Hibernate Query By Example and Projections

Question

To make it short: hibernate doesn't support projections and query by example? I found this post:

The code is this:

User usr = new User();
usr.setCity = 'TEST';
getCurrentSession().createCriteria(User.class)
.setProjection( Projections.distinct( Projections.projectionList()
.add( Projections.property("name"), "name")
.add( Projections.property("city"), "city")))
.add( Example.create(usr))

Like the other poster said, The generated sql keeps having a where class refering to just y0_= ? instead of this_.city.

I already tried several approaches, and searched the issue tracker but found nothing about this.

I even tried to use Projection alias and Transformers, but it does not work:

User usr = new User();
usr.setCity = 'TEST';
getCurrentSession().createCriteria(User.class)
.setProjection( Projections.distinct( Projections.projectionList()
.add( Projections.property("name"), "name")
.add( Projections.property("city"), "city")))
.add( Example.create(usr)).setResultTransformer(Transformers.aliasToBean(User.class));

Has anyone used projections and query by example ?

Answer 1

The problem seems to happen when you have an alias the same name as the objects property. Hibernate seems to pick up the alias and use it in the sql. I found this documented here and here, and I believe it to be a bug in Hibernate, although I am not sure that the Hibernate team agrees.

Either way, I have found a simple work around that works in my case. Your mileage may vary. The details are below, I tried to simplify the code for this sample so I apologize for any errors or typo's:

Criteria criteria = session.createCriteria(MyClass.class)
    .setProjection(Projections.projectionList()
        .add(Projections.property("sectionHeader"), "sectionHeader")
        .add(Projections.property("subSectionHeader"), "subSectionHeader")
        .add(Projections.property("sectionNumber"), "sectionNumber"))
    .add(Restrictions.ilike("sectionHeader", sectionHeaderVar)) // <- Problem!
    .setResultTransformer(Transformers.aliasToBean(MyDTO.class));

Would produce this sql:

select
    this_.SECTION_HEADER as y1_,
    this_.SUB_SECTION_HEADER as y2_,
    this_.SECTION_NUMBER as y3_,
from
    MY_TABLE this_ 
where
    ( lower(y1_) like ? ) 

Which was causing an error: java.sql.SQLException: ORA-00904: "Y1_": invalid identifier

But, when I changed my restriction to use "this", like so:

Criteria criteria = session.createCriteria(MyClass.class)
    .setProjection(Projections.projectionList()
        .add(Projections.property("sectionHeader"), "sectionHeader")
        .add(Projections.property("subSectionHeader"), "subSectionHeader")
        .add(Projections.property("sectionNumber"), "sectionNumber"))
    .add(Restrictions.ilike("this.sectionHeader", sectionHeaderVar)) // <- Problem Solved!
    .setResultTransformer(Transformers.aliasToBean(MyDTO.class));

It produced the following sql and my problem was solved.

select
    this_.SECTION_HEADER as y1_,
    this_.SUB_SECTION_HEADER as y2_,
    this_.SECTION_NUMBER as y3_,
from
    MY_TABLE this_ 
where
    ( lower(this_.SECTION_HEADER) like ? ) 

Thats, it! A pretty simple fix to a painful problem. I don't know how this fix would translate to the query by example problem, but it may get you closer.