Postgres Pro
Downloads
Home   >   mailing lists

Thread: inserting an apostrophe

inserting an apostrophe

From
Peter Choe
Date:
i am trying to add a record of a name.  the name has an apostrophe (O'Neil).

i am doing this through a servlet and wrote the code to use
PreparedStatement.

when i do:

...
PrepareStatement pstmt = con.prepareStatement("INSERT INTO directory
(name, phone) VALUES (?,?)");
pstmt.setString(1, name);
pstmt.setString(2, phone);
pstmt.executeUpdate();
...

i get the following error:

java.sql.SQLException: ERROR:  parser: parse error at or near "NEIL" at character 47

    at org.postgresql.core.QueryExecutor.execute(QueryExecutor.java:94)
    at org.postgresql.Connection.ExecSQL(Connection.java:398)
    at org.postgresql.jdbc2.Statement.execute(Statement.java:130)
    at org.postgresql.jdbc2.Statement.executeQuery(Statement.java:54)

i thought that if i use the setString() method of the prepared
statement, it would automatically escape the apostrophe.

it only seems to be doing it on INSERT.  with UPDATE it seems to behave
as it should (escape the character).

if i enter the record from psql, it works fine.

i am using postgres 7.2 on a freebsd 4.3 platform and jdk1.3.1

Peter Choe

Re: inserting an apostrophe

From
Ron
Date:
Peter Choe wrote:
> i am trying to add a record of a name.  the name has an apostrophe
> (O'Neil).
>
> i am doing this through a servlet and wrote the code to use
> PreparedStatement.
>
> when i do:
>
> ...
> PrepareStatement pstmt = con.prepareStatement("INSERT INTO directory
> (name, phone) VALUES (?,?)");
> pstmt.setString(1, name);
> pstmt.setString(2, phone);
> pstmt.executeUpdate();
> ...
>
We do this all the time (pg 7.3, java 1.4) without any problems. The
only problem I see with this snippet is the lack of a terminating
semicolon on your insert statement (after (?,?)).


> i get the following error:
>
> java.sql.SQLException: ERROR:  parser: parse error at or near "NEIL" at
> character 47
>
>     at org.postgresql.core.QueryExecutor.execute(QueryExecutor.java:94)
>     at org.postgresql.Connection.ExecSQL(Connection.java:398)
>     at org.postgresql.jdbc2.Statement.execute(Statement.java:130)
>     at org.postgresql.jdbc2.Statement.executeQuery(Statement.java:54)
>
> i thought that if i use the setString() method of the prepared
> statement, it would automatically escape the apostrophe.
>
> it only seems to be doing it on INSERT.  with UPDATE it seems to behave
> as it should (escape the character).
>
> if i enter the record from psql, it works fine.
>
> i am using postgres 7.2 on a freebsd 4.3 platform and jdk1.3.1
>
> Peter Choe
>
>
>
> ---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
> TIP 1: subscribe and unsubscribe commands go to majordomo@postgresql.org
>

Re: inserting an apostrophe

From
Scott Lamb
Date:
On Tuesday, Sep 9, 2003, at 10:28 America/Chicago, Ron wrote:

> Peter Choe wrote:
>> i am trying to add a record of a name.  the name has an apostrophe
>> (O'Neil).
>> i am doing this through a servlet and wrote the code to use
>> PreparedStatement.
>> when i do:
>> ...
>> PrepareStatement pstmt = con.prepareStatement("INSERT INTO directory
>> (name, phone) VALUES (?,?)");
>> pstmt.setString(1, name);
>> pstmt.setString(2, phone);
>> pstmt.executeUpdate();
>> ...
> We do this all the time (pg 7.3, java 1.4) without any problems. The
> only problem I see with this snippet is the lack of a terminating
> semicolon on your insert statement (after (?,?)).

None is necessary; that's a statement separator and it's only expecting
one statement. (In fact, some databases' JDBC and/or ODBC drivers fail
if you _do_ put in a semicolon.)

Peter, I see nothing wrong with that code at all. And I've also
inserted many records containing apostrophes without problems. What
version of the JDBC drivers are you using? In particular, the ones
shipped with the database aren't necessarily the best available, even
at the time that version of the database was released. Try downloading
the freshest ones from http://jdbc.postgresql.org/.

Scott