SimpleDateFormat

With SimpleDateFormat, you can set your own date patterns. For example, dd/mm/yyyy, mm/dd/yyyy, yyyy-mm-dd, and so on.

The following pattern letters are defined (all other characters from 'A' to 'Z' and from 'a' to 'z' are reserved):

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

( from  Java API doc ) 

 

The more commonly used patterns can be used by a combination of y (representing a year digit), M (representing a month digit) and d (representing a date digit).

Examples of patterns are dd/MM/yyyy, dd-MM-yyyy, MM/dd/yyyy, yyyy-MM-dd.

import  java.text.ParseException;
import  java.text.SimpleDateFormat;
import  java.util.Date;

public class  MainClass  {
   public static  void  main ( String []  args ) {
     String pattern =  "MM/dd/yyyy" ;
     SimpleDateFormat format =  new  SimpleDateFormat ( pattern ) ;
     try  {
       Date date = format.parse ( "12/31/2006" ) ;
       System.out.println ( date ) ;
     }  catch  ( ParseException e ) {
       e.printStackTrace () ;
     }
     // formatting
     System.out.println ( format.format ( new  Date ())) ;
   }
} 

 

Sun Dec  31 00 : 00 : 00  PST  2006
01 / 26 / 2007