nHibernate method using Criteria for selecting parents for which strings in their child collection contain a certain searchterm

Question

I need to do a search on company address - if a company has a certain string in one of it's addreses it must appear in the search results ( something like regex '%string%' ).

nHibernate mapping file for the Company looks like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<hibernate-mapping xmlns="urn:nhibernate-mapping-2.2"
                   assembly="TaskMappings"
                   namespace="TaskMappings">
    <class name="Company">
        <id name="Id">
            <generator class="sequence">
                <param name="sequence">company_id_seq</param>
            </generator>
        </id>
        <property name="Name" />
        <property name="Fax" />
        <property name="PostalCode" />

        <bag name="Users" cascade="all-delete-orphan" inverse="true">
            <key column="UserCompany" />
            <one-to-many class="User" />
        </bag>

        <bag name="Phone" cascade="all-delete-orphan" lazy="false">
            <key column="PhoneCompany" />
            <element column="Phone" />
        </bag>

        <bag name="Email" cascade="all-delete-orphan" lazy="false">
            <key column="EmailCompany" />
            <element column="Email" />
        </bag>

        <bag name="Addresses" table="address" cascade="all-delete-orphan" lazy="false">
            <key column="AddressCompany" />
            <element column="Address" type="String"/>
        </bag>
    </class>
</hibernate-mapping>

and the Company entity class like this:

public class Company : Entity<int>
{
    public virtual string Name { get; set; }
    public virtual string Fax { get; set; }
    public virtual string PostalCode { get; set; }

    private IList<string> _phone = new List<string>();
    public virtual IList<string> Phone
    {
        get { return _phone; }
        set { _phone = value; }
    }

    private IList<string> _email = new List<string>();
    public virtual IList<string> Email
    {
        get { return _email; }
        set { _email = value; }
    }

    private IList<string> _addresses = new List<string>();
    public virtual IList<string> Addresses
    {
        get { return _addresses; }
        set { _addresses = value; }
    }

    private IList<User> users = new List<User>();
    public virtual IList<User> Users
    {
        get { return users; }
        set { users = value; }
    }
}

My question is: how can i do the search using criteria preferably? I need the result as an IList. Thanks for your answers! :)

Answer 1

Looks like this cannot be done using the Criteria API (although I'm not 100%) see here for another similar question. But I have managed to get it to work using a HQL query.

var query = session.CreateQuery("select c from Company c 
join c.Addresses a where a like '%string%'").List<Company>();

Answer 2

You could try:

ensure your Address entity has a Company on it and references it in its mapping then change your company entity for addresses to:

private IList<Address> _addresses = new List<Address>();
public virtual IList<Address> Addresses
{
    get { return _addresses; }
    set { _addresses = value; }
}

and then try this criteria:

var criteria = DetachedCriteria.For<Company>()
   .CreateCriteria("this.Addresses", "a")
   .SetFetchMode("a", FetchMode.Join)
   .Add(Restrictions.InsensitiveLike("a.Address", <string variable>, MatchMode.Anywhere))
   .SetResultTransformer(new DistinctRootEntityTransformer());

And then just execute that criteria in whatever session you have. My question is, why are addresses mapped onto Company, but are simply a list of strings? It would simplify things for you if Addresses were an entity mapped onto company.

Answer 3

Something like:

HibernateDelegate<IList<IAssetLiabilityModel>> del = delegate(ISession session)
    {
        ICriteria criteria = session.CreateCriteria(typeof(ICompany));
        criteria.CreateCriteria("Company.Addresses", "Addresses");
        criteria.Add(Restrictions.Like("Addresses",<your_search_string>)); 
        criteria.SetResultTransformer(CriteriaSpecification.DistinctRootEntity);
        HibernateTemplate.PrepareCriteria(criteria);
        return criteria.List<ICompany>();
    };
    IList<ICompany> companies = HibernateTemplate.Execute(del);