inserting an apostrophe

Started by Peter Choeover 22 years ago3 messagesgeneral
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#1Peter Choe
choepete@mindspring.com

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

#2Ron St-Pierre
rstpierre@syscor.com
In reply to: Peter Choe (#1)
Re: inserting an apostrophe

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 (?,?)).

Show quoted text

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

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#3Scott Lamb
slamb@slamb.org
In reply to: Ron St-Pierre (#2)
Re: inserting an apostrophe

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