With SimpleDateFormat, you can set your own date patterns. For example, dd/mm/yyyy, mm/dd/yyyy, yyyy-mm-dd, and so on.
The following pattern letters are defined (all other characters from 'A' to 'Z' and from 'a' to 'z' are reserved):
Letter Date or Time Component Presentation Examples
G Era designator Text AD
y Year Year 1996; 96
M Month in year Month July; Jul; 07
w Week in year Number 27
W Week in month Number 2
D Day in year Number 189
d Day in month Number 10
F Day of week in month Number 2
E Day in week Text Tuesday; Tue
a Am/pm marker Text PM
H Hour in day (0-23) Number 0
k Hour in day (1-24) Number 24
K Hour in am/pm (0-11) Number 0
h Hour in am/pm (1-12) Number 12
m Minute in hour Number 30
s Second in minute Number 55
S Millisecond Number 978
z Time zone General time zone Pacific Standard Time; PST; GMT-08:00
Z Time zone RFC 822 time zone -0800
(from Java API doc)
The more commonly used patterns can be used by a combination of
y (representing a year digit),
M (representing a month digit) and
d (representing a date digit).
Examples of patterns are dd/MM/yyyy, dd-MM-yyyy, MM/dd/yyyy, yyyy-MM-dd.
import java.text.ParseException;
import java.text.SimpleDateFormat;
import java.util.Date;
public class MainClass {
public static void main(String[] args) {
String pattern = "MM/dd/yyyy";
SimpleDateFormat format = new SimpleDateFormat(pattern);
try {
Date date = format.parse("12/31/2006");
System.out.println(date);
} catch (ParseException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
// formatting
System.out.println(format.format(new Date()));
}
}
Sun Dec 31 00:00:00 PST 2006
01/26/2007