Hi folks,

I have a class that looks like this:

@Entity
@Inheritance(strategy=InheritanceType.SINGLE_TABLE)
abstract class Person {

@Id
private String id;

@CollectionOfElements(fetch=FetchType.EAGER)
private Set<String> aliases = new TreeSet<String>();

}

Now, when Hibernate pushes that out to the DB, I end up with a table "PERSON" and the 'child table' (containing the aliases for each PERSON) of PERSON_ALIASES. The PERSON_ALIASES table contains the columns PERSON_ID and ELEMENT.

My question is this: Without using a wrapper class (that is, a set of "Alias" objects where each object contains a String), how do I go about querying on an alias?

For example: I want to say, "Hey Mr. Hibernate, get me all the People who have the the Alias of 'spiderman'!"

It seems like I would do something like this:
"List spiderPeople = sess.createCriteria(Person.class)
.createCriteria("aliases")
.add( Restrictions.eq("ELEMENT", "spiderman") )
.list();

Unfortunately, that doesn't work, because it doesn't know what "ELEMENT" is. :(

I am not using any XML, so please don't use that in showing me how... You'll just confuse me. :D Also, I want to avoid using HQL, because once again, I'm afraid that will have me in over my head.

Oh, one last thing, I can't use the Example API (at least I don't think I can) because Person is an abstract class, so I can't always pass in a Person as an example. :/.

Thanks for helping me become a little less newb-ish,
Newawd

I fear that is not possible.
I believe that @CollectionOfElements was not designed for being queried with HQL or Criteria.
(Of course you could realize it with a native join SQL by using sess.createSQLQuery() but you mentioned that you don't intend to use it.)

session.createQuery("from Person p where 'spiderman' in elements(p.contents)").list();
Now maybe someone can tell me how to write this as a Criterion.

Actually @CollectionOfElements was created much after HQL or Criteria and they are pretty powerful:
http://docs.jboss.org/hibernate/core/3. ... ryhql.html

Thank you tseringshrestha.

With a little adaption



it works and it produces following query (with subquery)


Also I don't know how to translate if in Criteria