JSF Converter Timestamp

Question

I want to convert my input into a timestamp value.

I have only found a dateconverter in examples. Are there any best practises?

Thank you

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Update:

I want to save a birthday of a user but my backend requires a timestamp value. And I have problems with binding it to my jsf frontend..

Maybe a link to an example would be helful :-)

I tried it as follows:

public void setBday(Date bday) {
            member.setBirthday(new Timestamp(bday.getTime()));
        }
        public Timestamp getBday() {
            return member.getBirthday();
        }

But I get exceptions (strange):

/createMember.xhtml @34,54 value="#{member.bday}": Cannot convert 13.01.83 01:00 of type class java.util.Date to class java.sql.Timestamp

(Is it maybe because of get method?)

Solution

Bind to Date#getTime() instead to get/set the raw timestamp in milliseconds.

<h:inputText value="#{bean.date.time}" />

Or if you want to input/output a human readable date, then just stick to using #{bean.date} and use the standard date converters.

<h:inputText value="#{bean.date}">
    <f:convertDateTime type="date" dateType="short" />
</h:inputText>

In the backend just use Date#getTime() to process the timestamp.

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Update: you shouldn't clutter your model with JDBC specific API. The java.util.Date represents the timestamp. Use java.sql.Timestamp only at that point you're about to persist a java.util.Date in a TIMESTAMP or DATETIME column of your DB.

preparedStatement.setTimestamp(index, new Timestamp(bean.getDate().getTime()));