How to return a Map result from a JPA or Hibernate query

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Introduction

In this article, I’m going to show you how you can return a Java Map result when executing a JPA query. I decided to write this article after answering a similar question on StackOverflow.

How to return a #Java Map result when executing a JPA query.https://t.co/8zhtAr4jTN pic.twitter.com/G09xmtS9Xh
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Domain Model

Assuming we are using the following Post entity which has a createdOn attribute of the LocalDate Java type:

And, we have persisted the following Post entity into our database:

entityManager.persist(
    new Post()
        .setId(1L)
        .setTitle(
            "High-Performance Java Persistence eBook " +
            "has been released!"
        )
        .setCreatedOn(LocalDate.of(2016, 8, 30))
);

entityManager.persist(
    new Post()
        .setId(2L)
        .setTitle(
            "High-Performance Java Persistence paperback " +
            "has been released!"
        )
        .setCreatedOn(LocalDate.of(2016, 10, 12))
);

entityManager.persist(
    new Post()
        .setId(3L)
        .setTitle(
            "High-Performance Java Persistence Mach 1 video course " +
            "has been released!"
        )
        .setCreatedOn(LocalDate.of(2018, 1, 30))
);

entityManager.persist(
    new Post()
        .setId(4L)
        .setTitle(
            "High-Performance Java Persistence Mach 2 video course " +
            "has been released!"
        )
        .setCreatedOn(LocalDate.of(2018, 5, 8))
);

entityManager.persist(
    new Post()
        .setId(5L)
        .setTitle(
            "Hypersistence Optimizer " +
            "has been released!"
        )
        .setCreatedOn(LocalDate.of(2019, 3, 19))
);

Counting posts published per year

Now, we want to build a report which displays the number of posts by their publishing year. For this, we can use the following JPQL query:

select 
    YEAR(p.createdOn) as year, 
    count(p) as postCount 
from 
    Post p 
group by 
    YEAR(p.createdOn)

Traditionally, the getResultList JPA Query method has been used whenever the result set contained multiple rows. However, we don’t want to return a List when executing this query. Since we have a projection of two columns where the first one is unique, we are better off returning a Map instead.

Returning a Map result using JPA Query getResultStream

As I explained in this article, you can use the JPA 2.2 getResultStream to transform the List<Tuple> result into a Map<Integer, Integer>:

Map<Integer, Integer> postCountByYearMap = entityManager.createQuery("""
    select
       YEAR(p.createdOn) as year,
       count(p) as postCount
    from
       Post p
    group by
       YEAR(p.createdOn)
    """, Tuple.class)
.getResultStream()
.collect(
    Collectors.toMap(
        tuple -> ((Number) tuple.get("year")).intValue(),
        tuple -> ((Number) tuple.get("postCount")).intValue()
    )
);

The Collectors.toMap method returns a Collector that returns a HashMap with the key mapped by the first lambda function provided and the value mapped by the second lambda function.

Returning a Map result using JPA Query getResultList

If you’re using JPA 2.1 or older versions, but your application is running on Java 8 or a newer version, then you can use getResultList and transform the List<Tuple> to a Java 8 stream:

Map<Integer, Integer> postCountByYearMap = entityManager.createQuery("""
    select
       YEAR(p.createdOn) as year,
       count(p) as postCount
    from
       Post p
    group by
       YEAR(p.createdOn)
	""", Tuple.class)
.getResultList()
.stream()
.collect(
    Collectors.toMap(
        tuple -> ((Number) tuple.get("year")).intValue(),
        tuple -> ((Number) tuple.get("postCount")).intValue()
    )
);

Returning a Map result using a Hibernate-specific ResultTransformer

Another option is to use the MapResultTransformer class provided by the Hypersistence Utils open-source project:

Map<Number, Number> postCountByYearMap = (Map<Number, Number>) 
entityManager.createQuery("""
    select
       YEAR(p.createdOn) as year,
       count(p) as postCount
    from
       Post p
    group by
       YEAR(p.createdOn)
	""")
.unwrap(org.hibernate.query.Query.class)
.setResultTransformer(
    new MapResultTransformer<Number, Number>()
)
.getSingleResult();

The MapResultTransformer is suitable for projects still running on Java 6 or using older Hibernate versions.

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Conclusion

Both JPA and Hibernate provide a lot of flexibility when it comes to transforming the result set of a given JPQ query, be it JPQL, Criteria API, or native SQL query.

If a given JPA GROUP BY query returns only two columns where one is unique, it’s very suitable to return the result as a Java Map. For this, you can use either the Java Stream functionality or the Hibernate-specific ResultTransformer.

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