String to java.sql.Date

Question

I realize this has been asked a lot. I did actually look. I've spent hours looking around and trying to figure this out. I'm supposed to be making a program that stores what amounts to a list of appointments in a database, with a description, date, start time, and end time. It has to take input from the user to add or cancel appointments, so as far as I know that means I need to convert a string to a date.

These are my imports: import java.io.File; import java.io.IOException; import java.sql.Connection; import java.sql.Date; import java.sql.PreparedStatement; import java.sql.ResultSet; import java.sql.ResultSetMetaData; import java.sql.SQLException; import java.sql.Time; import java.text.DateFormat; import java.text.ParseException; import java.text.SimpleDateFormat; import java.util.ArrayList; import java.util.Scanner;

As you can see, no java.util.Date there. Here is the bit where I'm getting the error:

private static java.sql.Date getDay()
{
    Scanner in = new Scanner(System.in);
    String input;
    Date apptDay = null;
    DateFormat df = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy/MM/dd");
    java.sql.Date sqlDate;
    System.out.println("\nPlease enter the date of the appointment, format: yyyy/mm/dd");
    while(apptDay == null)
    {
        try
        {
            input = in.next();
            apptDay = (Date) df.parse(input);
        }
        catch(ParseException e)
        {
            System.out.println("Please enter a valid date! Format is yyyy/mm/dd");
        }
    }
    sqlDate = new Date(apptDay.getTime());
    return sqlDate;
}

I've added java.sql.Dates to it and mucked about with it a bunch trying to get it to work, but it's still giving me this:

Exception in thread "main" java.lang.ClassCastException: java.util.Date cannot be cast to java.sql.Date at Calendar.getDay(Calendar.java:47)

Any ideas on what I'm doing wrong or how to make this work would be very much appreciated.

Edit: I thought perhaps it would help if I added the bit of code that is calling this so maybe it will be more clear how I am trying to use it, so here is the addAppointment() method, so you can see where getDay() is being called and where it's going.

public static void addAppointment() throws SQLException
{
    //get the info
    String desc = getDesc();
    java.sql.Date apptDay = getDay();
    Time[] times = getTime();
    Time startTime = times[0];
    Time endTime = times[1];
    int key;

    Connection conn = SimpleDataSource.getConnection(); //connect to the database

    try
    {
        PreparedStatement max = conn.prepareStatement("SELECT MAX(ID) FROM Calendar");
        ResultSet result = max.executeQuery();
        key = result.getInt("ID") + 1; 
        PreparedStatement stat = conn.prepareStatement(
                "INSERT INTO Calendar " +
                "VALUES (?, ?, ?, ?, ?)"); 
        stat.setInt(1, key);
        stat.setString(2, desc); 
        stat.setDate(3, apptDay);
        stat.setTime(4, startTime);
        stat.setTime(5, endTime);
        stat.execute();
        System.out.println("\nAppointment added!\n");
    }
    finally
    {
        conn.close(); //finished with the database
    }
}

Answer 1

It would be much simpler to change the input format to yyyy-MM-dd and use java.sql.Date.valueOf(String date) method which converts a string in the above format to a java.sql.Date value directly.