In hibernate can we have criteria inside a criteria

Question

Suppose I am have created a criteria on a class. Now inside that I want to get data from a different table which I will be using in the current criteria. For that again I have to create criteria on the new table. So is it possible create a new criteria inside a criteria?

Answer 1

Yes  It is possible  , see the description below from the hibernate documentation

https://docs.jboss.org/hibernate/orm/3.3/reference/en/html/querycriteria.html

15.4. Associations

By navigating associations using createCriteria() you can specify constraints upon related entities:

List cats = sess.createCriteria(Cat.class)
    .add( Restrictions.like("name", "F%") )
    .createCriteria("kittens")
        .add( Restrictions.like("name", "F%") )
    .list();

The second createCriteria() returns a new instance of Criteria that refers to the elements of the kittens collection.

There is also an alternate form that is useful in certain circumstances:

List cats = sess.createCriteria(Cat.class)
    .createAlias("kittens", "kt")
    .createAlias("mate", "mt")
    .add( Restrictions.eqProperty("kt.name", "mt.name") )
    .list();
(createAlias() does not create a new instance of Criteria.)

The kittens collections held by the Cat instances returned by the previous two queries are not pre-filtered by the criteria. If you want to retrieve just the kittens that match the criteria, you must use a ResultTransformer.

List cats = sess.createCriteria(Cat.class)
    .createCriteria("kittens", "kt")
        .add( Restrictions.eq("name", "F%") )
    .setResultTransformer(Criteria.ALIAS_TO_ENTITY_MAP)
    .list();
Iterator iter = cats.iterator();
while ( iter.hasNext() ) {
    Map map = (Map) iter.next();
    Cat cat = (Cat) map.get(Criteria.ROOT_ALIAS);
    Cat kitten = (Cat) map.get("kt");
}