Develop Reference

HQL order by type()

For example, I have a base entity called 'MyEntityParent' and two sub types 'ZChild' and 'AChild'.
When using the following HQL, this will sort the result list by the type's internal integer value (same as the special class property):
select e from MyEntityParent e
order by type(e)
However, I need to sort the result list by their entity type's name. I.e., first, instances of type 'AChild', then, instances of type 'ZChild'.

Try
select e from MyEntityParent e order by e.class
From the Hibernate 3.6 documentation:
The special property class accesses the discriminator value of an instance in the case of polymorphic persistence. A Java class name embedded in the where clause will be translated to its discriminator value.
http://docs.jboss.org/hibernate/core/3.6/reference/en-US/html/queryhql.html#queryhql-where
But this is deprecated in Hibernate 4.1
Also this is not exactly your wish as it returns the discriminator value, not the exact type name if i read the docs correctly.

There is no straightforward solution, because HQL is translated to SQL and database is not aware of how the value maps to the name of the class. There is way to make it, but it is not nice:
Query gets complex, because we have to define order in query.
Select list contains additional value that defines order, so we cannot return list of entities.
When model changes, query should be modified
Query is:
SELECT e,
CASE TYPE(e) WHEN AChild THEN 1
WHEN ZChild THEN 2
ELSE 3
END AS orderValue
FROM MyEntityParent e ORDER BY orderValue
And as said, result is no more list of entities, it is list of object arrays, so accessing entity is bit more hard. Entity itself is first item in array (index 0) and ordedValue in second:
List<Object[]> result = em.createQuery("JPQL given above").getResultList();
for (Object[] resultRow : result) {
MyEntityParent myEntityParent = (MyEntityParent) resultRow[0];
}
Solution is valid JPQL, so it is not Hibernate specific, but works also with other JPA providers.

Using DISTINCT keyword in JPA on individual columns

I am reading some values from a database that is horribly un-normalized (which I can't control). The call retrieves announcements for university departments, and if a user is in multiple departments (which is possible), then the same results are returned multiple times for these users. However, some departments might have different announcements, while some have the same.
Is there a way for me to use the DISTINCT keyword in JPA on individual columns? This is what I currently have for the query:
String jpql = "SELECT DISTINCT annoucement FROM Announcment announcement "
+ "WHERE (announcement.date <= :now AND announcement.endDate >= :now) "
+ "AND announcement.approved = true AND announcement.departmentId IN (:departmentIDs)";
TypedQuery<Announcement> query = entityManager.createQuery(jpql,
Announcement.class);
query.setParameter("now", new Date());
query.setParameter("departmentIDs", departmentIDs);
The departmentID value might be different, but the announcement, dates, etc. are all identical. This query returns announcements that have duplicate values.

two ways I come up with your problem:
"select distinct annoucement.x, annoucement.y, annoucement.z
...(without depId) from..."
then construct an announcement. but you
lost the persistent object and its references. you have to load them
again by your Dao objects if you need.
override equals() [hashCode() too] in your Annoucement class, of
course, in equals(), depId should be out of the comparison. getting
the list as you did, then convert the list to Set. you got
"Distinct" objects
hope it helps

In my opinion a better approach is to return a more specific object holding only the columns you're interested in. See also following answer:
JPQL Constructor Expression - org.hibernate.hql.ast.QuerySyntaxException:Table is not mapped
According to your example you could create a new Object with only the columns you are interested in:
SELECT DISTINCT new com.mypackage.MyInterestingAnnouncement(annoucement.x, annoucement.y, annoucement.z) FROM Announcment annoucement

PlayFramework get field from model select

Since the play documentation on models is terrible I'll ask here. I have the basic code;
public static void Controller() {
List<Item> item = Item.find("SELECT itemname,id FROM Item WHERE itembool = true ORDER BY itemcreated ASC LIMIT 0,1").fetch();
if ( item == null ) {
notFound();
}
}
What I'm trying to do is get the value for 'itemname' returned for the first value returned from an SQL query (The real query is much more complicated and other things so it can't be replaced with methods). I can get the entire first object with item.get(0) but I can't figure out how to get the value of 'itemname' as a string and it doesn't seem to be documented anywhere.
Edit
Probably should have mentioned in the original question, I need to retrieve by field name, not index. I.E. I can't do items.get(0)[0]; I need to do items.get(0)['itemname'];

The documentation explains this if you read it, in here. Hibernate doesn't use SQL, but JPQL, which has a different syntax as it works with objects, not individual fields.
What you want to do can be achieved in two ways (both in the documentation):
List<Item> item = Item.find("SELECT i FROM Item i WHERE i.itembool = true ORDER BY i.itemcreated ASC").fetch(1);
List<Item> item = Item.find("itembool = true ORDER BY itemcreated ASC").fetch(1);
EDIT:
On the retrieval part, you will get a list of Item, so you can just access the field directly on the object:
item.get(0).getItemName();

