
Now that you've seen a simple example of how this Java SimpleDateFormat Date to String conversion works, lets take a look at a real world example of how you might convert a Date to a String, using an array (or List) of possible String date formatting patterns. Bonus: Using an array of patterns in a SimpleDateFormat Date to String conversion If the SimpleDateFormat.parse method can parse the given String, it converts the String to a Date objectĪgain, just to drill this point home, the date format we're expecting (" MM/dd/yyyy") must match the format we're given (as it does in ""), otherwise the parse method will throw a ParseException.If the SimpleDateFormat.parse method can't parse the given String, it will throw a ParseException.Attempt to parse a String that is supposed to contain a date in the format we expect.Craete a SimpleDateFormat instance, giving it the expected format.execution will come here if the String that is givenĪs you can see from that example, the steps to convert from a given Java String to Date using SimpleDateFormat are:

(2) give the formatter a String that matches the SimpleDateFormat pattern

SimpleDateFormat formatter = new SimpleDateFormat(expectedPattern) this is the format/pattern we're expecting to receive. (1) create a SimpleDateFormat object with the desired format. Public class SimpleDateFormatStringToDate * Uses a String pattern to define the expected date format. * Java SimpleDateFormat - convert a Java String to a Date
Java convert string to date from different formats how to#
Here’s the source code for a complete SimpleDateFormat example that demonstrates how to convert from a given formatted Java String to a Date object: SimpleDateFormat: Java String to Date conversion In an earlier example I showed how to use the Java SimpleDateFormat class to convert from a Date to a String, but you can also use the SimpleDateFormat class to convert in the opposite direction, from a given Java String to a Date object. Print(formatter4.date(from: string) ? "Unknown date")ĭate(from:) returns an optional Date because it might be given a string containing an invalid value, so that code uses nil coalescing to make sure there’s a default value printed.Summary: This is a Java SimpleDateFormat (date formatting) example, showing how to convert a String to a Date. That will print something like “20:32 Wed, ”.įinally, this attempts to convert a string to a date let string = "20:32 Wed, "įormatter4.dateFormat = "HH:mm E, d MMM y" Third, this converts the same date to a date and time string using a custom date format: let formatter3 = DateFormatter()įormatter3.dateFormat = "HH:mm E, d MMM y" That will print something like “20:27:32” or “8:27:32pm” depending on the user’s locale. Second, this converts the same date to a medium time string using timeStyle: let formatter2 = DateFormatter() That will print something like “” depending on the user’s locale.


Converting a Date instance to a string using one of the built-in date formats.There are four primary ways you’re going to use it: If you want to get a string from a Date, Apple’s DateFormatter class has everything you need: you can get short dates, long dates, dates with times, and can even go the opposite way to give you a Date from a string. How to convert dates and times to a string using DateFormatter
