JPQL LIKE syntax with Strings

Question

EDIT:

I changed the hard coded query to be:

 query.setParameter("desc", "%unplug //your// server... enjoy the freedom%" ESCAPE '//')

and now I am getting an com.sun.jdi.InvocationException occurred invoking method.

There's no stacktrace produced either.

I have a description column in my PostgreSQL database and I am trying to query it with a 'LIKE' clause, however I am unable to get any results. Here's an example:

    Query query = em.createQuery("from MyClass c WHERE c.description LIKE :desc");
    query.setParameter("desc", "%unplug /your/ server... enjoy the freedom%"); 

In the database I have many descriptions containing a substring of the above text. I've done a lot of research and looked into escaping special chars etc, but nothing has worked.

I am missing something, I just cannot figure out what that is.

Answer 1

Most likely the slash / is messing up the parsing in PG. Turn the parameter into a quoted literal. Unless you are certain that no special characters go into string arguments (ie you control the strings), this is always a good idea to avoid SQL injection.

query.setParameter("desc", "quote_literal('%unplug /your/ server... enjoy the freedom%')");