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?

Possible duplicate of Java SimpleDateFormat always returning January for Month — Anonymous
– Anonymous, Commented Apr 7, 2018 at 10:54
FYI, the troublesome old date-time classes such as java.util.Date, java.util.Calendar, and java.text.SimpleDateFormat are now legacy, supplanted by the java.time classes built into Java 8 and later. See modern correct Answer by Ole V.V. — Basil Bourque
– Basil Bourque, Commented Jul 1, 2018 at 5:59
I sure seen this problem before... Java date format conversion - getting wrong month — user85421
– user85421, Commented Feb 8 at 8:21

Bohemian · Accepted Answer · 2012-03-26 12:55:34Z

99

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!

edited Mar 26, 2012 at 12:55

answered Mar 26, 2012 at 12:50

Bohemian♦

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3 Comments

Shantanu Tomar Over a year ago

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

Sefran2 Over a year ago

@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 Over a year ago

@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).

Mohsen Safari · Accepted Answer · 2013-12-03 10:46:35Z

46

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

edited Dec 3, 2013 at 10:46

Mohsen Safari

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answered Dec 3, 2013 at 9:56

jahir

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1 Comment

Fi Horan Over a year ago

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

Chand Priyankara · Accepted Answer · 2013-02-05 10:18:21Z

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();
    }

kandarp · Accepted Answer · 2012-03-26 13:06:44Z

7

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()));

answered Mar 26, 2012 at 13:06

kandarp

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Comments

Kishan Bheemajiyani · Accepted Answer · 2013-11-11 07:27:50Z

4

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());
            }

answered Nov 11, 2013 at 7:27

Kishan Bheemajiyani

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1 Comment

Ryan Augustine Over a year ago

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

Alfred Ayi-bonte · Accepted Answer · 2015-12-24 07:03:14Z

4

This piece of code helps to convert back and forth

    System.out.println("Date: "+ String.valueOf(new Date()));
    SimpleDateFormat dt = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss");
    String stringdate = dt.format(new Date());
    System.out.println("String.valueOf(date): "+stringdate);

    try {
    Date date = dt.parse(stringdate);
    System.out.println("parse date: "+ String.valueOf(date));
    } catch (ParseException e) {
    e.printStackTrace();
    }

answered Dec 24, 2015 at 7:03

Alfred Ayi-bonte

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Comments

BEN SEBASTIAN · Accepted Answer · 2015-11-19 07:48:18Z

3

you can solve the problem much simple like First convert the the given string to the date object eg:

java.util.Date date1 = new Date("11/19/2015"); 
SimpleDateFormat formatter = new SimpleDateFormat("MMM dd yyyy HH:mma");
String format = formatter.format(date);
System.out.println(format);

answered Nov 19, 2015 at 7:48

BEN SEBASTIAN

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Comments

Anonymous · Accepted Answer · 2018-04-07 11:45:51Z

    DateTimeFormatter dateFormatter = DateTimeFormatter.ofPattern("MM/dd/uuuu");
    System.out.println(LocalDate.parse("08/16/2011", dateFormatter));

Output:

2011-08-16

I am contributing the modern answer. The answer by Bohemian is correct and was a good answer when it was written 6 years ago. Now the notoriously troublesome SimpleDateFormat class is long outdated and we have so much better in java.time, the modern Java date and time API. I warmly recommend you use this instead of the old date-time classes.

What went wrong in your code?

When I parse 08/16/2011 using your snippet, I get Sun Jan 16 00:08:00 CET 2011. Since lowercase mm is for minutes, I get 00:08:00 (8 minutes past midnight), and since uppercase DD is for day of year, I get 16 January.

In java.time too format pattern strings are case sensitive, and we needed to use uppercase MM for month and lowercase dd for day of month.

Question: Can I use java.time with my Java version?

Yes, java.time works nicely on Java 6 and later and on both older and newer Android devices.

In Java 8 and later and on new Android devices (from API level 26, I’m told) the modern API comes built-in.
In Java 6 and 7 get the ThreeTen Backport, the backport of the new classes (ThreeTen for JSR 310; see the links at the bottom).
On (older) Android use the Android edition of ThreeTen Backport. It’s called ThreeTenABP. And make sure you import the date and time classes from org.threeten.bp with subpackages.

Links

Oracle tutorial: Date Time explaining how to use java.time.
Java Specification Request (JSR) 310, where java.time was first described.
ThreeTen Backport project, the backport of java.timeto Java 6 and 7 (ThreeTen for JSR-310).
ThreeTenABP, Android edition of ThreeTen Backport
Question: How to use ThreeTenABP in Android Project, with a very thorough explanation.

Dan Alboteanu · Accepted Answer · 2018-03-08 22:25:30Z

1

String localFormat = android.text.format.DateFormat.getBestDateTimePattern(Locale.getDefault(), "EEEE MMMM d");
return new SimpleDateFormat(localFormat, Locale.getDefault()).format(localMidnight);

will return a format based on device's language. Note that getBestDateTimePattern() returns "the best possible localized form of the given skeleton for the given locale"

answered Mar 8, 2018 at 22:25

Dan Alboteanu

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Comments

Du-Lacoste · Accepted Answer · 2018-07-25 05:25:55Z

1

You have used some type errors. If you want to set 08/16/2011 to following pattern. It is wrong because,

mm stands for minutes, use MM as it is for Months

DD is wrong, it should be dd which represents Days

Try this to achieve the output you want to get ( Tue Aug 16 "Whatever Time" IST 2011 ),

    String date = "08/16/2011"; //input date as String

    SimpleDateFormat simpleDateFormat = new SimpleDateFormat("MM/dd/yyyy"); // date pattern

    Date myDate = simpleDateFormat.parse(date); // returns date object 

    System.out.println(myDate); //outputs: Tue Aug 16 00:00:00 IST 2011

answered Jul 25, 2018 at 5:25

Du-Lacoste

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Comments

Guillermo Solana · Accepted Answer · 2025-02-07 19:30:30Z

0

For example:

if you have a String "Fri Feb 28 00:00:00 UYT 2025".

You can do:

Date date = new SimpleDateFormat("EEE MMM dd HH:mm:ss zzz yyyy", new Locale("en", "en_US")).parse("Fri Feb 28 00:00:00 UYT 2025");

"Locale" depends of "language" of string value, in this case is "en".

answered Feb 7 at 19:30

Guillermo Solana

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2 Comments

Arvind Kumar Avinash Feb 7 at 19:51

Avoid using error-prone java.util and its related date-time and parsing/formatting API. Check the modern answer by Anonymous.

user85421 Feb 7 at 22:40

additionally: 1) the 2nd parameter of the Locale constructor - country - is expected to be "An ISO 3166 alpha-2 country code or a UN M.49 numeric-3 area code.", for example "US"; 2) that (all three) constructor is (are) deprecated, should not be used (since Java 19); 3) input is a different string format

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