Hi! I'd like to map a very weird association. I want to access a list of entities through a string key of a dictionary. Does anyone have a good suggestion of mapping for that?

I think probably I'll have to use an intermediate entity to accommodate that, but I also believe that doing it in such way will generate a ugly underling database.

Has some one come across that before?

Thanks,
Luis

Have You looked at <map> mapping? AFAIK it is used to map dictionaries.

Gert

Yes, I have. It's quite easy to use the <map> to map a string into an entity,



but what I need is

IDictionary --> IList --> Entity

and not

IDictionary --> Entity

I thought about a <composite-element> or a <index-many-to-many> associated with <map>, but couldn't make it in the way I want...
Thinking about VB.NET, I'd like to access the property in a way like this:



That is: EntitiA.Parameters returns an IDictionary and EntityA.Parameters("KEY_NAME) returns a IList and finally EntityA.Parameters("KEY_NAME)(0) returns the entity EntityB. Of course, there may exist lot's of casts (CType's) in that expression, but I can cope with that.

I was thinking... Is there a topic in weird associations in this forum? :-)

Ok, now I got it. Maybe the simplest solution would be to build that dictionary using .Net code, and not to map it with NHibernate? And let the primary (mapped) association do be simple <bag> or <set>?

Gert

At least now I'm reasonably sure that there isn't a simple mapping for that. I'll try to sort it with some extra lines of code then.

Thanks, Gert!

Luis