Seam Pros - Need your opinion...Date vs Long

[indyjones]

I have a POJO that needs to store date information.

But, I don't want to store the Java type "Date" in my database, I prefer to store my date in the database as Java type "Long".

This is all fine and good, but when i display this POJO, i dont want the Long number displayed for my date, I want a readable date format...

Right now, I have 2 properties on my POJO...

 public Long getDate() { return date; }
 public void setDate(Long date) { this.date = date; }

 public Date getDateDisplay() { return datedisply; }
 public void setDateDisplay(Date datedisplay) { this.datedisplay = datedisplay; }

I use one method to save to the database and the other in my JSF EL calls to display on a page.

Is there a better way of doing this?

Is there a JSF tag to convert a Long into a Date?

Is there a way to have a property on my POJO without saving it to the database? (Right now i have 2 columns with the same data)

Or, am I just doing this wrong?

Thanks

Indy

[goku2]

Use

@Basic
@Temporal(TemporalType.TIMESTAMP)
private Date someDate;

It will store the timestamp and you could use the date class. I think it can work with Calendar too.

If you want the time represented in milliseconds sine the Epoch(1/jan/1970) use the method .getTime() from the Date class.

In your .xhtml use

<h:outputText value="#{someBean.someDate}">
 <s:convertDateTime pattern="dd/MM/yyyy H:mm" />
</h:outputText>

to show the date.

Hope this helps

[matt.drees]

I'm fine with storing dates in the database. But if I had to store longs, I'd look into using Dates in my java object and mapping it to the database using a custom type. I haven't tried it, but I'm pretty sure that'd work.

If you decide to stay with having two properties, mark the Date one @Transient, and it won't show up as a column.

[indyjones]

Thanks for the info guys!!

This helps a ton...

Indy