Best way to get the date literal?

egervari · **Joined:** Sun Oct 26, 2003 5:05 am **Posts:** 139

I was wondering what is the best way to get a date literal to send to a hibernate query. I figured out one way to do it like this:

Code:

Calendar calendar = Calendar.getInstance();
calendar.set( 2004, 4, 1 );
java.sql.Date start = new java.sql.Date( calendar.getTime().getTime() );

This is kind of bloated. I was think I could move this to a static utility class, something like this:

Code:

java.sql.Date start = DateUtils.getDate( 2004, 4, 1 );

I also thought I could use the date format objects and just take a date and make the correct string. That's probably what the sql Date is doing anyway. In either case, I'm basically making a utility method for it.

How do you guys handle this?[/code]

michael · **Posted:** Thu Jul 01, 2004 9:26 am

In any case, don't use anything else than query.setDate() - don't create any string literals yourself.

egervari · **Joined:** Sun Oct 26, 2003 5:05 am **Posts:** 139

michael wrote:

In any case, don't use anything else than query.setDate() - don't create any string literals yourself.

Hrmm. So you recommend doing all queries through the callback interface rather than using the simpler executeFind* methods? I'm pretty much using those except for when I need to load collections.

egervari · **Joined:** Sun Oct 26, 2003 5:05 am **Posts:** 139

I meant find() methods on the hibernate template in spring. The execute methods were the callback ones. Sorry

christian · **Posted:** Thu Jul 01, 2004 9:39 am

You should never ever pass direct user input to the database, which is likely the case if you create your queries using string manipulation. Search Google for "SQL injection".

michael · **Posted:** Thu Jul 01, 2004 9:44 am

You can use find, but don't pass a String literal to it, if you actually have a Date - always use a date object.

egervari · **Joined:** Sun Oct 26, 2003 5:05 am **Posts:** 139

Actually, I wasn't passing the string literal (I know not to do that!), I was just using the toString on java.sql.date because setDate or new Object[] { myDate } wasn't quite working, but I found it was something else. I'm actually getting back a date that is one month in advance on that calendar object. So I specify 2004/7/1 and I get back 2004/8/1, where 8 is the month.

I guess I should just rephrase my question then, because clearly I don't quite know the best way to go about this. I have two dates specified in user input and I'd like to make 2 date objects, which I can then pass as query parameters (via query or just in an object array). What is the best way going about that?

steve · **Posted:** Fri Jul 02, 2004 1:06 am

If the "month off" happens from javascript, thats a stupid, brandead, assinine, retarded bug in javascript's Date object (do I sound bitter :). If your saying it happens on constructing a java.util.Date instance, I've never seen that.

In general, I've found its best to parse date strings coming from the UI through use of a java.util.text.DateFormatter using a standard format pattern.

Regardless how you build them, once you have the Date instances, use them in HQL like this:

Code:

Date date1 = ...;
Date date2 = ...;
Query query = session.createQuery("from MyObject as myObj where myObj.startDate between :rangeStartDate and :rangeEndDate");
query.setDate("rangeStartDate", date1);
query.setDate("rangeEndDate", date2);
...

michael · **Posted:** Fri Jul 02, 2004 5:28 am

Beware, the month in the calendar.set() method is zero-based, eg

Code:

calendar.set( 2004, 4, 30 );

means 2004-05-30 as a date. I hate that, too.