The following code shows how we can convert a string representation of date into java.util.Date object.

To convert a string of date we can use the help from java.text.SimpleDateFormat that extends java.text.DateFormat abstract class.

package org.kodejava.text;

import java.text.DateFormat;
import java.text.ParseException;
import java.text.SimpleDateFormat;
import java.time.LocalDate;
import java.time.format.DateTimeFormatter;
import java.util.Date;

public class ConvertStringToDateExample {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        String pattern = "dd/MM/yyyy";
        String date = "15/09/2021";

        try {
            DateFormat df = new SimpleDateFormat(pattern);
            Date today = df.parse(date);
            System.out.println("Today = " + df.format(today));
        } catch (ParseException e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }

        // Using Java 8 Date and Time
        DateTimeFormatter formatter = DateTimeFormatter.ofPattern(pattern);
        LocalDate localDate = LocalDate.parse(date, formatter);
        System.out.println("Today = " + localDate.format(formatter));
    }
}

And here is the result of our code:

Today = 15/09/2021
Today = 15/09/2021

The example starts by creating an instance of SimpleDateFormat with dd/MM/yyyy format which mean that the date string is formatted in day-month-year sequence.

Finally, using the parse(String source) method we can get the Date instance. Because parse method can throw java.text.ParseException exception if the supplied date is not in a valid format; we need to catch it.

Here are the list of defined patterns that can be used to format the date taken from the Java class documentation.

Letter	Date / Time Component	Examples
G	Era designator	AD
y	Year	1996; 96
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 in week	Tuesday; Tue
a	Am/pm marker	PM
H	Hour in day (0-23)	0
k	Hour in day (1-24)	24
K	Hour in am/pm (0-11)	0
h	Hour in am/pm (1-12)	12
m	Minute in hour	30
s	Second in minute	55
S	Millisecond	978
z	Time zone	Pacific Standard Time; PST; GMT-08:00
Z	Time zone	-0800