Using hibernate criteria, is there a way to escape special characters?

Question

For this question, we want to avoid having to write a special query since the query would have to be different across multiple databases. Using only hibernate criteria, we w

Answer 1

If you use Hibernate 3.2+, you can subclass LikeExpression, and then create factory like/ilike methods:

import org.hibernate.criterion.Criterion;
import org.hibernate.criterion.LikeExpression;
import org.hibernate.criterion.MatchMode;

public class EscapedLikeRestrictions {
    private EscapedLikeRestrictions() {}

    public static Criterion likeEscaped(String propertyName, String value, MatchMode matchMode) {
        return likeEscaped(propertyName, value, matchMode, false);
    }

    public static Criterion ilikeEscaped(String propertyName, String value, MatchMode matchMode) {
        return likeEscaped(propertyName, value, matchMode, true);
    }

    private static Criterion likeEscaped(String propertyName, String value, MatchMode matchMode, boolean ignoreCase) {
        return new LikeExpression(propertyName, escape(value), matchMode, '!', ignoreCase) {/*a trick to call protected constructor*/};
    }

    private static String escape(String value) {
        return value
                .replace("!", "!!")
                .replace("%", "!%")
                .replace("_", "!_");
    }
}