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.

Answer 2

Can I see your User class? This is just using restrictions below. I don't see why Restrictions would be really any different than Examples (I think null fields get ignored by default in examples though).

getCurrentSession().createCriteria(User.class)
.setProjection( Projections.distinct( Projections.projectionList()
.add( Projections.property("name"), "name")
.add( Projections.property("city"), "city")))
.add( Restrictions.eq("city", "TEST")))
.setResultTransformer(Transformers.aliasToBean(User.class))
.list();

I've never used the alaistToBean, but I just read about it. You could also just loop over the results..

List<Object> rows = criteria.list();
for(Object r: rows){
  Object[] row = (Object[]) r;
  Type t = ((<Type>) row[0]);
}

If you have to you can manually populate User yourself that way.

Its sort of hard to look into the issue without some more information to diagnose the issue.