Question

I have created an SQLiteOpenHelper subclass to store reminders.
I create a table in this class as follows:

public static final String TABLE = "Reminders";
public static final String ID = "id";
public static final String COMPLETE = "complete";
public static final String PRIORITY = "priority";
public static final String DATE = " alarmdate";
public static final String TITLE = "title";
public static final String NOTES = "notes";

@Override
public void onCreate(SQLiteDatabase db) {
    String create = "CREATE TABLE " + TABLE + "(\n" 
            + ID + " INTEGER PRIMARY KEY, \n" 
            + COMPLETE + " INTEGER DEFAULT 0, \n" 
            + PRIORITY + " INTEGER DEFAULT 1, \n"
            + DATE + " CHAR(21) DEFAULT NULL, \n"
            + TITLE + " TEXT NOT NULL, \n" 
            + NOTES + " TEXT DEFAULT NULL \n"
            + ");";
    db.execSQL(create);
}

The database is created fine and I am able to add entries normally.

The problem is that, when I want to retrieve a row from the database, cursor.getColumnIndex(DATE) returns -1, while it returns the correct indexes for the other fields:

//Method of the helper class
public Reminder getReminder(int _id) {
    Reminder r;

    SQLiteDatabase db = getReadableDatabase();
    String query = String
            .format("SELECT * FROM %s WHERE ID=%d", TABLE, _id);
    Cursor cursor = db.rawQuery(query, null);

    cursor.moveToFirst();

    if (cursor.isAfterLast())
        return null;

    boolean complete = (cursor.getInt(cursor.getColumnIndex(COMPLETE)) != 0);
    int priority = cursor.getInt(cursor.getColumnIndex(PRIORITY));
    String dateS = cursor.getString(cursor.getColumnIndex(DATE)); //cursor.getColumnIndex(DATE) returns -1;

    //etc...
    cursor.close();

It’s quite annoying, as getColumnIndex() returns a valid index for all the other fields.

Even more, calling cursor.getString(3) instead of cursor.getString(cursor.getColumnIndex(DATE)), I get the date value correctly.

What might be the cause of this and how could I fix it?

Answer 1

Try removing the leading space from " alarmdate".

If that doesn’t do it, try changing CHAR(21) to TEXT, which means exactly the same as far as SQLite is concerned.