Object to date

Question

I am trying to convert a SQL timestamp (mySQL db) to e dd-mm-yyyy format. The problem I do not know how to convert the object ret to a date. This date is formatted to dd-mm-yyyy in the formatDate method.
If someone can help me with the line 'Date out = ..... ret;', or write a new method which helps me to convert the ret object to a date which i can send to formatDate, I would be gratefull.
        public String getdatum(int target) throws DBException, SQLException
          Object ret = getDBSelect().getColumn(SQL_LABEL[target]);
          Date out = ..... ret;
          return massageOutput(formatDate(out));
     public String formatDate(Date in)      
          SimpleDateFormat sdf = new SimpleDateFormat("dd-MM-yyyy");          
          return sdf.format(in);     
     }

Answer 1

Great! Now we're getting somewhere. Using this code I finally get results.
public String formatdate(int target) throws DBException, SQLException         
     Object ret = getDBSelect().getColumn(SQL_LABEL[target]);
     Date out = new Date(Long.parseLong(ret.toString()));
     return massageOutput(convertDate(out));
public String convertDate(Date in)
     SimpleDateFormat sdf =      new SimpleDateFormat("dd-MM-yyyy");
     return sdf.format(in);
}But yes, another problem has occured. It seems that the the out variabele does not get the timestamp correctly. The value it shows says 'Tue Jan 13 03:49:23 CET 1970', while it should be 'Thursday, March 6th 2003, 15:07:14 (GMT)' (<- according to my PHP script).
I suppose unix timestamps in Java are the same as in any other language?
Note:
- System.out.println("OBJECT " +ret); returns 1147483647
- System.out.println("DATE LONG "+ret); returns 1147483647