How to parse month full form string using DateFormat in Java?

Question

I tried this:

DateFormat fmt = new SimpleDateFormat("MMMM dd, yyyy"); Date d = fmt.parse("June 27, 2007"); 

error:

Exception in thread "main" java.text.ParseException: Unparseable date: "June 27, 2007"

The java docs say I should use four characters to match the full form. I'm only able to use MMM successfully with abbreviated months like "Jun" but i need to match full form.

Text: For formatting, if the number of pattern letters is 4 or more, the full form is used; otherwise a short or abbreviated form is used if available. For parsing, both forms are accepted, independent of the number of pattern letters.

https://docs.oracle.com/javase/6/docs/api/java/text/SimpleDateFormat.html

Answer 1

You are probably using a locale where the month names are not "January", "February", etc. but some other words in your local language.

Try specifying the locale you wish to use, for example Locale.US:

DateFormat fmt = new SimpleDateFormat("MMMM dd, yyyy", Locale.US); Date d = fmt.parse("June 27,  2007"); 

Also, you have an extra space in the date string, but actually this has no effect on the result. It works either way.

Answer 2

Just to top this up to the new Java 8 API:

DateTimeFormatter formatter = new DateTimeFormatterBuilder().appendPattern("MMMM dd, yyyy").toFormatter(); TemporalAccessor ta = formatter.parse("June 27, 2007"); Instant instant = LocalDate.from(ta).atStartOfDay().atZone(ZoneId.systemDefault()).toInstant(); Date d = Date.from(instant); assertThat(d.getYear(), is(107)); assertThat(d.getMonth(), is(5)); 

A bit more verbose but you also see that the methods of Date used are deprecated ;-) Time to move on.