How to properly express JPQL "join fetch" with "where" clause as JPA 2 CriteriaQuery?
Solution 1
In JPQL the same is actually true in the spec. The JPA spec does not allow an alias to be given to a fetch join. The issue is that you can easily shoot yourself in the foot with this by restricting the context of the join fetch. It is safer to join twice.
This is normally more an issue with ToMany than ToOnes. For example,
Select e from Employee e
join fetch e.phones p
where p.areaCode = '613'
This will incorrectly return all Employees that contain numbers in the '613' area code but will left out phone numbers of other areas in the returned list. This means that an employee that had a phone in the 613 and 416 area codes will loose the 416 phone number, so the object will be corrupted.
Granted, if you know what you are doing, the extra join is not desirable, some JPA providers may allow aliasing the join fetch, and may allow casting the Criteria Fetch to a Join.
Solution 2
I will show visually the problem, using the great example from James answer and adding the alternative solution.
When you do the follow query, without the FETCH
:
Select e from Employee e
join e.phones p
where p.areaCode = '613'
You will have the follow results from Employee
as you expected:
EmployeeId | EmployeeName | PhoneId | PhoneAreaCode |
---|---|---|---|
1 | James | 5 | 613 |
1 | James | 6 | 416 |
But when you add the FETCH
clause on JOIN
(FETCH JOIN
), this is what happens:
EmployeeId | EmployeeName | PhoneId | PhoneAreaCode |
---|---|---|---|
1 | James | 5 | 613 |
The generated SQL is the same for the two queries, but the Hibernate removes on memory the 416
register when you use WHERE
on the FETCH
join.
So, to bring all phones and apply the WHERE
correctly, you need to have two JOIN
s: one for the WHERE
and another for the FETCH
. Like:
Select e from Employee e
join e.phones p
join fetch e.phones //no alias, to not commit the mistake
where p.areaCode = '613'
Solution 3
I may answer late this but from my point of view.
Select e from Employee e
join e.phones p
join fetch e.phones //no alias, to not commit the mistake
where p.areaCode = '613'
This could be translated to the following SQL Query
Select e.id, e.name, p.id ,p.phone
From Employe e
inner join Phone p on e.id = p.emp_id
where exists(
select 1 from Phone where Phone.id= p.id and Phone.area ='XXX'
)
This will get all phones of an employee that belongs to an area.
BUT
Select e from Employee e
join fetch e.phones p //no alias, to not commit the mistake
where p.areaCode = '613'
could be translated to the following SQL Queries
Select e.id, e.name, p.id ,p.phone
From Employe e
inner join Phone p on e.id = p.id
Where p.area ='XXX'
or
Select e.id, e.name, p.id ,p.phone
From Employe e
inner join Phone p on e.id = p.emp_id and p.area ='XXX'
this will restrict row selection to only rows where employees phone is of area XXX
And finally writing this
Select e from Employee e
join e.phones p
where p.areaCode = '613'
Could be seen as
Select e.id, e.name
from Employe e
where exists (
select 1 from phone p where p.emp_id = e.id and p.area = 'XXX'
)
Where we are only getting employee data that have a phone number in some area
This should help get the idea after each query.
chris
Updated on January 20, 2022Comments
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chris over 2 years
Consider the following JPQL query:
SELECT foo FROM Foo foo INNER JOIN FETCH foo.bar bar WHERE bar.baz = :baz
I'm trying to translate this into a Criteria query. This is as far as I have gotten:
CriteriaBuilder cb = em.getCriteriaBuilder(); CriteriaQuery<Foo> cq = cb.createQuery(Foo.class); Root<Foo> r = cq.from(Foo.class); Fetch<Foo, Bar> fetch = r.fetch(Foo_.bar, JoinType.INNER); Join<Foo, Bar> join = r.join(Foo_.bar, JoinType.INNER); cq.where(cb.equal(join.get(Bar_.baz), value);
The obvious problem here is that I am doing the same join twice, because
Fetch<Foo, Bar>
doesn't seem to have a method to get aPath
. Is there any way to avoid having to join twice? Or do I have to stick with good old JPQL with a query as simple as that? -
chris about 13 yearsBrilliant answer, thanks. Hadn't thought of that. Hibernate never complained to me about aliasing a fetch join, I wasn't aware that this actually violates the spec.
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James about 12 years
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Faraway almost 6 yearsI was doing exactly this kind of query and wondering what the results would be like in this exact case. This solves my confusion.
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pavlee over 5 yearsI find this answer incorrect. In my case query like this returns only employees that have all phones with
areaCode = '613'
. It does not filter the phones collection like you said. -
Anton Pryamostanov almost 4 yearsJoin fetch is the whole point of Join. Object does not get corrupted when its nested collections are filtered out - regardless whether it's user code or JPA join fetch.
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Faizan about 3 yearsCan you a little explain it more with SQL query, why the first query will return the employees with areaCode 613 and 416 Because there is a where clause, and if I understand it correctly then there will be an inner join between Employee and Phone. Then why it will return the 613 and 416? Shouldn't it return only 613?
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Dherik about 3 years@FaizanAhmad the first query will return only the employee entity "James", because one of his two addresses has the 613 code. When you use
fetch
join, some developers expect to also receive these two addresses, because one of them is 613, but hibernate filter in memory and exclude the 416 from the result, returning only the 613. So, you need one join for thefetch
(to bring all addresses) and another one for thewhere
condition (return any employee that has some address with 613 code). -
Faizan about 3 yearsI am still confused, Let me tell you what SQL I have in my mind, For the case one
Select * from Employees as e inner join Phones as p on e.employeeId = p.employeeId where p.areacode = 613
if this is the query for the case one we would not get the entry with area code416
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fantaztig about 3 yearsSorry but from a performance point of view this solution is just terrible as it will produce n^2 rows with n being the size of the collection.
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Yann39 over 2 years@FaizanAhmad You would be right if we thought in pure SQL, but here we are selecting entities, which can "embed" relations. The
Employee
entity contains the list of all phones of the employee (usuallyOneToMany
association). So as we are selecting the whole employee entity (e
), whatever thewhere
clause is, it is indeed supposed to contain all the phones of that employee. The problem here is that when usingfetch
, hibernate internally excludes from thee.phones
list the values that or not in thewhere
clause. -
RAM237 over 2 yearsHmmm.... so finally, I used it as I need which is mentioned "incorrectly" in this answer :) But the problem I have - is when I add one more join fetch, then the same phone with area 613 is added multiple times (exactly the same count as in those newly added join fetch)...