedBy = "person", cascade = CascadeType.ALL)
private List<Address> addresses;

CascadeType.ALL cascades all entity state transitions.