title: In JPA 2, using a CriteriaQuery, how to count results
body: <p>I am rather new to JPA 2 and it's CriteriaBuilder / CriteriaQuery API:</p>
  
  <p><a href="http://java.sun.com/javaee/6/docs/api/javax/persistence/criteria/CriteriaQuery.html" rel="noreferrer"><code>CriteriaQuery</code> javadoc</a></p>
  
  <p><a href="http://java.sun.com/javaee/6/docs/tutorial/doc/gjivm.html" rel="noreferrer"><code>CriteriaQuery</code> in the Java EE 6 tutorial</a></p>
  
  <p>I would like to count the results of a CriteriaQuery without actually retrieving them. Is that possible, I did not find any such method, the only way would be to do this:</p>
  
  <pre><code>CriteriaBuilder cb = entityManager.getCriteriaBuilder();
  
  CriteriaQuery&lt;MyEntity&gt; cq = cb
          .createQuery(MyEntityclass);
  
  // initialize predicates here
  
  return entityManager.createQuery(cq).getResultList().size();
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>And that can't be the proper way to do it...</p>
  
  <p>Is there a solution?</p>