Given this schema:

Table 'A':
int A_ID primary key;
varchar name;

Table 'B':
int B_ID primary key;
varchar name;

Table 'A_B':
int A_ID not null foreign key(A);
int B_ID not null foreign key(B);

Then A is tied to B with this annotation defined in A.java:



The reverse tie is done in B as well (although this shouldn't matter). How can I use the Criteria API to generate this query for A objects?



I've tried several stabs, the most recent being:

List<B> bees = session.createCriteria(B.class)
.add(Restrictions.in("name", [list of 'Moo', 'Bark', 'Meow'])
.list();
Criteria c = session.createCriteria(A.class)
.add(Restrictions.in("bees", bees));

To no avail.

Also, are there any in-depth books on the Criteria API?

I finally figured out how to do this, and thought I'd pass along my solution for anyone who finds this post in the future. First of all, I was using an older version of Hibernate (3.2) that did not support nesting DetachedCriteria (threw NullPointExceptions in getTypes() from the SQL builders). Version 3.5.4 works just fine with something like this:



Which will generate SQL that looks somewhat like this:



It would be nice to use B objects directly instead if converting them to IDs first, but I cannot see how that is possible because the only Projection that makes sense for this task is the id() one. If anyone has a way around that, it would be great.