JPA: How to get entity based on field value other than ID?

It is not a "problem" as you stated it.

Hibernate has the built-in find(), but you have to build your own query in order to get a particular object. I recommend using Hibernate's Criteria :

Criteria criteria = session.createCriteria(YourClass.class);
YourObject yourObject = criteria.add(Restrictions.eq("yourField", yourFieldValue))
                             .uniqueResult();

This will create a criteria on your current class, adding the restriction that the column "yourField" is equal to the value yourFieldValue. uniqueResult() tells it to bring a unique result. If more objects match, you should retrive a list.

List<YourObject> list = criteria.add(Restrictions.eq("yourField", yourFieldValue)).list();

If you have any further questions, please feel free to ask. Hope this helps.

if you have repository for entity Foo and need to select all entries with exact string value boo (also works for other primitive types or entity types). Put this into your repository interface:

List<Foo> findByBoo(String boo);

if you need to order results:

List<Foo> findByBooOrderById(String boo);

See more at reference.

Basically, you should add a specific unique field. I usually use xxxUri fields.

class User {

    @Id
    // automatically generated
    private Long id;

    // globally unique id
    @Column(name = "SCN", nullable = false, unique = true)
    private String scn;
}

And you business method will do like this.

public User findUserByScn(@NotNull final String scn) {
    CriteriaBuilder builder = manager.getCriteriaBuilder();
    CriteriaQuery<User> criteria = builder.createQuery(User.class);
    Root<User> from = criteria.from(User.class);
    criteria.select(from);
    criteria.where(builder.equal(from.get(User_.scn), scn));
    TypedQuery<User> typed = manager.createQuery(criteria);
    try {
        return typed.getSingleResult();
    } catch (final NoResultException nre) {
        return null;
    }
}

Best practice is using @NaturalId annotation. It can be used as the business key for some cases it is too complicated, so some fields are using as the identifier in the real world. For example, I have user class with user id as primary key, and email is also unique field. So we can use email as our natural id

@Entity
@Table(name="user")
public class User {
  @Id
  @Column(name="id")
  private int id;

  @NaturalId
  @Column(name="email")
  private String email;

  @Column(name="name")
  private String name;
}

To get our record, just simply use 'session.byNaturalId()'

Session session = sessionFactory.getCurrentSession();
User user = session.byNaturalId(User.class)
                   .using("email","[email protected]")
                   .load()