Path Navigation in Criteria Queries

Path objects are used in the SELECT and WHERE clauses of a Criteria query and can be query root entities, join entities, or other Path objects. The Path.get method is used to navigate to attributes of the entities of a query.

The argument to the get method is the corresponding attribute of the entity’s Metamodel class. The attribute can either be a single-valued attribute, specified by @SingularAttribute in the Metamodel class, or a collection-valued attribute, specified by one of @CollectionAttribute, @SetAttribute, @ListAttribute, or @MapAttribute.

The following query returns the names of all the pets in the data store. The get method is called on the query root, pet, with the name attribute of the Pet entity’s Metamodel class, Pet_ as the argument:

CriteriaQuery<String> cq = cb.createQuery(String.class);
Metamodel m = em.getMetamodel();
EntityType<Pet> Pet_ = m.entity(Pet.class);

Root<Pet> pet = cq.from(Pet.class);
cq.select(pet.get(Pet_.name));