As described in the docs on Querying from the SDK, you can use either a simple string with the Java SDK or use the DSL. For example:
// query with a simple string
System.out.println("Simple string query:");
N1qlQuery airlineQuery = N1qlQuery.simple("SELECT `travel-sample`.* FROM `travel-sample` WHERE name=\"United Airlines\" AND type=\"airline\"");
N1qlQueryResult queryResult = bucket.query(airlineQuery);
for (N1qlQueryRow result: queryResult) {
System.out.println(result.value());
}
//query with a parameter using the DSL
System.out.println("Parameterized query using the DSL:");
Statement statement = select(path(i("travel-sample"), "*")).from(i("travel-sample")).where(x("name").eq(x("$airline_param")).and(x("type").eq(s("airline"))));
JsonObject placeholderValues = JsonObject.create().put("airline_param", "United Airlines");
N1qlQuery airlineQueryParameterized = N1qlQuery.parameterized(statement, placeholderValues);
N1qlQueryResult queryResultParameterized = bucket.query(airlineQueryParameterized);
for (N1qlQueryRow row : queryResultParameterized) {
System.out.println(row);
}
(I posted a full gist of this example for the imports, etc.)
See the docs for more info, but you may want to use the DSL to allow IDE code completion and Java compile time checking. When developing an interactive web application, you'll probably also want to use parameterized statements (for security) and may even want prepared statements (for performance).