tl;dr
LocalDate.now( ZoneId.of( "America/Montreal" ) )
.format(
DateTimeFormatter.ofLocalizedDate( FormatStyle.SHORT )
.withLocale( Locale.CANADA )
)
For January 23, 2016:
23/01/16
See live code in IdeOne.com.
java.time
The accepted Answer by Joshi is correct.
Also, the modern way to do this is with the java.time classes that supplant the troublesome old legacy date-time classes.
DateTimeFormatter
The DateTimeFormatter
class can automatically localize when creating a string that represents a date-time value. Your desired format happens to be that of dates localized to Canada and other locales.
You can specify a custom format if desired. Usually better to let java.time localize.
To localize, specify:
FormatStyle
to determine how long or abbreviated should the string be.
Locale
to determine (a) the human language for translation of name of day, name of month, and such, and (b) the cultural norms deciding issues of abbreviation, capitalization, punctuation, and such.
Example code:
Locale l = Locale.CANADA ;
DateTimeFormatter f =
DateTimeFormatter.ofLocalizedDate( FormatStyle.SHORT )
.withLocale( l ) ;
LocalDate
The LocalDate
class represents a date-only value without time-of-day and without time zone.
A time zone is crucial in determining a date. For any given moment, the date varies around the globe by zone. For example, a few minutes after midnight in Paris France is a new day while still “yesterday” in Montréal Québec.
ZoneId z = ZoneId.of( "America/Montreal" );
LocalDate today = LocalDate.now( z );
To generate a string representing this date value in standard ISO 8601 format, call toString
.
String outputStandard = today.toString();
2016-01-23
To generate a string representing this date value, call format
.
String output = today.format( f );
23/01/16
About java.time
The java.time framework is built into Java 8 and later. These classes supplant the troublesome old legacy date-time classes such as java.util.Date
, Calendar
, & SimpleDateFormat
.
The Joda-Time project, now in maintenance mode, advises migration to java.time.
To learn more, see the Oracle Tutorial. And search Stack Overflow for many examples and explanations. Specification is JSR 310.
Where to obtain the java.time classes?
- Java SE 8 and SE 9 and later
- Built-in.
- Part of the standard Java API with a bundled implementation.
- Java 9 adds some minor features and fixes.
- Java SE 6 and SE 7
- Much of the java.time functionality is back-ported to Java 6 & 7 in ThreeTen-Backport.
- Android
The ThreeTen-Extra project extends java.time with additional classes. This project is a proving ground for possible future additions to java.time. You may find some useful classes here such as Interval
, YearWeek
, YearQuarter
, and more.