Case-insensitive equals using Hibernate Criteria

Expression is now deprecated. Use Restrictions instead ...

crit(Restrictions.eq("firstName", firstName).ignoreCase());

As Andy's answer suggests, this for case-insensitive searches but it is also works through to Hibernate version 4.1:

crit(Restrictions.eq("firstName", firstName).ignoreCase());

Versions 4.1.1 and later of Hibernate do not support the ignoreCase() method on Restriction.eq(). For that, we have to use ilike with MatchMode.

Criteria crit = session.createCriteria(ENTITY.class);
crit.add(Restrictions.ilike('PROPERTY NAME', 'VALUE', MatchMode.ANYWHERE));

As an example, for a USER entity with id, name, surname properties, a case-insensitive search based on name will be:

Criteria crit = session.createCriteria(USER.class);
crit.add(Restrictions.ilike('name', 'Satyam', MatchMode.ANYWHERE));

This will return all results, case insensitive.

Be careful of using ilike because it would allow someone to enter things like "test%" and match. I use the following to do a case-insensitive equal in one app:

...
Criteria crit=session.createCriteria(Event.class);
crit.add(Expression.eq("rsvpCode","test1").ignoreCase());
...

I'm not absolutely sure, but when you use Restriction.eq you obtain a SimpleExpression object, and that object suppports an ignoreCase() operation which I've never tried using but sounds like it could make a difference.

Kudos to Hibernate for not documenting what this method actually does.