Calendar date to yyyy-MM-dd format in java

Question

A Java Date is a container for the number of milliseconds since January 1, 1970, 00:00:00 GMT.

When you use something like System.out.println(date), Java uses Date.toString() to print the contents.

The only way to change it is to override Date and provide your own implementation of Date.toString(). Now before you fire up your IDE and try this, I wouldn't; it will only complicate matters. You are better off formatting the date to the format you want to use (or display).

Java 8+

LocalDateTime ldt = LocalDateTime.now().plusDays(1);
DateTimeFormatter formmat1 = DateTimeFormatter.ofPattern("yyyy-MM-dd", Locale.ENGLISH);
System.out.println(ldt);
// Output "2018-05-12T17:21:53.658"

String formatter = formmat1.format(ldt);
System.out.println(formatter);
// 2018-05-12

Prior to Java 8

You should be making use of the ThreeTen Backport

The following is maintained for historical purposes (as the original answer)

What you can do, is format the date.

Calendar cal = Calendar.getInstance();
cal.add(Calendar.DATE, 1);
SimpleDateFormat format1 = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd");
System.out.println(cal.getTime());
// Output "Wed Sep 26 14:23:28 EST 2012"

String formatted = format1.format(cal.getTime());
System.out.println(formatted);
// Output "2012-09-26"

System.out.println(format1.parse(formatted));
// Output "Wed Sep 26 00:00:00 EST 2012"

These are actually the same date, represented differently.

Your code is wrong. No point of parsing date and keep that as Date object.

You can format the calender date object when you want to display and keep that as a string.

Calendar cal = Calendar.getInstance();
cal.add(Calendar.DATE, 1);
Date date = cal.getTime();             
SimpleDateFormat format1 = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd");          
String inActiveDate = null;
try {
    inActiveDate = format1.format(date);
    System.out.println(inActiveDate );
} catch (ParseException e1) {
    // TODO Auto-generated catch block
    e1.printStackTrace();
}

java.time

The answer by MadProgrammer is correct, especially the tip about Joda-Time. The successor to Joda-Time is now built into Java 8 as the new java.time package. Here's example code in Java 8.

When working with date-time (as opposed to local date), the time zone in critical. The day-of-month depends on the time zone. For example, the India time zone is +05:30 (five and a half hours ahead of UTC), while France is only one hour ahead. So a moment in a new day in India has one date while the same moment in France has “yesterday’s” date. Creating string output lacking any time zone or offset information is creating ambiguity. You asked for YYYY-MM-DD output so I provided, but I don't recommend it. Instead of ISO_LOCAL_DATE I would have used ISO_DATE to get this output: 2014-02-25+05:30

ZoneId zoneId = ZoneId.of( "Asia/Kolkata" );
ZonedDateTime zonedDateTime = ZonedDateTime.now( zoneId );

DateTimeFormatter formatterOutput = DateTimeFormatter.ISO_LOCAL_DATE; // Caution: The "LOCAL" part means we are losing time zone information, creating ambiguity.
String output = formatterOutput.format( zonedDateTime );

Dump to console…

System.out.println( "zonedDateTime: " + zonedDateTime );
System.out.println( "output: " + output );

When run…

zonedDateTime: 2014-02-25T14:22:20.919+05:30[Asia/Kolkata]
output: 2014-02-25

Joda-Time

Similar code using the Joda-Time library, the precursor to java.time.

DateTimeZone zone = new DateTimeZone( "Asia/Kolkata" );
DateTime dateTime = DateTime.now( zone );
DateTimeFormatter formatter = ISODateTimeFormat.date();
String output = formatter.print( dateTime );

ISO 8601

By the way, that format of your input string is a standard format, one of several handy date-time string formats defined by ISO 8601.

Both Joda-Time and java.time use ISO 8601 formats by default when parsing and generating string representations of various date-time values.

java.util.Date object can't represent date in custom format instead you've to use SimpleDateFormat.format method that returns string.

String myString=format1.format(date);

public static void main(String[] args) {
    Calendar cal = Calendar.getInstance();
    cal.set(year, month, date);
    SimpleDateFormat format1 = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy MM dd");
    String formatted = format1.format(cal.getTime());
    System.out.println(formatted);
}

In order to parse a java.util.Date object you have to convert it to String first using your own format.

inActiveDate = format1.parse(  format1.format(date)  );

But I believe you are being redundant here.

Calendar cal = Calendar.getInstance();
cal.add(Calendar.DATE, 7);
Date date = c.getTime();
SimpleDateFormat ft = new SimpleDateFormat("MM-dd-YYYY");
JOptionPane.showMessageDialog(null, ft.format(date));

This will display your date + 7 days in month, day and year format in a JOption window pane.