How to convert String to Date in Java - SimpleDateFormat Example

SimpleDateFormat in Java can be used to convert String to Date in Java. java.text.SimpleDateFormat is an implementation of DateFormat which defines a date pattern and can convert a particular String which follows that pattern into Date in Java.This is the second part of the article on java.util.Date and String in Java. In the first part, we have seen How to convert Date to String in Java. SimpleDateFormat accepts a String in any date format e.g. yyyyMMdd is a date pattern and  20110924 is a String in that format. Now you want to create a java.util.Date object from this String.

In this Java tutorial, we will see list steps to convert String to Date in Java and then we will see different examples of SimpleDateFormat with different date patterns e.g. ddMMyy or dd-MM-yyyy.

Though converting String to Date is quite easy using SimpleDateFormat, but you need to remember that SimpleDateFormat is not thread-safe, which means you can not share the same instance of SimpleDateFormat between multiple threads.

Avoid storing SimpleDateFormat in static variable and if you want to safely share or reuse SimpleDateFormat, you need to make it thread-safe. One way is to use ThreadLocal variable in Java to make SimpleDateFormat thread-safe, as shown in this example.

Steps to Convert String into Date

Converting String to date is rather a common scenario because you may get a date in a String format from any file or xml document. SimpleDateFormat in Java also supports time information e.g. HH for an hour , mm for minutes, and SS for seconds.

Here are steps we need to use for conversion in Java:

1) Create a SimpleDateFormat object with a date pattern e.g. dd-MM-yyyy. here d denotes the day of the month, M is for the month of year and yyyy is the year in four-digit e.g. 2012. Java documentation of SimpleDateFormat has a complete list of date and time patterns specified.

2) Call parse() method of SimpleDateFormat and cast the result into Date object and you are done. parse() method of SimpleDateFormat throws ParseException so you need to either throw it or you can provide handling of this exception. Let’s see some SimpleDateFormat Example of converting a string to date in Java to get hold of the concept.

SimpleDateFormat Example in Java

import java.text.DateFormat;

import java.text.ParseException;

import java.text.SimpleDateFormat;

import java.util.Date;

/**

 * Java program to convert String to Date in Java. This example

 * use SimpleDateFormat for String to Date conversion, you can also

 * use JODA date and time API for that.

 *

 * @author Javin

 */

public class StringToDateExample{

public static void main(String args[]) throws ParseException{

DateFormat formatter = null;

Date convertedDate = null;

// Creating SimpleDateFormat with yyyyMMdd format e.g."20110914"

String yyyyMMdd = "20110914";

        formatter =new SimpleDateFormat("yyyyMMdd");

        convertedDate =(Date) formatter.parse(yyyyMMdd);

System.out.println("Date from yyyyMMdd String in Java : " + convertedDate);

//convert string to date with ddMMyyyy format example "14092011"

String ddMMyyyy = "14092011";

        formatter =new SimpleDateFormat("ddMMyyyy");

        convertedDate =(Date) formatter.parse(ddMMyyyy);

System.out.println("Date from ddMMyyyy String in Java : " + convertedDate);

//String to Date conversion in Java with dd-MM-yyyy format e.g. "14-09-2011"

String dd_MM_YY = "14-09-2011";

        formatter =new SimpleDateFormat("dd-MM-yyyy");

        convertedDate =(Date) formatter.parse(dd_MM_YY);

System.out.println("Date from dd-MM-yyyy String in Java : " + convertedDate);

// dd/MM/yyyy date format for example "14/09/2011"

String stringDateFormat = "14/09/2011";

        formatter =new SimpleDateFormat("dd/MM/yyyy");

        convertedDate =(Date) formatter.parse(stringDateFormat);

System.out.println("Date from dd/MM/yyyy String in Java : " + convertedDate);

//parsing string into date with dd-MMM-yy format e.g. "14-Sep-11"

//MMMM denotes three letter month String e.g. Sep

String ddMMMyy = "14-Sep-11";

        formatter =new SimpleDateFormat("dd-MMM-yy");

        convertedDate =(Date) formatter.parse(ddMMMyy);

System.out.println("Date from dd-MMM-yy String in Java : " + convertedDate);

//convert string to Date of dd-MMMM-yy format e.g. "14-September-11"

//MMMM denotes full month String e.g. September

String dMMMMyy = "14-September-11";

        formatter =new SimpleDateFormat("dd-MMMM-yy");

        convertedDate =(Date) formatter.parse(dMMMMyy);

System.out.println("Date from dd-MMMM-yy String in Java : " + convertedDate);

//SimpleDateFormat also allows to include time information e.g. dd-MM-yyyy:HH:mm:SS

String date = "15-09-2011:23:30:45";

        formatter =new SimpleDateFormat("dd-MM-yyyy:HH:mm:SS");

        convertedDate =(Date) formatter.parse(date);

System.out.println("Date from dd-MM-yyyy:HH:mm:SS String in Java : "

+ convertedDate);

   }

}

Output:

Date from yyyyMMdd String in Java : Wed Sep 14 00:00:00 PST 2011

Date from ddMMyyyy String in Java : Wed Sep 14 00:00:00 PST 2011

Date from dd-MM-yyyy String in Java : Wed Sep 14 00:00:00 PST 2011

Date from dd/MM/yyyy String in Java : Wed Sep 14 00:00:00 PST 2011

Date from dd-MMM-yy String in Java : Wed Sep 14 00:00:00 PST 2011

Date from dd-MMMM-yy String in Java : Wed Sep 14 00:00:00 PST 2011

Date from dd-MM-yyyy:HH:mm:SS String in Java : Thu Sep 15 23:30:00 PST 2011

You can check the java doc of DateFormat for all the symbols it supports and what is meaning for that but here I am listing some common points which is worth remembering while working with SimpleDateFormat for conversion.

1) Confusion between “m” and “M”, small case “m” represent minutes while “M” represents Month Also “d” represent date in month while “D” represent Day of the week. This is the most common cause of error while converting String to date and backdate to a string. In short,ddMMyy is not equal to DDmmyy.

2) SimpleDateFormat is not thread-safe. They are not synchronized so its better you create separate SimpleDateFormat for each thread to avoid any race condition while parsing.

Java is very rich in terms of date-time support and it also provides a convenient way to convert string to date which is very handy while working in java application.

Further Learning

Complete Java Masterclass

Java Fundamentals: The Java Language

Java In-Depth: Become a Complete Java Engineer!

Related Java tutorials

Key differences between Vector and ArrayList in java

How to deal with UnSupportedClassVersionError in Java

ArrayList tutorial with examples on Java 1.5 generics

Key points while set classpath in Linux UNIX and Windows

10 examples of grep command in UNIX

How volatile keyword works in Java

10 tips for better logging in Java