Many-to-one / one-to-many relations

Many-to-one / one-to-many is a relation where A contains multiple instances of B, but B contains only one instance of A. Let’s take for example User and Photo entities. User can have multiple photos, but each photo is owned by only one single user.

import {Entity, PrimaryGeneratedColumn, Column, ManyToOne} from "typeorm";
import {User} from "./User";

@Entity()
export class Photo {
    
    @PrimaryGeneratedColumn()
    id: number;
    
    @Column()
    url: string;
    
    @ManyToOne(type => User, user => user.photos)
    user: User;
    
}

import {Entity, PrimaryGeneratedColumn, Column, OneToMany} from "typeorm";
import {Photo} from "./Photo";

@Entity()
export class User {
    
    @PrimaryGeneratedColumn()
    id: number;
    
    @Column()
    name: string;
    
    @OneToMany(type => Photo, photo => photo.user)
    photos: Photo[];
    
}

Here we added @OneToMany to the photos property and specified the target relation type to be Photo. You can omit @JoinColumn in a @ManyToOne / @OneToMany relation. @OneToMany cannot exist without @ManyToOne. If you want to use @OneToMany, @ManyToOne is required. However, the inverse is not required: If you only care about the @ManyToOne relationship, you can define it without having @OneToMany on the related entity. Where you set @ManyToOne - its related entity will have “relation id” and foreign key.

This example will produce following tables:

+-------------+--------------+----------------------------+
|                         photo                           |
+-------------+--------------+----------------------------+
| id          | int(11)      | PRIMARY KEY AUTO_INCREMENT |
| url         | varchar(255) |                            |
| userId      | int(11)      | FOREIGN KEY                |
+-------------+--------------+----------------------------+

+-------------+--------------+----------------------------+
|                          user                           |
+-------------+--------------+----------------------------+
| id          | int(11)      | PRIMARY KEY AUTO_INCREMENT |
| name        | varchar(255) |                            |
+-------------+--------------+----------------------------+

Example how to save such relation:

const photo1 = new Photo();
photo1.url = "me.jpg";
await connection.manager.save(photo1);

const photo2 = new Photo();
photo2.url = "me-and-bears.jpg";
await connection.manager.save(photo2);

const user = new User();
user.name = "John";
user.photos = [photo1, photo2];
await connection.manager.save(user);

or alternative you can do:

const user = new User();
user.name = "Leo";
await connection.manager.save(user);

const photo1 = new Photo();
photo1.url = "me.jpg";
photo1.user = user;
await connection.manager.save(photo1);

const photo2 = new Photo();
photo2.url = "me-and-bears.jpg";
photo2.user = user;
await connection.manager.save(photo2);

With cascades enabled you can save this relation with only one save call.

To load a user with photos inside you must specify the relation in FindOptions:

const userRepository = connection.getRepository(User);
const users = await userRepository.find({ relations: ["photos"] });

// or from inverse side

const photoRepository = connection.getRepository(Photo);
const photos = await photoRepository.find({ relations: ["user"] });

Or using QueryBuilder you can join them:

const users = await connection
    .getRepository(User)
    .createQueryBuilder("user")
    .leftJoinAndSelect("user.photos", "photo")
    .getMany();

// or from inverse side

const photos = await connection
    .getRepository(Photo)
    .createQueryBuilder("photo")
    .leftJoinAndSelect("photo.user", "user")
    .getMany();

With eager loading enabled on a relation you don’t have to specify relation or join it - it will ALWAYS be loaded automatically.