I have a many to many collection like so:

<bag name="organizations" table="claim_user_orgs" lazy="true" >
<key column="claim_user_id" />
<many-to-many class="CID.IPath.NewBusinessLayer.organization, CID.IPath.NewBusinessLayer" column="organization_id" />
</bag>

where claim_user_orgs is an association table, and just has 2 columns: claim_user_id and organization_id.

I want the collection property "organizations" of the claim_user object to return the list of organizations sorted by organization_name, so I did this:

<bag name="organizations" table="claim_user_orgs" lazy="true" order-by="client_name asc" >
<key column="claim_user_id" />
<many-to-many class="CID.IPath.NewBusinessLayer.organization, CID.IPath.NewBusinessLayer" column="organization_id" />
</bag>

However, this gives me an error, because there is no column called client_name in the association table.

How can I sort a many-to-many collection? And where would I put the order-by clause?

To sort the collection on a retrieved object you have a couple of options.

One option is to have the collection retrieved come back from the database in a particular order : order-by in the mapping or a filter

Another option is to have some programmatic sorting capability through a comparator.

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You should look at Hibernate 3.0.5 documentation section 7.3.2 if you want a bidirectional many-to-many or 7.2.4 otherwise.

First, I notice you mention a class plus a package in the <many-to-many class="...,...".... I doubt this is legal.

Next, why are you using "client_name" in the order by if you want to order by the organization name?


Joe