How do I convert string of time to time object?

By Wayan in Core API, Util Package 1 Comment

You want to convert a string representing a time into a time object in Java. As we know that Java represents time information in a class java.util.Date, this class keep information for date and time.

Now if you have a string of time like 15:30:18, you can use a SimpleDateFormat object to parse the string time and return a java.util.Date object. The pattern of the string should be passed to the SimpleDateFormat constructor. In the example below the string is formatted as hh:mm:ss (hour:minute:second).

package org.kodejava.util;

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

public class StringToTimeExample {
    public static void main(String[] args) {        
        // A string of time information
        String time = "15:30:18";

        // Create an instance of SimpleDateFormat with the specified
        // format.
        DateFormat sdf = new SimpleDateFormat("hh:mm:ss");
        try {
            // To get the date object from the string just called the 
            // parse method and pass the time string to it. This method 
            // throws ParseException if the time string is invalid. 
            // But remember as we don't pass the date information this 
            // date object will represent the 1st of january 1970.
            Date date = sdf.parse(time);            
            System.out.println("Date and Time: " + date);
        } catch (Exception e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
    }
}

The code snippet above print the following output:

Date and Time: Thu Jan 01 15:30:18 CST 1970

How do I convert Date to String?

By Wayan in Core API, Text Package 1 Comment 
package org.kodejava.text;

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

public class DateToString {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        // Create an instance of SimpleDateFormat used for formatting
        // the string representation of date (day/month/year)
        String pattern = "dd/MM/yyyy";
        DateFormat df = new SimpleDateFormat(pattern);

        // Get the date today using Calendar object.
        Date today = Calendar.getInstance().getTime();

        // Using DateFormat format method we can create a string
        // representation of a date with the defined format.
        String reportDate = df.format(today);

        // Print what date is today!
        System.out.println("Report Date: " + reportDate);

        // Using Java 8.
        // Creates a DateTimeFormatter using the ofPattern() method. Get
        // the current date by calling the .now() method of LocalDate.
        // To convert to string use the format() method of the LocalDate
        // and pass the formatter object as argument.
        DateTimeFormatter formatter = DateTimeFormatter.ofPattern(pattern);
        LocalDate now = LocalDate.now();
        reportDate = now.format(formatter);
        System.out.println("Report Date: " + reportDate);
    }
}

How do I convert String to Date object in Java?

By Wayan in Core API, Text Package 0 Comment

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