Format Date according to locale and then get the date part

Question

What I want to achieve is to convert a date in format yyyyMMdd to locale format i.e yyyy/MM/dd or dd/MM/yyyy etc. I am not interested in the time part, I just require date.

The function would take string date and return a string date in locale format.

What I currently have is:

dateFormat = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyyMMdd", Locale.getDefault());
convertedDate = dateFormat.parse("20120521");

Everything that I have tried after that either return me a long string with time and GMT etc, or the same string that I passed to the function.

Have you tried `DateFormat.getDateInstance(DateFormat.SHORT).format(convertedDate)`? — MadProgrammer, May 23 '14 at 08:03
Is the output that you are looking for some substring of what you are getting? — merlin2011, May 23 '14 at 08:03

score 5 · Accepted Answer · answered May 23 '14 at 08:03

It sounds like you've already got the parsing part sorted - that's entirely separate from the formatting part.

For formatting, I suspect you want:

DateFormat localeFormat = DateFormat.getDateInstance(DateFormat.MEDIUM, locale);
String text = localeFormat.format(convertedDate);

... experiment with SHORT, MEDIUM, LONG and FULL to see which one meets your needs best, but I suspect it'll be SHORT or MEDIUM.

(You can omit the second argument to getDateInstance and it will use the default locale, but personally I'd advise including it explicitly for clarity.)

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered May 23 '14 at 08:03

You want to use the DateFormat built in types

DateFormat df = DateFormat.getDateInstance(DateFormat.Short, Locale.getDefault()));

As per the Javadocs

Use getDateInstance to get the normal date format for that country. There are other static factory methods available. Use getTimeInstance to get the time format for that country. Use getDateTimeInstance to get a date and time format. You can pass in different options to these factory methods to control the length of the result; from SHORT to MEDIUM to LONG to FULL. The exact result depends on the locale, but generally:

SHORT is completely numeric, such as 12.13.52 or 3:30pm MEDIUM is longer, such as Jan 12, 1952 LONG is longer, such as January 12, 1952 or 3:30:32pm FULL is pretty completely specified, such as Tuesday, April 12, 1952 AD or 3:30:42pm PST.

score 1 · Answer 3 · edited May 23 '17 at 11:57

1

Here is an answer to your question: How can I format date by locale in Java?

an example:

DateFormat df = DateFormat.getDateInstance(DateFormat.SHORT, yourLocale);
String formattedDate = df.format(yourDate);

Also if you have to do a lot with Dates, consider using Joda: Java, getting Date without time

edited May 23 '17 at 11:57

Community

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answered May 23 '14 at 08:12

Dime

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score 1 · Answer 4 · answered Jul 01 '21 at 21:09

java.time

The java.util Date-Time API and their formatting API, SimpleDateFormat are outdated and error-prone. It is recommended to stop using them completely and switch to the modern Date-Time API^*.

Solution using java.time, the modern Date-Time API:

import java.time.LocalDate;
import java.time.format.DateTimeFormatter;
import java.time.format.FormatStyle;
import java.util.Locale;

public class Main {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        // A sample date string
        String strDate = "20210630";

        DateTimeFormatter dtfInput = DateTimeFormatter.ofPattern("uuuuMMdd", Locale.ENGLISH);

        LocalDate date = LocalDate.parse(strDate, dtfInput);

        System.out.println(date.format(getShortDateFormatterForLocale(Locale.getDefault())));
        System.out.println(date.format(getShortDateFormatterForLocale(Locale.GERMANY)));
        System.out.println(date.format(getShortDateFormatterForLocale(Locale.US)));
    }

    static DateTimeFormatter getShortDateFormatterForLocale(Locale locale) {
        return DateTimeFormatter.ofLocalizedDate(FormatStyle.SHORT).localizedBy(locale);
    }
}

Output on my system in the UK:

30/06/2021
30.06.21
6/30/21

ONLINE DEMO

Learn more about the modern Date-Time API from Trail: Date Time.

^{* For any reason, if you have to stick to Java 6 or Java 7, you can use ThreeTen-Backport which backports most of the java.time functionality to Java 6 & 7. If you are working for an Android project and your Android API level is still not compliant with Java-8, check Java 8+ APIs available through desugaring and How to use ThreeTenABP in Android Project.}

Format Date according to locale and then get the date part

4 Answers4

java.time