Java Date - Insert into database
Before I answer your question, I'd like to mention that you should probably look into using some sort of ORM solution (e.g., Hibernate), wrapped behind a data access tier. What you are doing appear to be very anti-OO. I admittedly do not know what the rest of your code looks like, but generally, if you start seeing yourself using a lot of Utility classes, you're probably taking too structural of an approach.
To answer your question, as others have mentioned, look into java.sql.PreparedStatement, and use java.sql.Date or java.sql.Timestamp. Something like (to use your original code as much as possible, you probably want to change it even more):
java.util.Date myDate = new java.util.Date("10/10/2009");
java.sql.Date sqlDate = new java.sql.Date(myDate.getTime());
sb.append("INSERT INTO USERS");
sb.append("(USER_ID, FIRST_NAME, LAST_NAME, SEX, DATE) ");
sb.append("VALUES ( ");
sb.append("?, ?, ?, ?, ?");
sb.append(")");
Connection conn = ...;// you'll have to get this connection somehow
PreparedStatement stmt = conn.prepareStatement(sb.toString());
stmt.setString(1, userId);
stmt.setString(2, myUser.GetFirstName());
stmt.setString(3, myUser.GetLastName());
stmt.setString(4, myUser.GetSex());
stmt.setDate(5, sqlDate);
stmt.executeUpdate(); // optionally check the return value of this call
One additional benefit of this approach is that it automatically escapes your strings for you (e.g., if were to insert someone with the last name "O'Brien", you'd have problems with your original implementation).
PreparedStatement
You should definitely use a PreparedStatement. (Tutorial)
That way you can invoke:
pstmt.setDate( 1, aDate );
The JDBC driver will do date-time handling appropriate for your particular database.
Also, a PreparedStatement stops any SQL injection hacking attempts – very important! (humor)
It should look like this:
SimpleDateFormat format = new SimpleDateFormat( "MM/dd/yyyy" ); // United States style of format.
java.util.Date myDate = format.parse( "10/10/2009" ); // Notice the ".util." of package name.
PreparedStatement pstmt = connection.prepareStatement(
"INSERT INTO USERS ( USER_ID, FIRST_NAME, LAST_NAME, SEX, DATE ) " +
" values (?, ?, ?, ?, ? )");
pstmt.setString( 1, userId );
pstmt.setString( 3, myUser.getLastName() );
pstmt.setString( 2, myUser.getFirstName() ); // please use "getFir…" instead of "GetFir…", per Java conventions.
pstmt.setString( 4, myUser.getSex() );
java.sql.Date sqlDate = new java.sql.Date( myDate.getTime() ); // Notice the ".sql." (not "util") in package name.
pstmt.setDate( 5, sqlDate );
And that's it, the JDBC driver will create the right SQL syntax for you.
Retrieving
When retrieving a Date object, you can use a SimpleDateFormat to create a formatted string representation of the date-time value.
Here is one quick example line, but search StackOverflow for many more.
String s = new SimpleDateFormat("dd/MM/yyyy").format( aDate );
Granted, PreparedStatement will make your code better, but to answer your question you need to tell the DBMS the format of your string representation of the Date. In Oracle (you don't name your database vendor) a string date is converted to Date using the TO_DATE() function:
INSERT INTO TABLE_NAME(
date_column
)values(
TO_DATE('06/06/2006', 'mm/dd/yyyy')
)
The Answer by OscarRyz is correct, and should have been the accepted Answer. But now that Answer is out-dated.
java.time
In Java 8 and later, we have the new java.time package (inspired by Joda-Time, defined by JSR 310, with tutorial, extended by ThreeTen-Extra project).
Avoid Old Date-Time Classes
The old java.util.Date/.Calendar, SimpleDateFormat, and java.sql.Date classes are a confusing mess. For one thing, j.u.Date has date and time-of-day while j.s.Date is date-only without time-of-day. Oh, except that j.s.Date only pretends to not have a time-of-day. As a subclass of j.u.Date, j.s.Date inherits the time-of-day but automatically adjusts that time-of-day to midnight (00:00:00.000). Confusing? Yes. A bad hack, frankly.
For this and many more reasons, those old classes should be avoided, used only a last resort. Use java.time where possible, with Joda-Time as a fallback.
LocalDate
In java.time, the LocalDate class cleanly represents a date-only value without any time-of-day or time zone. That is what we need for this Question’s solution.
To get that LocalDate object, we parse the input string. But rather than use the old SimpleDateFormat class, java.time provides a new DateTimeFormatter class in the java.time.format package.
String input = "01/01/2009" ;
DateTimeFormatter formatter = DateTimeFormatter.ofPattern( "MM/dd/yyyy" ) ;
LocalDate localDate = LocalDate.parse( input, formatter ) ;
JDBC drivers compliant with JDBC 4.2 or later can use java.time types directly via the PreparedStatement::setObject and ResultSet::getObject methods.
PreparedStatement pstmt = connection.prepareStatement(
"INSERT INTO USERS ( USER_ID, FIRST_NAME, LAST_NAME, SEX, DATE ) " +
" VALUES (?, ?, ?, ?, ? )");
pstmt.setString( 1, userId );
pstmt.setString( 3, myUser.getLastName() );
pstmt.setString( 2, myUser.getFirstName() ); // please use "getFir…" instead of "GetFir…", per Java conventions.
pstmt.setString( 4, myUser.getSex() );
pstmt.setObject( 5, localDate ) ; // Pass java.time object directly, without any need for java.sql.*.
But until you have such an updated JDBC driver, fallback on using the java.sql.Date class. Fortunately, that old java.sql.Date class has been gifted by Java 8 with a new convenient conversion static method, valueOf( LocalDate ).
In the sample code of the sibling Answer by OscarRyz, replace its "sqlDate =" line with this one:
java.sql.Date sqlDate = java.sql.Date.valueOf( localDate ) ;
if you are using mysql .. you can save date as "2009-12-31" for example.
update person set birthday_date = '2009-12-31'
but i prefer to use jdbc although you have to create java.sql.Date ...
*Date is kind of evil in this world ... :)