Getting the current date in your model layer

Besides the standard way of getting the current date as a String, one could come across the need of inserting in a database table column of date datatype. Thus, the well known code snippet won't be suitable:

 DateFormat dateFormat = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy/MM/dd HH:mm:ss");
 
 java.util.Date date = new java.util.Date();
 
 String datetime = dateFormat.format(date);
 
 System.out.println("Current Date Time : " + datetime);
 
In case you use ADF business components for your Model project, you get the 
current date in a slightly different way. Consider for example the following code snippet,

from an adf business components, employees entity object: 

import oracle.jbo.domain.Date;
...

              

protected void doDML(int operation, TransactionEvent e) {

                if (operation == DML_UPDATE) {

    ...

               histStartDate = row.getEndDate();

              /*Check whether end date equals current date*/

              if (histStartDate.equals(new Date(Date.getCurrentDate()))){

                  System.out.println("End date equals current date!");

                  }

      
In case you need to convert  oracle.jbo.domain.Date to java.util.Date, please consult this:

http://forums.oracle.com/forums/thread.jspa?threadID=2185902&tstart=15

or

http://www.ecotronics.ch/webdesign/javadate.htm
  

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Finally, in case you prefer EJB's for your Model project instead, you might consider the following example:

/*Typical current date for DB inserts */

java.util.Date today = new java.util.Date();

java.sql.Date bidDate = new java.sql.Date(today.getTime());

/* public void setBidDate(Date bidDate)*/

newBid.setBidDate(bidDate);

Which is in a sense, the most paradox way of all, since in order to get the current date, you actually need to call getTime()!

References

More help about: using timestamps
http://download.oracle.com/javase/1.4.2/docs/api/java/text/SimpleDateFormat.html