Java: Use DB2 Timestamps with Nanoseconds in Java

Sometimes you need to run your unit tests using DB2 TIMESTAMP values in your test data to match specific records. You can’t just use a Date() objekt because you have to specify nanoseconds.

As I couldn’t find any code snippet via Google, this might be helpful for you, dear reader.

Example: You want to check for a timestamp of ‘2006-02-15 12:05:19.861555’ (within quotes, as shown by one of my favourite SQL clients, SQuirrel SQL).

DateFormat formatter = new SimpleDateFormat( "yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss" );
Date theMilliDate  = formatter.parse( "2006-02-15 12:05:19" );
Timestamp timestamp = new Timestamp(theMilliDate.getTime());
// Note the trailing zeros!
timestamp.setNanos(861555000);
// validFrom would be of type java.util.Date
myEntityObjekt.setValidFrom(timestamp);

This – at least – does the trick, if you know of a better solution, please share it 🙂