Troubles with JPA criteria API and multiple subqueries - jpa

Question

I am struggling with the JPA Criteria API for formulating a query for my data structure. Ok, my entities are as follows. I have users and groups (both share a common base class OrgEntity). Logically, users can be members in multiple groups of course. Finally, I have an entity representing a task, which has a list of potential owners (that can be either single users or whole groups). The domain model is summarized below and is given, so I cannot change it.
#Entity
#Inheritance(strategy=InheritanceType.JOINED)
abstract public class OrgEntity {
#Id
public String name;
...
}
#Entity
public class User extends OrgEntity {
public String displayName;
#ManyToMany(mappedBy="members")
public List<Group> groups;
...
}
#Entity
public class Group extends OrgEntity {
#ManyToMany
public List<User> members;
...
}
#Entity
public class Task {
#Id
public String uuid;
#ManyToMany
public List<OrgEntity> potentialOwners;
...
}
The starting point for my query is a single instance of User. I want to know all the tasks where the user is a potential owner (regardless if the user is directly contained in the potentialOwners collection or member of a group that is contained in potentialOwners).
My first attempt using a named query was as follows
SELECT DISTINCT t FROM Task AS t JOIN t.potentialOwners po
WHERE (po IN (SELECT g FROM User u JOIN u.groups g WHERE u = :user)
OR po IN (SELECT u FROM User u WHERE u = :user))
It works, but I don't know if this is the most efficient way to do this. Any suggestions?
However, I have no idea how to implement this using the criteria API. Can somebody please help me with that.
Thanks

Answer 1

Ok, I finally figured out how to do it. If you are interested in my solution, here it is. u is the User object, basically the query parameter and em is the EntityManager instance.
CriteriaBuilder criteriaBuilder = em.getCriteriaBuilder();
// specifies the result value of the query
CriteriaQuery<Task> cq = criteriaBuilder.createQuery(Task.class);
// start with the navigation at the task entity
Root<Task> from = cq.from(Task.class);
// join the potential owner organizational entities
Join<Task,OrgEntity> potentialOwners = from.join("potentialOwners");
// select the tasks but remove duplicates
CriteriaQuery<Task> select = cq.select(from).distinct(true);
// definition for subquery1: fetch the user instance
Subquery<User> subquery1 = cq.subquery(User.class);
// start at the User entities
Root<User> from1 = subquery1.from(User.class);
// select the whole user
subquery1.select(from1);
// based on the specified user
subquery1.where(criteriaBuilder.equal(from1, u));
// definition for subquery2: fetch all groups for given user
Subquery<Group> subquery2 = cq.subquery(Group.class);
// we start at the User entity
Root<User> from2 = subquery2.from(User.class);
// join to Group entities via the groups collection
Join<User, Group> groups = from2.join("groups");
// select the group entities only
subquery2.select(groups).distinct(true);
// and finally restrict to all groups of the specified user
subquery2.where(criteriaBuilder.equal(from2, u));
// order in descending order based on the unique task id
select.orderBy(criteriaBuilder.desc(from.get("uuid")));
// here we restrict to those tasks that have the potential
// owners either in the result set of subquery2 or subquery1
// additionally I've tried to filter for another restriction
// in the task (based on a like statement of the uuid)
select.where(criteriaBuilder.and(
criteriaBuilder.or(
criteriaBuilder.in(potentialOwners).value(subquery2),
criteriaBuilder.in(potentialOwners).value(subquery1)),
criteriaBuilder.like(from.<String>get("uuid"), "1%")));
TypedQuery<Task> typedQuery = em.createQuery(select);
List<Task> resultList = typedQuery.getResultList();