I looked in the documentation, but could not find an answer to this question:

I want to be able to allow a user to indicate which fields to be searched and then to search all of them and return any record where one of the fields contains the search term. So I thought of using Criteria, though I am little lost how I would use to do an OR between three values.

For example imagine my conditions are as follow:

Expression.like("title",term);
Expression.like("description",term);
Expression.like("email",term);

I that I need to use Criterion, but that's as much as I understand at the moment.

Any help would be appreciated. Examples even more.

Do you want to use only Criteria for your requirement. Your search conditions can be done using the HQL:

from obj where
obj.title=:title or obj.description=:description or obj.email=:email

How about Expression.or(Criterion lhs, Criterion rhs) ?

I'm sorry I can't provide examples, but it seems pretty straightforward.

Erik

Criteria OR is done via Restrictions.or(left,right) and/or Restrictions.disjunction()

So far I have some code that does not really do what I want it to do:

Criteria criteria = session.createCriteria(Entry.class)
.add(
Expression.or(
Expression.or(Expression.like("title","%"+term+"%"),Expression.like("description","%"+term+"%"))
,Expression.like("comment","%"+term+"%")));

What I would like to do is something like:

Criteria criteria = session.createCriteria(Entry.class);
if ( searchTitle ) { criteria.addOr(Expression.like("title","%"+term+"%")) }
if ( searchDescription ) { criteria.addOr(Expression.like("description","%"+term+"%")) }
if ( searchComment ) { criteria.addOr(Expression.like("comment","%"+term+"%")) }

I suppose I could create the HQL myself, but I was hoping for something that looked a bit cleaner, where I wouldn't have to check whether a previous condition had already been added.

Is this possible? I am looking into this myself, but if someone could save me their time with their knowledge then it would be appreciated.

I found my answer in the form of the Disjunction class. Below is an example for anyone else needing to the same as me:

Criteria criteria = session.createCriteria(Entry.class);
Disjunction any = Expression.disjunction();
any.add(Expression.like("title","%"+term+"%"));
any.add(Expression.like("description","%"+term+"%"));
any.add(Expression.like("comment","%"+term+"%"));
List l = criteria.list();

You can also clean it up further with MatchMode.ANYWHERE, i.e.

any.add(Expression.like("title", term, MatchMode.ANYWHERE));

Chris.

Using Disjunction provides a cleaner solution.
Is there some similar ways to count the number of rows without actually getting the results (using Criteria).
Because if we use HQL, and the number of search conditions are more, checking for a previous condition would result in complex code.