java - Hibernate criteria: Joining table without a mapped association

Question

I'd like to use Hibernate's criteria api to formulate a particular query that joins two entities. Let's say I have two entities, Pet and Owner with a owner having many pets, but crucially that association is not mapped in the Java annotations or xml.

With hql, I could select owners that have a pet called 'fido' by specifying the join in the query (rather than adding a set of pets to the owner class).

Can the same be done using hibernate criteria? If so how?

Thanks, J

Answer 1

This is indeed possible with criteria:

DetachedCriteria ownerCriteria = DetachedCriteria.forClass(Owner.class);
ownerCriteria.setProjection(Property.forName("id"));
ownerCriteria.add(Restrictions.eq("ownername", "bob"));

Criteria criteria = getSession().createCriteria(Pet.class);
criteria.add(Property.forName("ownerId").in(ownerCriteria));

Update: This actually performs a sub-query instead of a join but it allows you to use Criteria on two entities that do not have a hibernate relationship defined.