What does “if (rs.next())” mean?

Question

I am currently getting the error,

java.sql.SQLException: Method 'executeQuery(String)' not allowed on prepared statement.

because I am using

PreparedStatement stmt = conn.prepareStatement(sql);

and also had

ResultSet rs = stmt.executeQuery(sql);

in my code.

I now need to remove the ResultSet line but that leaves me with having to deal with the following code:

if (rs.next()) {
    messages.add(ActionMessages.GLOBAL_MESSAGE, new ActionMessage("login.successful"));
    request.getSession(true).setAttribute("USERNAME", rs.getString("USERNAME"));
    request.getSession(true).setAttribute("BALANCE", rs.getString("BALANCE"));
    request.setAttribute("msg", "Logged in successfully");

I'm not sure I completely understand what

 if (rs.next())

does. Could someone explain this code to me? If I have a better understanding of that I believe I'll have a better idea on how to deal using the PreparedStatement results with the logic being used for rs. Also any help to deal with changing that logic would be greatly appreciated too.

Answer 1

The next() moves the cursor froward one row from its current position in the resultset. so its evident that if(rs.next()) means that if the next row is not null (means if it exist), Go Ahead.

Now w.r.t your problem,

ResultSet rs = stmt.executeQuery(sql);  //This is wrong
                                  ^       

note that executeQuery(String) is used in case you use a sql-query as string.

Whereas when you use a PreparedStatement, use executeQuery() which executes the SQL query in this PreparedStatement object and returns the ResultSet object generated by the query.

Solution :

Use : ResultSet rs = stmt.executeQuery();