Date Formatting Help

[John Park]

Hello all,

I have a really stupid question concerning Date Formatting. It's driving me nuts and I can't seem to figure it out...

The situation is, I have known date (i.e. 06-30-05) and I can set that Date as a constant.

How would i convert a known date into a MM-DD-YY format?

please help,

Thanks in advance,

JP

[Ivo Delver]

im doing it this way

    
    Calendar c = new GregorianCalendar(TimeZone.getTimeZone("Europe/Amsterdam"));
 
    int year = c.get(c.YEAR);
    int month = c.get(c.MONTH) + 1;
    int day = c.get(c.DAY_OF_MONTH);
    int hour = c.get(c.HOUR_OF_DAY);
    int minute = c.get(c.MINUTE);
    int seconds = c.get(c.SECOND);
 
 
    //Date and time
    public String DateTime() {
        String setDateTime = day + "-" + month + "-" + year + " " + hour + ":" + minute + ":" + seconds;
        return setDateTime;
    }

[ July 14, 2006: Message edited by: Ivo Delver ]
[ July 14, 2006: Message edited by: Ivo Delver ]

[Ken Blair]

Of course this would be much easier:

final DateFormat sdf = new SimpleDateFormat("MM-dd-yy");
System.out.println(sdf.format(myDate));

[John Park]

Thanks all for the help.

Ken, one question: what does myDate represent?

final SimpleDateFormat sdf = new SimpleDateFormat();
System.out.println(sdf.format(myDate));

i'm assuming myDate is my member variable?

Thanks,

JP

[Henry Wong]

Originally posted by John Park:
Thanks all for the help.

Ken, one question: what does myDate represent?

final SimpleDateFormat sdf = new SimpleDateFormat();
System.out.println(sdf.format(myDate));

i'm assuming myDate is my member variable?

Thanks,

JP

For Ken's example to work, "myDate" should be a reference to a java.util.Date object.

Henry

[Rene Larsen]

private SimpleDateFormat sdf = new SimpleDateFormat(�MM-dd-yy�);
 
public String getDateAsString(Date date) {
   return sdf.format(date);
}
 
public Date getStringAsDate(String date) {
   return sdf.parse(date));
}

[John Park]

Just to be sure, let me repeat my situation:

I have a known date (06-30-05) that I will be storing as a CONSTANT. I need the date to be in the above format (MM-DD-YY).

Isn't there a Calendar method out there that will convert that string to a date?"

Otherwise, it seems like parsing the string to a date format would be easiest.

Thanks,

JP

[Paul Clapham]

Originally posted by John Park:
Isn't there a Calendar method out there that will convert that string to a date?

No, that's what SimpleDateFormat is for. Calendar is for storing dates and doing calendar-like calculations.

Otherwise, it seems like parsing the string to a date format would be easiest.

Yes, that is what you should do.

[John Park]

Sounds good,

Thanks to everyone for your help!


JP

[John Park]

Hi,

Sorry to "reopen" this case, but isn't it better practice to throw Rene's string parsing code into a try/catch block?

Suggestions?

Thanks,


JP

[Ken Blair]

Only if you want to suppress the exception. Most likely it would be best to document clearly what exceptions may be thrown and then allow the client to handle it. What can you do? Nothing but suppress it and return null. What can the client do? Show the user an error, try a different format, substitute a default value, etc. Let the client decide how to handle invalid dates.