How to know the Data-type of column?

[Sangram Jo]

Hi Everybody

We are writing a generalized function to display data in a tabular form fetched from DB. Almost function we've written. But now we are facing a problem with columns having Date as data-type. We want Date in DD/MM/YY & it is giving in YYYY/MM/DD format. So is their any way to know the Data type of column from ResultSet?. Because we are passing ResultSet to the function.

Thanking You

[Sangram Jo]

Hi

I got answer for the same.

rs.getColumnType(colIndex) returns data type of column.
like
BIT
TINYINT
BIGINT
LONGVARBINARY
VARBINARY
BINARY
LONGVARCHAR
NULL
CHAR
NUMERIC
DECIMAL
INTEGER
SMALLINT
FLOAT
REAL
DOUBLE
VARCHAR
DATE
TIME
TIMESTAMP
OTHER

Thanks

[Paul Sturrock]

Assuming you handle date data types as Date objects in your JDBC code and PreparedStatements rather than Statements then the format of the date doesn't matter and you won't need to check the column type (which is going to add lots of unnecesary conditional code to support every possible "date" data type across all databases).

[Jeanne Boyarsky]

Sangram,
Take a look at SimpleDateFormat for the actual date display. Usually I would recommend against using metadata, but your function is generic and needs it. The conditional logic shouldn't be too bad though. If the field is a Date/Time/TimeStamp, then you can call getDate() and use SimpleDateFormat. This minimizes your dependence on the specific database as much as possible.

[Avi Abrami]

Sangram,
From the information you have supplied, it looks like you are using the "toString()" method of class "java.sql.Date" to display date values retrieved from the database. Note that you may not be doing this directly. If you are displaying the value in a "JTable", then the "JTable" is doing this for you.

The "toString()" method of "java.sql.Date" does, in fact, display dates in "YYYY/MM/DD" format.

As Jeanne suggests, you can use the "java.text.SimpleDateFormat" to change the format. But in any case, if you are using a "JTable", you may need to override its behaviour. You may need to make a custom cell renderer, or a custom "TableModel" or a custom "ColumnModel".

Good Luck,
Avi.