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