How to return an entity with chosen columns using Criteria

Question

This is exactly what projections are for. Here is an example:

  Criteria cr = session.createCriteria(User.class)
    .setProjection(Projections.projectionList()
      .add(Projections.property("id"), "id")
      .add(Projections.property("Name"), "Name"))
    .setResultTransformer(Transformers.aliasToBean(User.class));

  List<User> list = cr.list();

In fact, if you look at the documentation for "lazy property fetching" they specifically say:

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"A different (better?) way to avoid unnecessary column reads, at least for read-only transactions is to use the projection features of HQL or Criteria queries. This avoids the need for buildtime bytecode processing and is certainly a preferred solution."

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By the way, there is a related question that you may also be interested in: Hibernate Query By Example and Projections

I'm really late answering this, but, you can add a custom result transformer to the Query object like below.

Query query = session
        .getNamedQuery(
                "someNamedQueryWhichISHQL")
        .setString("cod", "10")
        .setResultTransformer(new ResultTransformer() {

            public Object transformTuple(Object[] row, String[] arg1) {
                User usr = new User(row[0],row[1]);
                return usr
            }

            public List transformList(List arg0) {

                return arg0;
            }
        });
return query.list();

Typically you don't want to partially load the properties of an object. But if you must, see this:

http://docs.jboss.org/hibernate/stable/core/manual/en-US/html/performance.html#performance-fetching-lazyproperties

For plain reporting-like behaviour you could use entity queries:

sess.createSQLQuery("SELECT ID, NAME, BIRTHDATE FROM CATS").addEntity(Cat.class);

http://docs.jboss.org/hibernate/stable/core/manual/en-US/html/querysql.html#d0e17633