How to get hibernate to store a date? - mysql

Question

I have a Spring / Hibernate project and I am trying to store a date into the database but it's not working. It must be something stupid but I have no idea what I am doing wrong.
Here is my code:
user.setFailedPasswordAnswerAttemptCount(0);
user.setLastLoginDate(new Date());
user.setIsOnline(true);
The other two variables (failedPasswordAnswerAttemptCount and isOnline) are getting written to the database without issue. I have also tried it with just passing a java.util.Date instead of a java.sql.Timestamp...same result. Here is how the property is defined on the user object:
private Date lastLoginDate;
#Temporal(TemporalType.TIMESTAMP)
#Column(name="last_login_date")
public Date getLastLoginDate() {
return this.lastLoginDate;
}
public void setLastLoginDate(Date lastLoginDate) {
this.lastLoginDate = lastLoginDate;
}
Here is the column definition:
`last_login_date` datetime DEFAULT NULL
Any help? I don't even know what else to look for as this should be working.
Some more detail about the error: No errors or strange messages in the hibernate log. The hibernate log is showing a parameterized query but it isn't telling me what it is actually writing. It looks like it's not updating the column at all. In other words, if there is already a date there it doesn't change, or if it is null it doesn't change.
Update: I have looked at the logs and it looks like hibernate does write the proper data, but then immediately writes the incorrect data again. I see the following entry in the log:
11:15:12.280 [http-bio-8080-exec-26] TRACE o.h.e.def.AbstractSaveEventListener - detached instance of: com.hi.model.User
11:15:12.280 [http-bio-8080-exec-26] TRACE o.h.e.def.DefaultMergeEventListener - merging detached instance
And right after that I see it putting the old value back in for the lastLoginDate.

Answer 1

Why are you using
Date date = new Date();
user.setLastLoginDate(new Timestamp(date.getTime()));
and not just this?
user.setLastLoginDate(new Date());
First - You may not want to use Date and Timestamp at the same time.(e.g. for collections, etc)
There are some classes in the Java platform libraries that do extend an instantiable
class and add a value component. For example, java.sql.Timestamp
extends java.util.Date and adds a nanoseconds field. The equals implementation
for Timestamp does violate symmetry and can cause erratic behavior if
Timestamp and Date objects are used in the same collection or are otherwise intermixed.
The Timestamp class has a disclaimer cautioning programmers against
mixing dates and timestamps. While you won’t get into trouble as long as you
keep them separate, there’s nothing to prevent you from mixing them, and the
resulting errors can be hard to debug. This behavior of the Timestamp class was a
mistake and should not be emulated. (Bloch, Effective Java, 2nd Ed.)
Second - I checked your examples, and it works fine for me on mysql-connector(5.1.21) / hibernate (4.0.1)
I prepared simple test project with arquillian integration test(You need to prepare jboss before running it):
https://github.com/rchukh/StackOverflowTests/tree/master/13803848
If you can provide some more information it might help - hibernate version, mysql version, mysql engine(MyISAM, InnoDB, etc.)
Otherwise it is possible that this is just a misconfiguration.

Answer 2

I found the problem. I am refactoring some code and it looks like I was doing this:
//get user object
User user = getUser();
//call a function which modifies user
functionModifiesUser();
//modify user
user.blah = blah;
entityManager.merge(user);
So the parent function had a stale copy of the user object when I tried to save it. Actually, removing the merge statement was enough to fix it. But I have refactored the code to put all this in one place.

Answer 3

Setting the column last_login_date as timestamp should work, at least works for me.