Can I use Hibernate Criteria without mapping with Hibernate? - spring

Question

I am using JPA annotations to map entities in my model. However, I found Hibernate Criteria is easy to use and contains less codes to write, so is there some way to use Criteria without mapping with hibernate xml ways? I tried this in my DAO implementation class:
private SessionFactory sFactory; // of type org.hibernate.SessionFactory
....
Session session = sFactory.getCurrentSession();
Criteria criteria = session.createCriteria(BTerminal.class);
But, without hibernate.cfg.xml it's giving nullpointerexception. Of course because it is not injected. But to fill this cfg.xml I have to add mapping xml files, which is not the way I like. So, can I use JPA mapping while using Hibernate Criteria?
I am not using Spring. Still doubt which is easier: write 10+ mapping xmls with all atributes, or to learn more about Spring DaoSupport, or any other ways.
Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Yes, it will work. You can have JPA annotated entities, while you use Hibernate Criteria to query your entities, instead of JPA Criteria.
I have actually have tested it.
My entity class looks like this:
import javax.persistence.Entity;
import javax.persistence.GeneratedValue;
import javax.persistence.GenerationType;
import javax.persistence.Id;
#Entity
public class TestEntity {
#Id
#GeneratedValue(strategy=GenerationType.IDENTITY)
private Integer id;
#Version
private Long version;
...
}
Then, I have Hibernate config file: hibernate.cfg.xml
<!DOCTYPE hibernate-configuration PUBLIC
"-//Hibernate/Hibernate Configuration DTD 3.0//EN"
"http://hibernate.sourceforge.net/hibernate-configuration-3.0.dtd">
<hibernate-configuration>
<session-factory>
<property name="dialect">org.hibernate.dialect.MySQLDialect</property>
<property name="connection.driver_class">com.mysql.jdbc.Driver</property>
<property name="connection.url">jdbc:mysql://localhost/test</property>
<property name="connection.username">root</property>
<property name="connection.password">root</property>
<property name="transaction.factory_class">org.hibernate.transaction.JDBCTransactionFactory</property>
<property name="hbm2ddl.auto">create</property>
<property name="show_sql">true</property>
<mapping class="com.test.model.TestEntity" />
</session-factory>
</hibernate-configuration>
Notice, that I still have to list down the entity classes, but I'm not using Hibernate mapping files (hbm.xml). I don't think that Hibernate has support for auto-detection of entity classes, like JPA does (so you still have to list them down even if they are annotated).
Then I have this code as a test, persist entity then retrieve using Hibernate Criteria:
Session session = sessionFactory.getCurrentSession();
session.beginTransaction();
TestEntity testEntity = new TestEntity();
testEntity.setName("test");
session.save(testEntity);
List<TestEntity> tests = (List<TestEntity>) session.createCriteria(TestEntity.class).list();
for (TestEntity test : tests) {
System.out.println(test.getName());
}
session.getTransaction().commit();
I have the ff. output in my console:
Hibernate: insert into TestEntity (name, version) values (?, ?)
Hibernate: select this_.id as id1_0_0_, this_.name as name2_0_0_, this_.version as version3_0_0_ from TestEntity this_
test