May I know how can I get the sql from a JPA query? or let's say, convert the JPA query to a SQL string? Thank you very much!
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Can you be a bit more explicit about what you want exactly? i.e. please post the "JPA query" (criteria query? JPQL?) and maybe an example of what kind of output you'd expect. Also tell us, which JPA implementation you use (OpenJPA, Hibernate, etc) – Lukas Eder Jun 08 '11 at 09:23
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For hibernate implementation: query.unwrap(org.hibernate.Query.class).getQueryString(). – Valsaraj Viswanathan Sep 13 '17 at 06:10
9 Answers
For Eclipselink: you can extract the SQL the following way:
query.unwrap(EJBQueryImpl.class).getDatabaseQuery().getSQLString()
It works only after the query has been executed.

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5Worked for me but my project did not have EJBQueryImpl.class (I used String rtn = query.unwrap(org.hibernate.Query.class).getQueryString();) – John Oct 26 '16 at 14:22
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@John if you had used "org.hibernate.Query.class" then you should get JPQL only but NOT raw SQL. I would like to get the raw query from JPQL (hibernate vendor used), is there any option to get it ? – Krish Apr 03 '18 at 14:22
If you only want to know how your JPQL or Criteria Query gets translated to the SQL dialect of your database you can enable fine grained logging in the persistence xml and then look into your log files.
The property name and value depends on your JPA implementation. Here is an example of the relevant part of persistence.xml for EclipseLink:
<properties>
<property name="eclipselink.logging.level" value="FINEST"/>
</properties>

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JPA Specification
While there is not standard JPA functionality to achieve this goal, you can still extract the SQL query from a JPQL or Criteria API Query
using the JPA provider-specific API.
Hibernate Types
Starting with the 2.9.11 version, the Hibernate Types open-source project offers the SQLExtractor
utility that allows you to get the SQL query from any JPQL or Criteria API query, no matter you are using Hibernate 5.4, 5.3, 5.2, 5.1, 5.0, 4.3, 4.2, or 4.1.
Get the SQL statement from a JPQL Query
Let's assume we have the following JPQL query:
Query jpql = entityManager.createQuery("""
select
YEAR(p.createdOn) as year,
count(p) as postCount
from
Post p
group by
YEAR(p.createdOn)
""", Tuple.class
);
With Hibernate Types, extracting the Hibernate-generated SQL query is as simple as that:
String sql = SQLExtractor.from(jpql);
And, if we log the extracted SQL query:
LOGGER.info("""
The JPQL query: [
{}
]
generates the following SQL query: [
{}
]
""",
jpql.unwrap(org.hibernate.query.Query.class).getQueryString(),
sql
);
We get the following output:
- The JPQL query: [
select
YEAR(p.createdOn) as year,
count(p) as postCount
from
Post p
group by
YEAR(p.createdOn)
]
generates the following SQL query: [
SELECT
extract(YEAR FROM sqlextract0_.created_on) AS col_0_0_,
count(sqlextract0_.id) AS col_1_0_
FROM
post p
GROUP BY
extract(YEAR FROM p.created_on)
]
Notice that we unwrapped the JPA
Query
to the Hibernateorg.hibernate.query.Query
interface which provided thegetQueryString
method we can use to log the associated JPQL query string.
Get the SQL statement from a JPA Criteria API Query
The SQLExtractor
is not limited to JPQL queries. You can use it with Criteria API queries as well, as illustrated by the following example:
CriteriaBuilder builder = entityManager.getCriteriaBuilder();
CriteriaQuery<PostComment> criteria = builder.createQuery(PostComment.class);
Root<PostComment> postComment = criteria.from(PostComment.class);
Join<PostComment, Post> post = postComment.join("post");
criteria.where(
builder.like(post.get("title"), "%Java%")
);
criteria.orderBy(
builder.asc(postComment.get("id"))
);
Query criteriaQuery = entityManager.createQuery(criteria);
String sql = SQLExtractor.from(criteriaQuery);
assertNotNull(sql);
LOGGER.info("""
The Criteria API, compiled to this JPQL query: [
{}
]
generates the following SQL query: [
{}
]
""",
jpql.unwrap(org.hibernate.query.Query.class).getQueryString(),
sql
);
When running the above test case, we get the following SQL query:
- The Criteria API, compiled to this JPQL query: [
select
pc
from
PostComment as pc
inner join
pc.post as p
where
p.title like :param0
order by
pc.id asc
]
generates the following SQL query: [
SELECT
pc.id AS id1_1_,
pc.post_id AS post_id3_1_,
pc.review AS review2_1_
FROM
post_comment pc
INNER JOIN
post p ON pc.post_id=p.id
WHERE
p.title LIKE ?
ORDER BY
pc.id ASC
]
The Criteria API is first compiled to a JPQL query, as illustrated by the getQueryString()
method call.
The intermediary JPQL query is further translated to an SQL query, which is properly resolved by the SQLExtractor
utility.

