Date Formatting using only date and month?

Question

I need to construct a date which will display only day and month example:- 23 Dec . I have day value and month value only but how do I use SimpleDateFormat to construct a formatted date with format like "dd-MMM".How do I modified the below method to return the formatted date?

public String formatDate(String day, String month, String year) {
        // Do something with the date chosen by the user
        SimpleDateFormat df = new SimpleDateFormat("dd-MMM");
    }

Suppose if I call above method like formatDate("11","1","") then it should return me "11 Jan".

Answer 1

This should work:

The year value is set to 0 since you do not have it but you can pass that in to the set method.

public String formatDate(String day, String month, String year) {
  // Do something with the date chosen by the user
  SimpleDateFormat df = new SimpleDateFormat("dd-MMM");

  Calendar c = Calendar.getInstance();
  c.set(0, Integer.parseInt(month)-1, Integer.parseInt(day));
  return df.format(c.getTimeInMillis());

}

Answer 2

tl;dr

MonthDay.of( Month.JANUARY , 23 )
        .toString() 

…or…

MonthDay.of( Month.JANUARY , 23 )
        .format( DateTimeFormatter.ofPattern( "dd MMM" ) ) 

MonthDay

If you want to represent a month and day-of-month without any year, use the MonthDay class. Built just for that purpose.

The standard ISO 8601 format for a month and day is "--MM-DD". Similar to the date format of "YYYY-MM-DD" but with a hyphen replacing the year.

The java.time classes use ISO 8601 formats by default when parsing/generating Strings. So no need to specify a formatting pattern for such strings. For your custom format, we must define a formatter. I suggest sticking with the ISO 8601 formats whenever possible.

MonthDay md = MonthDay.of( 12 , 23 );
DateTimeFormatter f = DateTimeFormatter.ofPattern( "dd-MMM" );
String output = md.format( f );

md.toString(): --12-23

output: 23-Dec

See live code in IdeOne.com.

Your Question contradicts itself, at one point showing a hyphen in your desired format but in another, a SPACE. If you want the SPACE, use DateTimeFormatter.ofPattern( "dd MMM" ).

---

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 the java.time classes.

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 ThreeTenABP project adapts ThreeTen-Backport (mentioned above) for Android specifically.
  • See How to use….

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.