Java parse date string returns wrong month

Question

I try to parse a date string, but get wrong month, why?

new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-DD", Locale.US).parse("2018-03-08")

Why this returns month as Jan?

Please check screenshot:

Use `dd` not `DD` . The former is for day in month, the latter for day in year . — Arnaud, Mar 08 '18 at 08:37
try new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd", Locale.US).parse("2018-03-08"); — Vishal Sanghani, Mar 08 '18 at 08:40
Also note that calling `setLenient(false)` on your `SimpleDateFormat` before using it, would prevent some attempts to interpret a wrong `String`. In your case attempting to parse the `String` would give a `java.text.ParseException: Unparseable date: "2018-03-08"` . — Arnaud, Mar 08 '18 at 09:45
As an aside consider throwing away the long outmoded and notoriously troublesome `SimpleDateFormat` and friends, and adding [ThreeTenABP](https://github.com/JakeWharton/ThreeTenABP) to your Android project in order to use `java.time`, the modern Java date and time API. It is so much nicer to work with. It will also alleviate your problem: the modern `LocalDate` class parses your `2018-03-08` without any explicit formatter because it is in its default format (ISO 8601). So no way to get the format pattern string wrong. — Ole V.V., Mar 08 '18 at 12:57

score 2 · Accepted Answer · edited Mar 08 '18 at 13:51

This is due to the format you used as "yyyy-MM-DD". The parser will parse in the sequence way:

Your input value is "2018-03-08"
yyyy - will bring to the year 2018
MM - will bring to the month MARCH

But what is DD? It's the number of the days from the beginning of the year. So here it moved back to 8^th day on this year (2018) which means January 8^th.

That's why you are seeing January instead of March.

pandd · Answer 2 · 2018-03-08T13:39:23.410

2

Why not use the java.time API?

LocalDate localDate = LocalDate.parse("2018-03-08");

If you want to convert the LocalDate to a java.util.Date, you can follow this answer.

edited Mar 08 '18 at 13:39

answered Mar 08 '18 at 13:31

pandd

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score 0 · Answer 3 · edited Mar 08 '18 at 09:56

0

You need to use dd instead of DD

Try this :-

new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd", Locale.US).parse("2018-03-08");

edited Mar 08 '18 at 09:56

akhilesh0707

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answered Mar 08 '18 at 08:42

Santanu Sur

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score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Mar 08 '18 at 08:44

0

Looking at this tutorial if you are trying to display the month name you should use 3 M’s and isn’t the standard for the day to be d and not D

I would suggest trying yyyy-MMM-dd

answered Mar 08 '18 at 08:44

Dan

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score 0 · Answer 5 · answered Mar 08 '18 at 08:49

I tried this below and it is working fine by changing the DD to dd

try {
            Date date=  new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd",Locale.US).parse("2018-03-08");

            Calendar calendar= Calendar.getInstance();
            calendar.setTime(date);
            Log.d("MONTH ","" + calendar.get(Calendar.MONTH));



        } catch (ParseException e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }

Java parse date string returns wrong month

5 Answers5

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