Java Date Error

Question

I am getting date in following format, as java string:

Sat Jan 01 00:00:00 CET 2000

i want to convert it to yyyy-MM-dd fromat. For this i am doing:

String strDate = "Sat Jan 01 00:00:00 CET 2001";
SimpleDateFormat sdf = new SimpleDateFormat ("yyyy-MM-dd");
try{
Date parsed = sdf.parse(strDate);
}catch(Exception e){
System.out.println("Exception: " + e.getMessage());
}

But i am getting exception: Unparseable date: "Sat Jan 01 00:00:00 CET 2001"

Please give me some solution for this.

Thank you

Answer 1

The SimpleDateFormat needs to be the input date format, then you can use another SimpleDateFormat to get the appropriate output format, i.e.:

String strDate = "Sat Jan 01 00:00:00 CET 2001";
SimpleDateFormat sdf = new SimpleDateFormat("EEE MMM dd HH:mm:ss z yyyy");
SimpleDateFormat outputDate = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd");
try{
    Date parsed = sdf.parse(strDate);
}
catch(Exception e){
    System.out.println("Exception: " + e.getMessage());
}
System.out.println("Date: " + outputDate.format(parsed));

Answer 2

You need a SimpleDateFormat to parse the existing string and another SimpleDateFormat to format the parsed Date object into the appropriate yyyy-MM-dd string.

You can use applyPattern to change the current pattern in the SimpleDateFormat so you don't have to create a new object.

I'll leave the patterns as an exercise for the student.