What is JDBC Clob data type? how to store and read data from it?

CLOB stands for Character Large Object in general, an SQL Clob is a built-in datatype and is used to store large amount of textual data. Using this datatype, you can store data up to 2,147,483,647 characters.
The java.sql.Clob interface of the JDBC API represents the CLOB datatype. Since the Clob object in JDBC is implemented using an SQL locator, it holds a logical pointer to the SQL CLOB (not the data).
MYSQL database provides support for this datatype using four variables.
TINYTEXT: A CLOB type with a maximum of 28-1 (255) characters.
TINYTEXT: A CLOB type with a maximum of 28-1 (255) characters.
TEXT: A CLOB type with a maximum of 216-1 (65535) characters.
TEXT: A CLOB type with a maximum of 216-1 (65535) characters.
MEDIUMTEXT: A CLOB type with a maximum of 224-1 (16777215) characters.
MEDIUMTEXT: A CLOB type with a maximum of 224-1 (16777215) characters.
LONGTEXT: A CLOB type with a maximum of 232-1 (4294967295 ) characters.
LONGTEXT: A CLOB type with a maximum of 232-1 (4294967295 ) characters.
To store Clob datatype to database, using JDBC program follow the steps given below
You can connect to a database using the getConnection() method of the DriverManager class.
Connect to the MySQL database by passing the MySQL URL which is jdbc:mysql://localhost/sampleDB (where sampleDB is the database name), username and password as parameters to the getConnection() method.
String mysqlUrl = "jdbc:mysql://localhost/sampleDB";
Connection con = DriverManager.getConnection(mysqlUrl, "root", "password");
Create a PreparedStatement object using the prepareStatement() method of the Connection interface. To this method pass the insert query (with place holders) as a parameter.
PreparedStatement pstmt = con.prepareStatement("INSERT INTO Technologies(Name,
Type, Article ) VALUES (?, ?, ?)");
Set the values to the place holders using the setter methods of the PreparedStatement interface. Chose the methods according to the datatype of the column. For Example if the column is of VARCHAR type use setString() method and if it is of INT type you can use setInt() method.
And if it is of Clob type you can set value to it using the setCharacterStream() or setClob() methods. To these methods pass an integer variable representing the parameter index and an object of the Reader class as parameters.
pstmt.setString(1, "JavaFX");
pstmt.setString(2, "Java Library");
FileReader reader = new FileReader("E:\\images\\javafx.txt");
pstmt.setClob(3, reader);
pstmt.execute();
Execute the above created PreparedStatement object using the execute() method of the PreparedStatement interface.
The getClob() method of the ResultSet interface accepts an integer representing the index of the column (or, a String value representing the name of the column) and retrieves the value at the specified column and returns it in the form of a Clob object.
while(rs.next()) {
   System.out.println(rs.getString("Name"));
   System.out.println(rs.getString("Type"));
   Clob clob = rs.getClob("Article");
}
The getCharacterStream() method of the Clob Interface retrieves the contents of the current Clob object and returns as a Reader object.
Using the getClob() method you can get the contents of the Clob as a Reader object and create text file with the retrieved contents, using the write() method of the FileOutputStream object.
Reader r = clob.getCharacterStream();
char cbuf[] = new char[r.read()];
r.read(cbuf);
FileOutputStream outPutStream = new
FileOutputStream("E:\\images\\clob_output"+i+".txt");
outPutStream.write(cbuf.toString().getBytes());
Following example creates a table in MySQL database with a Clob datatype in it. Inserts large text data from a file to it. Retrieves the text back and stores it in another text file.
import java.io.FileReader;
import java.io.FileWriter;
import java.io.Reader;
import java.sql.Clob;
import java.sql.Connection;
import java.sql.DriverManager;
import java.sql.PreparedStatement;
import java.sql.ResultSet;
import java.sql.Statement;
public class ClobExample {
   public static void main(String args[]) throws Exception {
      //Registering the Driver
      DriverManager.registerDriver(new com.mysql.jdbc.Driver());
      //Getting the connection
      String mysqlUrl = "jdbc:mysql://localhost/sampleDB";
      Connection con = DriverManager.getConnection(mysqlUrl, "root", "password");
      System.out.println("Connection established......");
      //Creating a table
      Statement stmt = con.createStatement();
      stmt.execute("CREATE TABLE Technologies( Name VARCHAR(255), Type VARCHAR(255), Article LONGTEXT)");
      System.out.println("Table Created......");

      //Inserting values
      String query = "INSERT INTO Technologies(Name, Type, Article ) VALUES (?, ?, ?)";
      PreparedStatement pstmt = con.prepareStatement(query);
      pstmt.setString(1, "JavaFX");
      pstmt.setString(2, "Java Library");
      FileReader reader = new FileReader("E:\\images\\javafx.txt");
      pstmt.setClob(3, reader);
      pstmt.execute();
      pstmt.setString(1, "CoffeeScript");
      pstmt.setString(2, "Scripting Language");
      reader = new FileReader("E:\\images\\coffeescript.txt");
      pstmt.setClob(3, reader);
      pstmt.execute();
      pstmt.setString(1, "Cassandra");
      pstmt.setString(2, "NoSQL Database");
      reader = new FileReader("E:\\images\\cassandra.txt");
      pstmt.setClob(3, reader);
      pstmt.execute();
      //Retrieving the data
      ResultSet rs = stmt.executeQuery("select * from Technologies");
      int j = 0;
      System.out.println("Contents of the table are: ");
      while(rs.next()) {
         System.out.println(rs.getString("Name"));
         Clob clob = rs.getClob("Article");
         Reader r = clob.getCharacterStream();
         String filePath = "E:\\Data\\clob_output"+j+".txt";
         FileWriter writer = new FileWriter(filePath);
         int i;
         while ((i=r.read())!=-1) {
            writer.write(i);
         }
         writer.close();
         System.out.println(filePath);
         j++;
      }
   }
}
Connection established......
Table Created......
Contents of the table are:
JavaFX
Java Library
E:\images\clob_output1.txt
CoffeeScript
Scripting Language
E:\images\clob_output2.txt
Cassandra
NoSQL Database
E:\images\clob_output3.txt