Question

I am trying to delete a record from a database using the following code in Java

try {
    Statement st = db.con.createStatement();
    con.stmt = st.executeUpdate("DELETE FROM item, WHERE Name=" + textField_name.getText());

however “stmt”, (which is my PreparedStatement initialized in my connection class), is underlined and the code doesn’t compile.

Answer 1

That’s because executeUpdate returns an int, and presumably con.stmt isn’t an int variable.

You shouldn’t write your SQL that way in the first place though (it’s invalid anyway due to the comma after item) – you should use a prepared statement:

PreparedStatement st = db.con.prepareStatement("DELETE FROM item WHERE Name=?");
st.setString(1, textField_name.getText());
int rowsDeleted = st.executeUpdate();

That way you don’t open yourself up to SQL injection attacks.