What are the date formats available in SimpleDateFormat class?

Question

Can anybody let me know about the date formats available in SimpleDateFormat class.

I have gone through api but could not find a satisfactory answer.Any help is highly appreciated.

Answer 1

Date and time formats are well described below

SimpleDateFormat (Java Platform SE 7) - Date and Time Patterns

There could be n Number of formats you can possibly make. ex - dd/MM/yyyy or YYYY-'W'ww-u or you can mix and match the letters to achieve your required pattern. Pattern letters are as follow.

• G - Era designator (AD)
• y - Year (1996; 96)
• Y - Week Year (2009; 09)
• M - Month in year (July; Jul; 07)
• w - Week in year (27)
• W - Week in month (2)
• D - Day in year (189)
• d - Day in month (10)
• F - Day of week in month (2)
• E - Day name in week (Tuesday; Tue)
• u - Day number of week (1 = Monday, ..., 7 = Sunday)
• a - AM/PM marker
• H - Hour in day (0-23)
• k - Hour in day (1-24)
• K - Hour in am/pm (0-11)
• h - Hour in am/pm (1-12)
• m - Minute in hour (30)
• s - Second in minute (55)
• S - Millisecond (978)
• z - General time zone (Pacific Standard Time; PST; GMT-08:00)
• Z - RFC 822 time zone (-0800)
• X - ISO 8601 time zone (-08; -0800; -08:00)

To parse:

2000-01-23T04:56:07.000+0000

Use: new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss.SSSZ");

Answer 2

Let me throw out some example code that I got from http://www3.ntu.edu.sg/home/ehchua/programming/java/DateTimeCalendar.html Then you can play around with different options until you understand it.

import java.text.SimpleDateFormat;
import java.util.Date;

public class DateTest {
   public static void main(String[] args) {
       Date now = new Date();

       //This is just Date's toString method and doesn't involve SimpleDateFormat
       System.out.println("toString(): " + now);  // dow mon dd hh:mm:ss zzz yyyy
       //Shows  "Mon Oct 08 08:17:06 EDT 2012"

       SimpleDateFormat dateFormatter = new SimpleDateFormat("E, y-M-d 'at' h:m:s a z");
       System.out.println("Format 1:   " + dateFormatter.format(now));
       // Shows  "Mon, 2012-10-8 at 8:17:6 AM EDT"

       dateFormatter = new SimpleDateFormat("E yyyy.MM.dd 'at' hh:mm:ss a zzz");
       System.out.println("Format 2:   " + dateFormatter.format(now));
       // Shows  "Mon 2012.10.08 at 08:17:06 AM EDT"

       dateFormatter = new SimpleDateFormat("EEEE, MMMM d, yyyy");
       System.out.println("Format 3:   " + dateFormatter.format(now));
       // Shows  "Monday, October 8, 2012"

       // SimpleDateFormat can be used to control the date/time display format:
       //   E (day of week): 3E or fewer (in text xxx), >3E (in full text)
       //   M (month): M (in number), MM (in number with leading zero)
       //              3M: (in text xxx), >3M: (in full text full)
       //   h (hour): h, hh (with leading zero)
       //   m (minute)
       //   s (second)
       //   a (AM/PM)
       //   H (hour in 0 to 23)
       //   z (time zone)
       //  (there may be more listed under the API - I didn't check)

   }

}

Good luck!