JPA criteriabuilder "IN" predicate on foreign key error: Object comparisons can only use the equal() or notEqual() operators - jpa

Question

I want to select a list of file references from a table by looking at which users have the rights to retrieve that file. To do this I have 3 tables, a file table, an access control table, and a users table.
I am using JPA and Criteriabuilder (because there are more tables involved and I need dynamicle create the query, I am leaving out the other tables and predicates from this question for the sake of readability).
The following code works
CriteriaBuilder queryBuilder = em.getCriteriaBuilder();
CriteriaQuery<File> queryDefinition = queryBuilder.createQuery(File.class);
Root<File> FileRoot = queryDefinition.from(File.class);
List<Predicate> predicateList = new ArrayList<Predicate>();
Predicate userPredicate = FileRoot .join("FileAccesControlCollection").join("userId").get("usersId").in(loggedInUser.getUsersId());
predicateList.add(userPredicate );
queryDefinition.where(predicateArray).distinct(true);
Query q = em.createQuery(queryDefinition);
List<Files> results = (List<Files>) q.getResultList();
For the userpredicate I want to leave out the last join to the users table because the ID that I want to filter on is already present in the FileAccesControlCollection table, and a join is a computational expensive database operation.
What I tried is to do this:
Predicate userPredicate = FileRoot .join("FileAccesControlCollection").get("usersId").in(loggedInUser.getUsersId());
But I guess because the userId value in the FileAccesControlCollection entity class is a foreignkey reference to the Users class I get the following error:
Exception Description: Object comparisons can only use the equal() or notEqual() operators. Other comparisons must be done through query keys or direct attribute level comparisons.
Is there a way, using the loggedInUser entity or its Id, to filter the files by just joining the File class to the FileAccesControlCollection class and filtering on the userId foreign key? I am kind of new to JPA and using google lead me to a lot of pages but not a clear answer for something which seems to me should be possible.

Answer 1

So "userId" is mapped as a OneToOne? Then you could do,
get("userId").get("id").in(...)
You could also add a QueryKey in EclipseLink using a DescriptorCustomizer for the foreign key field and then use it in the query,
get("userFk").in(...)

Answer 2

try this:
Predicate userPredicate = FileRoot.join(FileAccesControlCollection.class).join(Users.class).get("{id field name in class Users}").in(loggedInUser.getUsersId());
good luck.