I have 3 tables that represent a many-many relationship.
User->Mapping>Item

Mapping is a simple table with 2 columns user_id and item_id and the generated class contains two instance variables that reference a User class and an Item class. My confusion is trying to determine how to query against the generated Mapping Class. Given a User, how can I get the current collection of Items via the Mapping? What I can't wrap my brain around is how to write a query to query the Mapping table. I guess I could refetch the User object (which has a collection of Mappings), but is that the right way?

Thanks,
Dennis

select i from Mapping as m join m.item as i where m.user.id = ?

Or, perhaps Mapping should not be an actual class. If it has no use besides connecting User and Item, just use the mapping table to connect those two objects. In the User.hbm:

<set name="items" table="mappings" lazy="true" >
<key column="user_id"/>
<many-to-many column="item_id" class="com.company.model.Item"/>
</set>

And the reverse in Item.hbm.