Question

I’ve been thinking it over, and I’m starting to wonder if this is even possible.

User Perspective:
There’s a table of data, and one column contains a date. The user can type in a search term like dec and get all rows that occurred during December.

Backend: A jqGrid is used for displaying the table. It sends the entered search terms to the server. The server uses the code

Criteria cr = session.createCriteria( DetailedLogEntry.class );
Disjunction disjunction = Restrictions.disjunction();
MatchMode matchMode = MatchMode.ANYWHERE;
disjunction.add( Restrictions.ilike( searchKey.getField(), searchKey.getData(), matchMode ) );
cr.add( disjunction );

to apply the search terms, and where DetailedLogEntry contains a Date variable to represent the database’s TIMESTAMPfield.

Because searchKey.getData() returns a string, comparing it against a date object results in an empty set.

So I guess the question is…is it possible, preferbly through Hibernate, to apply a restriction against a Date object as if it were a String?

Answer 1

That’s not possible. You’d need to use Restrictions.between() and give it an upper and lower date values. You could use SimpleDateFormat to convert from your String values to Date values and then perform the search?

If the user searched for Dec, would you expect all the log entries from December of every year to show up? Can they type in :”1, Dec” and expect to see all the logs from the 1st December for every year? If it is string matching on dates you are looking for, it might be easier to load all the data into your jqGrid and use javascript to filter the table based on the string formatted date values.