Get current date in YYYY-MM-DD format in Java (Android)

Question

I am trying to get a Date object in the format YYYY-MM-DD representing the current system date. Below is my attempt:

Date todayDate = Calendar.getInstance().getTime();
SimpleDateFormat formatter = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-mm-dd");
String todayString = formatter.format(todayDate);

The values are as follows:

todayDate: Mon May 15 16:24:47 GMT+01:00 2017

todayString: 2017-24-15

Having tried this a couple of times I noticed the todayString is not made up of YYYY-MM-DD but YYYY-[minutes][minutes]-DD.

How might I get the current date in the YYYY-MM-DD format?

Solution

Change this:

SimpleDateFormat formatter = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-mm-dd");

to this:

SimpleDateFormat formatter = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd");

mm stands for the minutes, while MM (capitalized) stands for the month

Comments

[petehallw]

@OleV.V. I think it's crazy that this functionality has not been present in Java before version 8... Thanks for the link, I'm reading through it!

[Basil Bourque]

Answering an obviously duplicate Question is not helpful.