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15.4. Associations

By navigating associations using createCriteria() you can specify constraints upon related entities: 
List cats = sess.createCriteria(Cat.class)
    .add( Restrictions.like("name", "F%") )
    .createCriteria("kittens")
        .add( Restrictions.like("name", "F%") )
    .list();
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The second createCriteria() returns a new instance of Criteria that refers to the elements of the kittens collection.
There is also an alternate form that is useful in certain circumstances: 
List cats = sess.createCriteria(Cat.class)
    .createAlias("kittens", "kt")
    .createAlias("mate", "mt")
    .add( Restrictions.eqProperty("kt.name", "mt.name") )
    .list();
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(createAlias() does not create a new instance of Criteria.)
The kittens collections held by the Cat instances returned by the previous two queries are not pre-filtered by the criteria. If you want to retrieve just the kittens that match the criteria, you must use a ResultTransformer. 
List cats = sess.createCriteria(Cat.class)
    .createCriteria("kittens", "kt")
        .add( Restrictions.eq("name", "F%") )
    .setResultTransformer(Criteria.ALIAS_TO_ENTITY_MAP)
    .list();
Iterator iter = cats.iterator();
while ( iter.hasNext() ) {
    Map map = (Map) iter.next();
    Cat cat = (Cat) map.get(Criteria.ROOT_ALIAS);
    Cat kitten = (Cat) map.get("kt");
}
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