Since Play uses Hibernate under the hood, you need to take a look at Hibernate's documentation.
In particular, SELECT itemname,id ... yields Object[] rather than Item, so that you can get itemname as follows:
List<Object[]> items = ...;
String itemname = items.get(0)[0];

well if you have to do a select itemname,id ..., you would not be able to do a items.get(0)["itemname"] because as axtavt and Pere have mentioned, you would get a Object[] back. You can instead create another (perhaps immutable) entity class that can be used in this query. Please refer to hibernate documentation for details. You can then model the entity based on your query requirements and use it to fetch information, thus letting hibernate handle all the magic number game for you. That ways, you would have a bean with filled up values that you can use to map back to your model class if you like.
HTH!

Flatten a collection as part of an HQL query?

I have a requirement to use a reporting-friendly query from HQL. That is, each column is represented by a standard Java type (Long, Integer, String, List) rather than a mapped class. The values will be used by a third party library, so I have very limited control over post-processing.
My example object tree looks like this:
a.x
a.y (a collection of z)
a.y.z[0].v
a.y.z[1].v
a.y.z[2].v
I would like query to retrieve two columns. The first column is the plain "a.x" field, and the second is a String of a comma separated list of all of the a.y.z.v values. If this is not possible, then having the second column return as a Java list of the a.y.z.v values would be satisfactory.
In short, I would like to flatten the a.y.z.v collection to a csv String or to a List object from inside the query.
I have already attempted the following:
Using the "new" keyword in a list subselect. ie, "select a.x, (select new list(a.y.z.v)) from a". If necessary I could have transformed the contents of the list into a csv, but this caused a syntax error.
Using the "new" keyword with a custom object in a subselect. ie, "select a.x, (select new custom.package.ListToCsvObject(a.y.z)) from a". This caused the same error as the first attempt
Using the "elements()" keyword in the select. Unfortunately, this keyword only seems to work inside "in", "exists" clauses (etc), not as the actual returned value.
The only solution we've been able to find was to create a stored procedure in the database and use that, but such a solution is painfully slow through HQL (it turns a sub-second query into a 30 second query) and therefore is not something we want to continue to do.
I am able to make some limited changes to the Hibernate mapping (so I can add #formula, etc) but I would prefer not to have to make major changes to the database schema to support it. (So no, I don't want to create a denormalized "csv_value" column in the database!)
Could anyone suggest some code or, failing that, an alternative approach to solving this problem?

Try something like this should work. Flattening of list to comma separated string is done in the constructor of your VO class. You can also take a look at resultTransformer, you can create a custom resultTransformer and attach it to the query.
class ResultVO {
String x;
String y;
public ResultVO(String x,List<Z> y) {
this.x = x;
this.y = createCSV(y);
}
}
then in HQL
select new ResultVO(a.x,a.y) from a
A warning - this is not a good way to use JPA. If most of your use cases are like this you should seriously reconsider using some other persistence approach (ibastis, spring jdbc template + sql etc).

Inject attribute into JPQL SELECT clause

Let's depict the following use case: I have a JPQL Query which on the fly creates data objects using the new keyword. In the SELECT clause I would like to inject an attribute which is not known to the database but to the layer which queries it.
This could look like
EntityManager em; // Got it from somewhere
boolean editable = false; // Value might change, e.g. depending on current date
Query q = em.createQuery("SELECT new foo.bar.MyDTO(o, :editable) FROM MyObject o")
.setParameter("editable", editable);
List<MyDTO> results = (List<MyDTO>) q.getResultList();
Any ideas how this kind of attribute or parameter injection into the SELECT clause might work in JPQL? Both JPA and JPA 2.0 solutions are applicable.
Edit: Performance does not play a key role, but clarity and cleanness of code.

Have you measured a performance problem when simply iterating over the list of results and call a setter on each of the elements. I would guess that compared to
the time it takes to execute the query over the database (inter-process call, network communication)
the time it takes to transform each row into a MyObject instance using reflection
the time it takes to transform each MyObject instance into a MyDTO using reflection
your loop will be very fast.
If you're so concerned about performance, you should construct your MyDTO instances manually from the returned MyObject instances instead of relying on Hibernate and reflection to do it.
Keep is simple, safe, readable and maintainable first. Then, if you have a performance problem, measure to detect where it comes from. Then and only then, optimize.

It will not work without possible vendor extensions, because according specification:
4.6.4 Input Parameters
...
Input parameters can only be used in the
WHERE clause or HAVING clause of a query.