How do I initialize a java.sql.Date variable?

Question

I'm trying to initialize a variable called startDate using java.sql.Date.

I've tried...

java.sql.date startDate = "02/04/2015"

But it thinks it's a string.

java.sql.date startDate = 02/04/2015

But it thinks it's an int.

java.sql.date startDate = 02-04-2015

But it displays the error "invalid character constant".

How do I properly initialize this variable?

Answer 1

One possible approach is to use a SimpleDateFormat and the java.sql.Date(long) constructor like

DateFormat df = new SimpleDateFormat("MM-dd-yyyy");
java.sql.Date sqlDate = new java.sql.Date(df.parse("02-04-2015").getTime());