Using Hibernate query : colon gets treated as parameter / escaping colon

Question

return sessionFactory.getCurrentSession().
            createQuery("FROM Weather WHERE city_id = :id AND date " +
                    "BETWEEN now()::date AND now()::date + (:days - 1)").
                    setInteger("id", city_id).setString("days", days).list();

getting error:

org.hibernate.hql.ast.QuerySyntaxException: unexpected token: :

How can I use this syntax in HQL?

Basically the problem is that I want to use colon(:) in my query, but when hibernate sees colon, it thinks that it is a paramter(:parameterName is syntax for parameters in HQL), as you can see from my 2 uses(:id and :days).

But when I am using now()::date statement, it is specific postgreSQL syntax, hibernate ruins everything.

Answer 1

I just had this problem, had to use casts, so I tried some stuff to make it work. Turns out you escape : in hibernate with \

However, in java, to print \ to begin with, you have to escape it with \.
So, if you want to put a : in your SQL hibernate query, you have to write it like: \\:

And if you wanted to cast in PostgreSQL, such as in my case, you would have to, for example: field\\:\\:int if you wanted to cast some field as an integer.