JdbcTemplate queryForInt/Long is deprecated in Spring 3.2.2. What should it be replaced by?

Question

The queryforInt/queryforLong methods in JdbcTemplate are deprecated in Spring 3.2. I can't find out why or what is considered the best practice to replace existing code using these methods.

A typical method:

int rowCount = jscoreJdbcTemplate.queryForInt(
    "SELECT count(*) FROM _player WHERE nameKey = ? AND teamClub = ?",
    playerNameKey.toUpperCase(),
    teamNameKey.toUpperCase()
);

OK the above method needs to be re-written as follows:

Object[] params = new Object[] { 
   playerNameKey.toUpperCase(), 
   teamNameKey.toUpperCase()
};
int rowCount = jscoreJdbcTemplate.queryForObject(
    "SELECT count(*) FROM _player WHERE nameKey = ? AND teamClub = ?",
    params, Integer.class);

Obviously this deprecation makes the JdbcTemplate class simpler (or does it?). QueryForInt was always a convenience method (I guess) and has been around a long time. Why has it been removed. The code becomes more complicated as a result.

Answer 1

What I think is that somebody realized that the queryForInt/Long methods has confusing semantics, that is, from JdbcTemplate source code you can see its current implementation:

@Deprecated
public int queryForInt(String sql, Object... args) throws DataAccessException {
    Number number = queryForObject(sql, args, Integer.class);
    return (number != null ? number.intValue() : 0);
}

which may lead you to think that if the result set is empty it will return 0, however it throws an exception:

org.springframework.dao.EmptyResultDataAccessException: Incorrect result size: expected 1, actual 0

so the the following implementation is essentially equivalent to the current one:

@Deprecated
public int queryForInt(String sql, Object... args) throws DataAccessException {
    return queryForObject(sql, args, Integer.class);
}

And then the non deprecated code now must be replaced with the ugly:

    queryForObject(sql, new Object { arg1, arg2, ...}, Integer.class);

or this (nicer):

    queryForObject(sql, Integer.class, arg1, arg2, ...);