Many-to-many relations

What are many-to-many relations

Many-to-many is a relation where A contains multiple instances of B, and B contain multiple instances of A. Let's take for example Question and Category entities. A question can have multiple categories, and each category can have multiple questions.

import {Entity, PrimaryGeneratedColumn, Column} from "typeorm";

@Entity()
export class Category {

    @PrimaryGeneratedColumn()
    id: number;

    @Column()
    name: string;

}

import {Entity, PrimaryGeneratedColumn, Column, ManyToMany, JoinTable} from "typeorm";
import {Category} from "./Category";

@Entity()
export class Question {

    @PrimaryGeneratedColumn()
    id: number;

    @Column()
    title: string;

    @Column()
    text: string;

    @ManyToMany(() => Category)
    @JoinTable()
    categories: Category[];

}

@JoinTable() is required for @ManyToMany relations. You must put @JoinTable on one (owning) side of relation.

This example will produce following tables:

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

+-------------+--------------+----------------------------+
|                        question                         |
+-------------+--------------+----------------------------+
| id          | int(11)      | PRIMARY KEY AUTO_INCREMENT |
| title       | varchar(255) |                            |
| text        | varchar(255) |                            |
+-------------+--------------+----------------------------+

+-------------+--------------+----------------------------+
|              question_categories_category               |
+-------------+--------------+----------------------------+
| questionId  | int(11)      | PRIMARY KEY FOREIGN KEY    |
| categoryId  | int(11)      | PRIMARY KEY FOREIGN KEY    |
+-------------+--------------+----------------------------+

Saving many-to-many relations

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

const category1 = new Category();
category1.name = "animals";
await connection.manager.save(category1);

const category2 = new Category();
category2.name = "zoo";
await connection.manager.save(category2);

const question = new Question();
question.title = "dogs";
question.text = "who let the dogs out?";
question.categories = [category1, category2];
await connection.manager.save(question);

Deleting many-to-many relations

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

To delete a many-to-many relationship between two records, remove it from the corresponding field and save the record.

const question = getRepository(Question);
question.categories = question.categories.filter(category => {
    return category.id !== categoryToRemove.id
})
await connection.manager.save(question)

This will only remove the record in the join table. The question and categoryToRemove records will still exist.

Soft Deleting a relationship with cascade

This example shows how the cascading soft delete behaves:

const category1 = new Category();
category1.name = "animals";

const category2 = new Category();
category2.name = "zoo";

const question = new Question();
question.categories = [category1, category2];
const newQuestion =  await connection.manager.save(question);

await connection.manager.softRemove(newQuestion);

In this example we did not call save or softRemove for category1 and category2, but they will be automatically saved and soft-deleted when the cascade of relation options is set to true like this:

import {Entity, PrimaryGeneratedColumn, Column, ManyToMany, JoinTable} from "typeorm";
import {Category} from "./Category";

@Entity()
export class Question {

    @PrimaryGeneratedColumn()
    id: number;

    @ManyToMany(() => Category, category => category.questions, {
        cascade: true
    })
    @JoinTable()
    categories: Category[];

}

Loading many-to-many relations

To load questions with categories inside you must specify the relation in FindOptions:

const questionRepository = connection.getRepository(Question);
const questions = await questionRepository.find({ relations: ["categories"] });

Or using QueryBuilder you can join them:

const questions = await connection
    .getRepository(Question)
    .createQueryBuilder("question")
    .leftJoinAndSelect("question.categories", "category")
    .getMany();

When using FindOptions you don't need to specify eager relations - they are always automatically loaded.

bi-directional relations

Relations can be uni-directional and bi-directional. Uni-directional relations are relations with a relation decorator only on one side. Bi-directional relations are relations with decorators on both sides of a relation.

We just created a uni-directional relation. Let's make it bi-directional:

import {Entity, PrimaryGeneratedColumn, Column, ManyToMany} from "typeorm";
import {Question} from "./Question";

@Entity()
export class Category {

    @PrimaryGeneratedColumn()
    id: number;

    @Column()
    name: string;

    @ManyToMany(() => Question, question => question.categories)
    questions: Question[];

}

import {Entity, PrimaryGeneratedColumn, Column, ManyToMany, JoinTable} from "typeorm";
import {Category} from "./Category";

@Entity()
export class Question {

    @PrimaryGeneratedColumn()
    id: number;

    @Column()
    title: string;

    @Column()
    text: string;

    @ManyToMany(() => Category, category => category.questions)
    @JoinTable()
    categories: Category[];

}

We just made our relation bi-directional. Note that the inverse relation does not have a @JoinTable. @JoinTable must be only on one side of the relation.

Bi-directional relations allow you to join relations from both sides using QueryBuilder:

const categoriesWithQuestions = await connection
    .getRepository(Category)
    .createQueryBuilder("category")
    .leftJoinAndSelect("category.questions", "question")
    .getMany();

many-to-many relations with custom properties

In case you need to have additional properties in your many-to-many relationship, you have to create a new entity yourself. For example, if you would like entities Post and Category to have a many-to-many relationship with an additional order column, then you need to create an entity PostToCategory with two ManyToOne relations pointing in both directions and with custom columns in it:

import { Entity, Column, ManyToOne, PrimaryGeneratedColumn } from "typeorm";
import { Post } from "./post";
import { Category } from "./category";

@Entity()
export class PostToCategory {
    @PrimaryGeneratedColumn()
    public postToCategoryId!: number;

    @Column()
    public postId!: number;

    @Column()
    public categoryId!: number;

    @Column()
    public order!: number;

    @ManyToOne(() => Post, post => post.postToCategories)
    public post!: Post;

    @ManyToOne(() => Category, category => category.postToCategories)
    public category!: Category;
}

Additionally you will have to add a relationship like the following to Post and Category:

// category.ts
...
@OneToMany(() => PostToCategory, postToCategory => postToCategory.category)
public postToCategories!: PostToCategory[];

// post.ts
...
@OneToMany(() => PostToCategory, postToCategory => postToCategory.post)
public postToCategories!: PostToCategory[];