Hibernate EntityManager working with Collections

[Brian Smith]

I have an entity (InvalidAddress) with a many to one relationship with another entity (ServiceRequest). I am trying to add an InvalidAddress entity to the InvalidAddressCollection owned by ServiceRequest

InvalidAddress invalidAddress = new InvalidAddress();
 
//perform setters on invalidAddress
 
invalidAddress.setServiceRequest(serviceRequest);
serviceRequest.getInvalidAddressCollection().add(invalidAddress);
entityManager.persist(invalidAddress);

I am getting a NPE because serviceRequest.getInvalidAddressCollection() is returning null when there are no related InvalidAddress entities. I know this makes sense but it seems like a waste to have to do this before I add any related entity to any collection

if (serviceRequest.getInvalidAddressCollection() == null) {
   serviceRequest.setInvalidAddressCollection(new java.util.ArrayList();
}
serviceRequest.getInvalidAddressCollection().add(invalidAddress);

Is this very repetitive boiler-plate required when working with collections?

It would seem like the EntityManager should initialize the Collection and just return an empty list instead of a null list. Or is that up to me when I implement the getter on ServiceRequest?

Thanks for any advice.
[ July 23, 2007: Message edited by: Brian Smith ]