Java Date conversion

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Today we have some useful code for you – the Java Date Conversion example. SimpleDateFormat and it’s parse and format methods are used to convert String to Date (parse method) and Date to String (format method). Here are the examples.

ITCuties – Java Date Conversion

Java Date Conversion – String to Date

This example converts String object to Date object. Two String dates are created here – one is the English language date and other one is the Polish language date. Each String is converted to a Date object using SimpleDateFormat.parse method, and then the resulting objects are compared.

try {

   // EXAMPLE 1: from String to Date

   System.out.println("EXAMPLE 1: from String to Date"+"\n");

           

   // English language date

   String stringDateEN = "10:00 April 1, 2013";

   String stringDatePL = "10:00 Kwiecień 1, 2013";    // Change this to your language and see how it works :)

       

   // Parse the English date

   Date dateEN = new SimpleDateFormat("HH:mm MMMM d, yyyy", Locale.ENGLISH).parse(stringDateEN);

   System.out.println("\t"+"dateEN: " + dateEN);

           

   // Parse your date, system default (in our case PL - polish) - no Locale is provided

   Date datePL = new SimpleDateFormat("HH:mm MMMM d, yyyy").parse(stringDatePL);

   System.out.println("\t"+"datePL: " + datePL);

           

   // Are they the same?

   System.out.println("\t"+"dateEN == datePL " + dateEN.equals(datePL));

   } catch (ParseException e) {

   e.printStackTrace();

}

   

output:

EXAMPLE 1: from String to Date

   dateEN: Mon Apr 01 10:00:00 CEST 2013

   datePL: Mon Apr 01 10:00:00 CEST 2013

   dateEN == datePL true

Java Date Conversion – Date to String

To convert from Date to String use SimpleDateFormat.format method. In our example we display default formatted current date and then we format it match HH:mm:ss MMMM d, yyyy pattern.

try {

   // EXAMPLE 2: from Date to String

   System.out.println("EXAMPLE 2: from Date to String"+"\n");

   // Now!

   Date currentDate = new Date();

           

   System.out.println("\t"+"currentDate: " + currentDate);

   System.out.println("\t"+"currentDate: " + new SimpleDateFormat("HH:mm:ss MMMM d, yyyy").format(currentDate));

} catch (ParseException e) {

   e.printStackTrace();

}

output:

EXAMPLE 2: from Date to String

   currentDate: Thu Mar 28 18:07:58 CET 2013

   currentDate: 18:07:58 marzec 28, 2013

Download this sample code here.

This code is available on our GitHub repository as well.