A collection with cascade="all-delete-orphan" was no longer referenced by the owning entity instance how to deal with it?

Question

What possibly could be a problem with this?

Caused by: org.hibernate.HibernateException: A collection with cascade="all-delete-orphan" was no longer referenced by the owning entity instance: com.en.test.father.Father.listSons
    at org.hibernate.engine.internal.Collections.processDereferencedCollection(Collections.java:99)
    at org.hibernate.engine.internal.Collections.processUnreachableCollection(Collections.java:50)
    at org.hibernate.event.internal.AbstractFlushingEventListener.flushCollections(AbstractFlushingEventListener.java:243)
    at org.hibernate.event.internal.AbstractFlushingEventListener.flushEverythingToExecutions(AbstractFlushingEventListener.java:86)
    at org.hibernate.event.internal.DefaultAutoFlushEventListener.onAutoFlush(DefaultAutoFlushEventListener.java:44)
    at org.hibernate.internal.SessionImpl.autoFlushIfRequired(SessionImpl.java:1251)
    at org.hibernate.internal.SessionImpl.listCustomQuery(SessionImpl.java:1962)
    at org.hibernate.internal.AbstractSessionImpl.list(AbstractSessionImpl.java:322)
    at org.hibernate.internal.SQLQueryImpl.list(SQLQueryImpl.java:125)
    at org.hibernate.jpa.internal.QueryImpl.list(QueryImpl.java:606)
    at org.hibernate.jpa.internal.QueryImpl.getResultList(QueryImpl.java:483)

My getter and setter method

@OneToMany(fetch = FetchType.LAZY, cascade = CascadeType.ALL)
    @org.hibernate.annotations.Cascade(org.hibernate.annotations.CascadeType.DELETE_ORPHAN)
    @JoinColumn(name = "FATHERID", nullable = false)
    @OrderBy("id ASC")
    public List<Sons> getListSons() {
        return listSons;
    }

    public void setListSons(List<Sons> listSons) {
            this.listSons.clear();
            this.listSons.addAll(listSons);
    }

I supposed that list should be not initialize but clear and then added element, but even this i got this errors

Answer 1

You have not show your domain model but probably old list of sons still reference Father entity. Set father field to null for each Son object. It would look something like this:

    public void setListSons(List<Sons> listSons) {
            this.listSons.stream().forEach(oldSon -> oldSon.setFather(null));
            this.listSons.clear();
            this.listSons.addAll(listSons);
    }