Parsing zero-based month strings in java

Question

I am trying to parse a String that looks like:

2015, 2, 31, 17, 0, 1

so i figured I'll use

SimpleDateFormat("yyyy, MM, dd, hh, mm, ss")

but it assumed the months are 1-based. In this case the month (2) is March. How can i tell SimpleDateFormat or any other class to parse with zero-based months?

is there a reason you cannot just add one to the month immediately before formatting it with the date format? That would seem like it would solve the problem. — Davis Broda, Apr 08 '15 at 15:15
There are no placeholders for 0-based month in SimpleDateFormat, so you need to change month explicitly or create a date using Calendar. — Alex Salauyou, Apr 08 '15 at 15:16
@DavisBroda: How would you expect that to work with the example given, which would be parsed as "February 31st" (and thus either adjusted or failing to parse). — Jon Skeet, Apr 08 '15 at 15:17
@DavisBroda I am doing comparisons in java before sending the strings along to a javascript environment (which uses zero-based months), that's why I can't change the strings. — JonatanSJ, Apr 08 '15 at 15:20
@JonSkeet Thinking it through in more detail, my vague idea would not work. It was based on a misunderstanding of what the question was asking. Thank you for pointing that out. — Davis Broda, Apr 08 '15 at 16:02

score 4 · Accepted Answer · edited Apr 09 '15 at 08:41

4

Use Calendar:

String[] yourString = "2015, 2, 31, 17, 0, 1".split(",");

Calendar c = new GregorianCalendar();
c.set(Calendar.YEAR, Integer.valueOf(yourString[0]));
c.set(Calendar.MONTH, Integer.valueOf(yourString[1]));
c.set(Calendar.DAY_OF_MONTH, Integer.valueOf(yourString[2]));
c.set(Calendar.HOUR_OF_DAY, Integer.valueOf(yourString[3]));
c.set(Calendar.MINUTE, Integer.valueOf(yourString[4]));
c.set(Calendar.SECOND, Integer.valueOf(yourString[5]));

edited Apr 09 '15 at 08:41

JonatanSJ

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answered Apr 08 '15 at 15:15

Jordi Castilla

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Which overload of `set` is that using? (You want `Integer.parseInt` calls there...) – Jon Skeet Apr 08 '15 at 15:17
Yeah I figured I could "parse" the string manually, but I had hoped there would be a better way =). – JonatanSJ Apr 08 '15 at 15:22

score 0 · Answer 2 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:22

0

One solution i can see increase one month with

Date newDate = DateUtils.addMonths(new Date(), 1);

With calendar

Calendar cal = Calendar.getInstance(); 
cal.add(Calendar.MONTH, 1);

By default months are 0 based index. see

Why is January month 0 in Java Calendar?

Why are months off by one with Java SimpleDateFormat?

edited May 23 '17 at 12:22

Community

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answered Apr 08 '15 at 15:18

M Sach

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Parsing zero-based month strings in java

2 Answers2