Spring Data jpa (hibernate) nullpointer Exception when adding List of Entities

Question

first my Code.

Specialization

@Entity
public class Specialization {

    @Id
    private String name;

    @OneToMany(cascade = CascadeType.ALL)
    @JoinColumn(name="att_id", referencedColumnName="ID")
    private List<Attribute> attributes;

    //Getters and Setters
}

Attribute

@Entity
public class Attribute {

    @Id
    @GeneratedValue(strategy= GenerationType.AUTO)
    private Long id;

    private String name;
    private double scaling;

    //Getters and Setters
}

My Problem is that i get a following Exception:

Caused by: java.lang.NullPointerException
    at org.hibernate.cfg.annotations.CollectionBinder.bindCollectionSecondPass(CollectionBinder.java:1460)
    at org.hibernate.cfg.annotations.CollectionBinder.bindOneToManySecondPass(CollectionBinder.java:864)
    at org.hibernate.cfg.annotations.CollectionBinder.bindStarToManySecondPass(CollectionBinder.java:779)
    at org.hibernate.cfg.annotations.CollectionBinder$1.secondPass(CollectionBinder.java:728)
    at org.hibernate.cfg.CollectionSecondPass.doSecondPass(CollectionSecondPass.java:70)
    at org.hibernate.cfg.Configuration.originalSecondPassCompile(Configuration.java:1697)
    at org.hibernate.cfg.Configuration.secondPassCompile(Configuration.java:1426)
    at org.hibernate.cfg.Configuration.buildSessionFactory(Configuration.java:1846)
    at org.hibernate.jpa.boot.internal.EntityManagerFactoryBuilderImpl$4.perform(EntityManagerFactoryBuilderImpl.java:852)
    at org.hibernate.jpa.boot.internal.EntityManagerFactoryBuilderImpl$4.perform(EntityManagerFactoryBuilderImpl.java:845)
    at org.hibernate.boot.registry.classloading.internal.ClassLoaderServiceImpl.withTccl(ClassLoaderServiceImpl.java:398)
    at org.hibernate.jpa.boot.internal.EntityManagerFactoryBuilderImpl.build(EntityManagerFactoryBuilderImpl.java:844)
    at org.springframework.orm.jpa.vendor.SpringHibernateJpaPersistenceProvider.createContainerEntityManagerFactory(SpringHibernateJpaPersistenceProvider.java:60)
    at org.springframework.orm.jpa.LocalContainerEntityManagerFactoryBean.createNativeEntityManagerFactory(LocalContainerEntityManagerFactoryBean.java:343)
    at org.springframework.orm.jpa.AbstractEntityManagerFactoryBean.afterPropertiesSet(AbstractEntityManagerFactoryBean.java:318)
    at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.invokeInitMethods(AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.java:1625)
    at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.initializeBean(AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.java:1562)
    ... 98 more

This Exception only Occurs after adding the attribute attributes to the Class Specialization . So without this attribute everything works fine, but if I add this attribute, the exception comes up. I don't get what I'm doing wrong. Maybe somebody could find my mistake?

Additional information:

Hibernate Core Version: 4.3.7. Final.

There is another Entity GameClass with a oneToMany relationship to Specialization => Every GameClass has multiple Specialization s and every Specialization has multiple Attribute s.

Don't know if this matters but this is a Spring-Boot application

Answer 1

I've got my mistake. Sleeping a bit helped. I've mixed up the relations.

If one Specialization has many Attribute s, the annotations should look like this:

@OneToMany(cascade = CascadeType.ALL)
@JoinColumn(name="specc_id", referencedColumnName = "name")
private List<Attribute> attributes;

and NOT like this:

@OneToMany(cascade = CascadeType.ALL)
@JoinColumn(name="att_id", referencedColumnName="ID")
private List<Attribute> attributes;