Spring data REST links empty result for onetomany and manytomany relations - rest

Question

I have two classes as below
#Entity
#Table(name = "Employee", schema = "...", catalog = "...")
public class EmployeeEntity implements Serializable, UserDetails {
#Id()
#Column(name = "EmployeeID", nullable = false, insertable = true, updatable = true, length = 20)
#Basic
#Column(name = "UserName", nullable = true, insertable = true, updatable = true, length = 20)
private String username;
#OneToMany
#JoinColumn(name="UserName")
private Set<EmployeesGroupsEntity> employeeGroups;
//Getter and setters
}
and
#Entity
#Table(name = "EmployeesGroups", schema = "...", catalog = "...")
public class EmployeesGroupsEntity implements Serializable {
#Id
#Column(name = "UserName", nullable = false, insertable = true, updatable = true, length = 20)
private String username;
#Basic
#Column(name = "Group", nullable = false, insertable = true, updatable = true, length = 255)
private String groups;
}
Now, to access the objects, I have the spring data rest repositories as below
#RepositoryRestResource(collectionResourceRel = "Employee", path = "Employee")
public interface IEmployeeRepository extends PagingAndSortingRepository<EmployeeEntity, String> {
EmployeeEntity getByUsername(String userName);
EmployeeEntity getByEmailAddress(String emailAddress);
}
and
#RepositoryRestResource(collectionResourceRel = "EmployeesGroups", path = "EmployeesGroups")
public interface IEmployeesGroupsRepository extends PagingAndSortingRepository<EmployeesGroupsEntity,String> {
}
with the above setup, I tried to access the URL
http://localhost:8080/Employee/12345
and I successfully got the result as below
{
"employeeId" : "12345",
"username" : "firstx",
"_links" : {
"self" : {
"href" : "http://localhost:8080/Employee/12345"
},
"employeeGroups" : {
"href" : "http://localhost:8080/Employee/12345/employeeGroups"
}
}
}
As a next step, when I access the URL
http://localhost:8080/Employee/12345/employeeGroups
i get the output as
{ }
Subsequently, I also tried with the header "text/uri-list". When i do this I get a response code of 204.
Please help me in resolving the issue.
Thanks

Answer 1

After giving up.. Found the answer after stumbling upon another question.
I just had to annotate the relationship with RestResource(exported=true)
#Entity
#Table(name = "Employee", schema = "...", catalog = "...")
public class EmployeeEntity implements Serializable, UserDetails {
#Id()
#Column(name = "EmployeeID", nullable = false, insertable = true, updatable = true, length = 20)
#Basic
#Column(name = "UserName", nullable = true, insertable = true, updatable = true, length = 20)
private String username;
#OneToMany
#RestResource(exported = true)
#JoinColumn(name="UserName")
private Set<EmployeesGroupsEntity> employeeGroups;
//Getter and setters
}