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is it possible to get SQL with values instead of (?) using this method? – Vishal Patel Jun 09 '20 at 10:05
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thanks for the link. it will print values in the log but would it print values while generating SQL using your method? – Vishal Patel Jun 09 '20 at 10:24
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The `SQLExtractor` cannot extract bind parameters. Those can only be extracted prior to executing the `Query`. That's when you can only be sure that the user is done setting parameters. Otherwise, one could extract the SQL prior to calling `setParameter`. – Vlad Mihalcea Jun 09 '20 at 10:37
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@VladMihalcea I am thinking to use the SQLExtractor to create a partial query that I can then modify adding some native SQL. Is this going to create some performance issues? – Ward Clark Jan 10 '21 at 18:45
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1Better use a dedicated query building, like jooq. It's type safe too. – Vlad Mihalcea Jan 10 '21 at 19:19
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@VladMihalcea My pom file has springboot-starter-data-jpa v2.1.4 but it does not contain SpringExtractor. I'm new to these concepts appreciate if you could help me on this. – Thulasi Jan 22 '21 at 22:53
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You need to add Hibernate Types to your dependencies to get thev`SQLExtractor`. – Vlad Mihalcea Jan 23 '21 at 05:27
Following Karol's answer - It is possible to retrieve the SQL before executing the statement in EclipseLink :
Session session = em.unwrap(JpaEntityManager.class).getActiveSession();
DatabaseQuery databaseQuery = query.unwrap(EJBQueryImpl.class).getDatabaseQuery();
databaseQuery.prepareCall(session, new DatabaseRecord());
Record r = databaseQuery.getTranslationRow();
String bound = databaseQuery.getTranslatedSQLString(session, r);
String sqlString = databaseQuery.getSQLString();
To retrieve the SQL String During/After execution it is probably best to do so using persistence properties rather than in-code :
<property name="eclipselink.logging.parameters" value="true"/>
<property name="eclipselink.logging.level" value="FINE"/>

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Using Hibernate as a provider you can enable the following properties:
hibernate.show_sql
Write all SQL statements to console. This is an alternative to setting the log category org.hibernate.SQL to debug. (e.g. true | false)
hibernate.format_sql
Pretty print the SQL in the log and console. (e.g. true | false)
Or, as stated above you can enable logging to the debug level for the logger
org.hibernate.SQL
Log all SQL DML statements as they are executed

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You are probably interested if there's a way to 'extract' JPQL string (either with placeholders for params, or final JPQL after params are filled-in) out of javax.persistence.Query (one of it's possible subclasses to be more precise),- in this case it's not possible according to JPA specification contract. However, this hypothetically might be possible by JPA implementation (e.g., NamedQueryImpl could have #toJPQLString(), which you could access via casting), but I doubt about that. And even if it's possible I don't think it's a good code performing such manipulations. I would suggest finding another design solutions (and for that you could specify what kind of actual problem do you have). E.g., if you are building your queries dynamically, JPA Criteria API could be used for that, and along with 'building' JPA query, you could maintain your internal data structure reflecting the logic of your query.

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This blog contains instructions: http://narcanti.keyboardsamurais.de/hibernate-hql-to-sql-translation.html

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1https://web.archive.org/web/20171127164602/http://narcanti.keyboardsamurais.de/hibernate-hql-to-sql-translation.html – techfly Jan 10 '19 at 07:44
You could use p6spy. At the following link there are instructions for its operation:

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