How to place a date-time string into a Calendar object?

Question

Possible Duplicate:
How to convert a date String to a Date or Calendar object?

How could I do something like this

GregorianCalendar cal = new GregorianCalendar("2012-08-02 12:04:03");

or

Calendar cal = Calendar.getInstance();
cal.setDateTime("2012-08-02 12:04:03");

NOTE: The code snippets above are not actually possible, I would like to mock that behavior.

Further Clarification

Suppose I have a date and time string like "2012-08-02 12:04:03". Is there an efficient way of getting this information into a Calendar object without manually breaking it up into month, year, and day strings then converting them to integers then calling set(Calendar.HOUR) etc?

Currently, I have a form that takes as input the year, month, hour, day, and so on and I pass those individually into a calendar object but it would be nice if I could use a single date and time string like "2012-08-02 12:04:03"

use this instead joda-time http://joda-time.sourceforge.net/ — NimChimpsky, Sep 27 '12 at 13:03
Downvoting because it's a duplicate? Shame on the culprit. It's not like I can delete the post once people have answered.... — Usman Mutawakil, Sep 27 '12 at 13:18

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Sep 27 '12 at 13:02

1

You have to use SimpleDateFormat which gives you a Date object. With that Date object you can initialize your Calendar

answered Sep 27 '12 at 13:02

Kai

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I know you can use SimpleDateFormat to format the output of Calendar object but how would you use it configure the input? – Usman Mutawakil Sep 27 '12 at 13:06
See the [parse()](http://docs.oracle.com/javase/6/docs/api/java/text/SimpleDateFormat.html#parse%28java.lang.String,%20java.text.ParsePosition%29) method. – Kai Sep 27 '12 at 13:09

score 1 · Accepted Answer · edited Apr 06 '17 at 10:10

1

    String dateString=new SimpleDateFormat("dd/MM/yyyy HH:mm:ss").parse("2012-08-02 12:04:03");
            Calender cal = Calender.getInstance();
            cal.setTime(new SimpleDateFormat("dd/MM/yyyy HH:mm:ss").format(dateString).getTime());

wrap it around try catch though as the parse method would throw ParseException. and study the link provided by @user714965

edited Apr 06 '17 at 10:10

Naveed Ahmad

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answered Sep 27 '12 at 13:05

PermGenError

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score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Sep 27 '12 at 13:15

Use .parse() method to convert the String to Date object:

String dateString=new SimpleDateFormat("dd/MM/yyyy HH:mm:ss").parse("2012-08-02 12:04:03");

getInstance() will create an instance of one of the Subclass of the abstract Calendar class:

Calender cal = Calender.getInstance();

setTime() will take a Date object:

cal.setTime(new SimpleDateFormat("dd/MM/yyyy HH:mm:ss").fomat(dateString).getTime());

How to place a date-time string into a Calendar object?

3 Answers3