JPA Criteria: QuerySyntaxException for left join on treat entity

Question

Model:

@Entity
public class User {

    @Id
    private Integer id;

    @JoinColumn(name = "user_id")
    @OneToMany(fetch = FetchType.EAGER, cascade = CascadeType.ALL, orphanRemoval = true)
    private List<Project> projects;
}
@Entity
@Inheritance(strategy = InheritanceType.SINGLE_TABLE)
@DiscriminatorColumn(name = "Type")
public abstract class Project {

    @Id
    private Integer id;

    private String name;
}
@Entity
@DiscriminatorValue("Administrative")
public class AdminProject extends Project {

    private String departmentName;
}
@Entity
@DiscriminatorValue("Design")
public class DesignProject extends Project {

    private String companyName;
}

I am trying to use JPA's criteria api to query for User entities based on an attribute of an implementation of Project. For example, query all users that have a project with "SOME_NAME" department (that field does not exist on DesignProject).

I see there is a way of doing so via downcasting of the Project entity for the query. I am trying something similar to:

CriteriaBuilder cb...
Root<User> userRoot...
root = ((From) root).join("projects", JoinType.LEFT);
root = cb.treat(root, AdminProject.class);
root = root.get("departmentName");

Exception:

org.springframework.dao.InvalidDataAccessApiUsageException: org.hibernate.hql.internal.ast.QuerySyntaxException: Invalid path: 'generatedAlias2.departmentName' [select generatedAlias0 from io.github.perplexhub.rsql.model.User as generatedAlias0 left join generatedAlias0.projects as generatedAlias1 where treat(generatedAlias2 as io.github.perplexhub.rsql.model.AdminProject).departmentName=:param0]; nested exception is java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: org.hibernate.hql.internal.ast.QuerySyntaxException: Invalid path: 'generatedAlias2.departmentName' [select generatedAlias0 from io.github.perplexhub.rsql.model.User as generatedAlias0 left join generatedAlias0.projects as generatedAlias1 where treat(generatedAlias2 as io.github.perplexhub.rsql.model.AdminProject).departmentName=:param0]

What am I missing? Is it something related to the join, or how the downcasting occurs afterwards?

Edit

After the answer by @K.Nicholas, I have managed to make the query work on an isolated scenario, but not on my app. But, I noticed that the entityManager.createQuery(query) call throws the exception above when called for the first time, and it works if I call it again without changing the query object. Here is the query generated on the second call (this query finds the objects I want from the database):

select generatedAlias0 from User as generatedAlias0 left join generatedAlias0.projects as generatedAlias2 where treat(generatedAlias2 as io.github.perplexhub.rsql.model.AdminProject).departmentName=:param0

Why is the entity manager creating two different queries when called two consecutive times?

Answer 1

I would do the Entitys a little different, as you will see. The main concern is that you are using User as your root with a join to a list of Projects. This is a concern because you should have the foreign key on the Project class and use the projects field as a query only field. That is what I have done. It works better that way. It is also a concern because you have to do a join fetch instead of a join so that the projects get fetched along with the users.

So, first, the entities are like so:

@Entity
public class User { 
    @Id
    private Integer id; 
    @OneToMany(mappedBy="user")
    private List<Project> projects;
}

@Entity
@Inheritance(strategy = InheritanceType.SINGLE_TABLE)
@DiscriminatorColumn(name = "Type")
public abstract class Project {
    @Id
    private Integer id;
    private String name;    
    @ManyToOne
    private User user;
}

@Entity
@DiscriminatorValue("Administrative")
public class AdminProject extends Project {
    private String departmentName;
}

@Entity
@DiscriminatorValue("Design")
public class DesignProject extends Project {    
    private String companyName;
}

After a bit a digging I found a JPQL query that does the trick. This was a starting point:

List<User> users = entityManager.createQuery("select distinct(u) from User u join fetch u.projects p where TYPE(p) = 'Administrative' and p.departmentName = 'dept1'", User.class).getResultList();

After a bit more digging I found that the treat worked fine if you do it correctly and that with JPA 2.1 you should use an EntityGraph do get the join to do a fetch.

CriteriaBuilder builder = entityManager.getCriteriaBuilder();
CriteriaQuery<User> query = builder.createQuery(User.class);
Root<User> root = query.from(User.class);
Join<User, Project> join = root.join("projects");
query.select(root).where(builder.equal(builder.treat(join, AdminProject.class).get("departmentName"), "dept1"));
EntityGraph<User> fetchGraph = entityManager.createEntityGraph(User.class);
fetchGraph.addSubgraph("projects");
users = entityManager.createQuery(query.distinct(true)).setHint("javax.persistence.loadgraph", fetchGraph).getResultList();

As a side note the queries generated as slightly different but I didn't look that closely at them. You should.