Codessentials

The following code shows how we can convert a string representation of date into java.util.Date object.

To convert a string into a date we can use java.text.SimpleDateFormat that extends the java.text.DateFormat abstract class.

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

 public class StringToDate
 {
     public static void main(String[] args)
     {
         DateFormat df = new SimpleDateFormat("dd/MM/yyyy");
 
         try
         {
             Date today = df.parse("10/12/2008");   
                     System.out.println("Today = " + df.format(today));
         } catch (ParseException e)
         {
             e.printStackTrace();
         }
     }
 }
 

This is the list of defined patterns that can be used to format the date.

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