How to handle null database fields with Java
CREATE DATABASE `db-instance`; USE `db-instance`; CREATE TABLE Job ( `id` INT NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT, `name` VARCHAR(255), `description` TEXT, PRIMARY KEY(id) ) ENGINE=INNODB; CREATE TABLE Person ( `id` INT NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT, `name` VARCHAR(255), `address` VARCHAR(255), `job-id` INT, PRIMARY KEY (ID), FOREIGN KEY (`job-id`) REFERENCES Job(`id`) ) ENGINE=INNODB;
The above SQL commands will create a Job table and a Person table in the db-instance database.
Steps to interact with the database through JDBC
- Load the database driver.
- Provide a username and password pair and name of database instance to get a Connection object.
- Create a Statement object from the Connection object.
- Use the Statement object to execute SQL commands to interact with the database.
Sample code to interact with the database through the JDBC api.
Connection dbConnection = null; try { // Load the MySQL driver Class.forName("com.mysql.jdbc.Driver"); // Connect to the database instance (db-instance) // @ localhost with a user account (identified by user and password). dbConnection = DriverManager.getConnection("jdbc:mysql://localhost/" + "db-instance", "user", "password"); // Execute a SQL select statement on the database. Statement sqlStat = dbConnection.createStatement(); ResultSet sqlResult = sqlStat.executeQuery("SELECT * FROM Person"); // Traverse sqlResult while(sqlResult .next()) { // Get the value of job-id int jobId = sqlResult.getInt("job-id"); System.out.println("Job ID: " + jobId); } // end while } catch (ClassNotFoundException cnfe) { System.out.println(cnfe.getMessage()); } catch (SQLException sqle) { System.out.println(sqle); } finally { // Free up resources used if (dbConnection != null) { try { dbConnection.close(); } catch (SQLException sqle) { // Swallow any exceptions when closing the connection. } // end try-catch block } // end if } // end try-catch block
What is wrong with the above code?
Based on the database schema shown earlier, we can see that the job-id column of the Person table can contain null values. However, in the above coding, we are using the getInt()
method of the ResultSet
class to retrieve a the job-id value. The int data type being one of Java’s primitive types is not able to store the null. On my machine, the getInt()
method returns 0 when it hits a null on the job-id.
How to solve the problem?
There are two ways to detect whether a null value is read.
1) Use the wasNull()
method provided by the ResultSet class.
// Traverse sqlResult while(sqlResult.next()) { // Get the value of job-id int jobId = sqlResult.getInt("job-id"); // if jobId is supposed to be null if (sqlResult.wasNull()) { System.out.println("Job ID: null"); } else { System.out.println("Job ID: " + jobId); } } // end while
2) Use the getObject()
method instead of the getInt()
method to retrieve the value of the job-id column. By using the getObject()
method, we are able to get null values if there any appears.
// Traverse sqlResult while(sqlResult.next()) { Object jobId = sqlResult.getObject("job-id"); if (jobId == null) { System.out.println("Job ID: null"); } else { System.out.println("Job ID: " + jobId); } // end if (jobId == null) } // end while
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