This is now possible with Spring Data. Check out http://docs.spring.io/spring-data/jpa/docs/current/reference/html/#query-by-example
Person person = new Person();
person.setLastname("Smith");
Example<Person> example = Example.of(person);
List<Person> results = personRepository.findAll(example);
Note that this requires very recent 2016 versions
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework.data</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-data-jpa</artifactId>
<version>1.10.1.RELEASE</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework.data</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-data-commons</artifactId>
<version>1.12.1.RELEASE</version>
</dependency>
see https://github.com/paulvi/com.example.spring.findbyexample