Compare Date entities in JPA Criteria API

The problem is that with the string-based API it cannot infer the type for the result value of the get-Operation. This is explained for example in Javadoc for Path.

If you use

predicates.add(builder.lessThanOrEqualTo(root.<Date>get("dateCreated"), param));

instead, it will work fine, because it can figure out the return type from the type argument and will find out that it is comparable. Note, the use of a parameterised method invocation root.<Date>get(...) (see, e.g., When is a parameterized method call useful?).

Another (in my opinion better) solution is to use the metamodel based API instead of the string-based one. A simple example about canonical metamodel is given for example here. If you have more time to invest, this is a good article about static metamodel: Dynamic, typesafe queries in JPA 2.0

You need to use the generated metamodel to access the attributes is a really safe way. If you use Strings to refer to your attributes, types can only be deduced from the explicit generic type used when calling the method, or by a type cast, or by the automatic type inference done by the compiler:

Path<Date> dateCreatedPath = root.get("dateCreated");
predicates.add(builder.lessThanOrEqualTo(dateCreatedPath, dateLimit));

I was getting a similar error but with the syntax predicates.add(cb.greaterThan(article.get(Article_.created), since)); and found this page. The cause for me, turned out to be that I had upgraded my project from Java 1.7 to 1.8, and in the process had configured Maven to compile for Java 1.8 as well. I simply had to change Maven compiles back to 1.7, while keeping the rest of the project at 1.8, to fix the error.