How to convert a String to a Date using SimpleDateFormat?

Question

I have this code snippet:

DateFormat formatter1;
formatter1 = new SimpleDateFormat("mm/DD/yyyy");
System.out.println((Date)formatter1.parse("08/16/2011"));

When I run this, I get this as the output:

Sun Jan 16 00:10:00 IST 2011

I expected:

Tue Aug 16 "Whatever Time" IST 2011

I mean to say I am not getting the month as expected. What is the mistake?

Solution 1

Try this:

new SimpleDateFormat("MM/dd/yyyy")

• MM is "month" (not mm)
• dd is "day" (not DD)

It's all in the javadoc for SimpleDateFormat

FYI, the reason your format is still a valid date format is that:

• mm is "minutes"
• DD is "day in year"

Also, you don't need the cast to Date... it already is a Date (or it explodes):

public static void main(String[] args) throws ParseException {
    System.out.println(new SimpleDateFormat("MM/dd/yyyy").parse("08/16/2011"));
}

Output:

Tue Aug 16 00:00:00 EST 2011

Voila!

Solution 2

m - min M - Months

Letter  Date or Time Component  Presentation    Examples
G       Era designator          Text                AD
y       Year                    Year                1996; 96
M       Month in year           Month               July; Jul; 07
w       Week in year            Number              27
W       Week in month           Number              2
D       Day in year             Number              189
d       Day in month            Number              10
F       Day of week in month    Number              2
E       Day in week             Text                Tuesday; Tue
a       Am/pm marker            Text                PM
H       Hour in day (0-23)      Number              0
k       Hour in day (1-24)      Number              24
K       Hour in am/pm (0-11)    Number              0
h       Hour in am/pm (1-12)    Number              12
m       Minute in hour          Number              30
s       Second in minute        Number              55
S       Millisecond             Number              978
z       Time zone               General time zone   Pacific Standard Time; PST; GMT-08:00
Z       Time zone               RFC 822 time zone   -0800 

Solution 3

Use the below function

/**
     * Format a time from a given format to given target format
     * 
     * @param inputFormat
     * @param inputTimeStamp
     * @param outputFormat
     * @return
     * @throws ParseException
     */
    private static String TimeStampConverter(final String inputFormat,
            String inputTimeStamp, final String outputFormat)
            throws ParseException {
        return new SimpleDateFormat(outputFormat).format(new SimpleDateFormat(
                inputFormat).parse(inputTimeStamp));
    }

Sample Usage is as Following:

    try {
        String inputTimeStamp = "08/16/2011";

        final String inputFormat = "MM/dd/yyyy";
        final String outputFormat = "EEE MMM dd HH:mm:ss z yyyy";

        System.out.println(TimeStampConverter(inputFormat, inputTimeStamp,
                outputFormat));

    } catch (ParseException e) {
        // TODO Auto-generated catch block
        e.printStackTrace();
    }

Solution 4

String newstr = "08/16/2011";
SimpleDateFormat format1 = new SimpleDateFormat("MM/dd/yyyy");
SimpleDateFormat format = new SimpleDateFormat("EE MMM dd hh:mm:ss z yyyy");
Calendar c = Calendar.getInstance();
c.setTime(format1.parse(newstr));
System.out.println(format.format(c.getTime()));

Solution 5

Very Simple Example is.

SimpleDateFormat simpleDateFormat = new SimpleDateFormat("dd-MM-yyyy");
                Date date = new Date();
                Date date1 = new Date();
            try {
                System.out.println("Date1:   "+date1);
                System.out.println("date" + date);

                date = simpleDateFormat.parse("01-01-2013");
                date1 = simpleDateFormat.parse("06-15-2013");

                System.out.println("Date1 is:"+date1);
                System.out.println("date" + date);

            } catch (Exception e) {
                System.out.println(e.getMessage());
            }

View more solutions

Comments

[Shantanu Tomar]

No luck.. :( Its still Jan.. No matter what value i give to MM it always displays me Jan. Date and year working fine..

[Sefran2]

@Bohemian: If I use the same format (MM/dd/yyyy) with a wrong date (i.e. 02/40/2013), the parsing doesn't fail. I obtain 12 March 2013. Why? Is there a way to prevent this behaviour?

[Bohemian]

@Cricket the value is successfully parsed as the 40th day in February, simply rolling over to a day in March to accommodate the out of bounds value. To prevent this, call setLenient(false); on the format object before parsing (leniency is true by default).

[Fi Horan]

Thanks for the table, really helpful having it on this page

[Ryan Augustine]

"06-15-2013" should be replaced with "15-06-2013"