Class SimpleDateFormat
SimpleDateFormat is a concrete class for formatting and parsing dates in a locale-sensitive manner. It allows for formatting (date → text), parsing (text → date), and normalization.
SimpleDateFormat allows you to start by choosing any user-defined patterns for date-time formatting. However, you are encouraged to create a date-time formatter with either getTimeInstance , getDateInstance , or getDateTimeInstance in DateFormat . Each of these class methods can return a date/time formatter initialized with a default format pattern. You may modify the format pattern using the applyPattern methods as desired. For more information on using these methods, see DateFormat .
Date and Time Patterns
Date and time formats are specified by date and time pattern strings. Within date and time pattern strings, unquoted letters from ‘A’ to ‘Z’ and from ‘a’ to ‘z’ are interpreted as pattern letters representing the components of a date or time string. Text can be quoted using single quotes ( ‘ ) to avoid interpretation. «»» represents a single quote. All other characters are not interpreted; they’re simply copied into the output string during formatting or matched against the input string during parsing.
The following pattern letters are defined (all other characters from ‘A’ to ‘Z’ and from ‘a’ to ‘z’ are reserved):
Chart shows pattern letters, date/time component, presentation, and examples.
Letter Date or Time Component Presentation Examples G Era designator Text AD y Year Year 1996 ; 96 Y Week year Year 2009 ; 09 M Month in year (context sensitive) Month July ; Jul ; 07 L Month in year (standalone form) Month July ; Jul ; 07 w Week in year Number 27 W Week in month Number 2 D Day in year Number 189 d Day in month Number 10 F Day of week in month Number 2 E Day name in week Text Tuesday ; Tue u Day number of week (1 = Monday, . 7 = Sunday) Number 1 a Am/pm marker Text PM H Hour in day (0-23) Number 0 k Hour in day (1-24) Number 24 K Hour in am/pm (0-11) Number 0 h Hour in am/pm (1-12) Number 12 m Minute in hour Number 30 s Second in minute Number 55 S Millisecond Number 978 z Time zone General time zone Pacific Standard Time ; PST ; GMT-08:00 Z Time zone RFC 822 time zone -0800 X Time zone ISO 8601 time zone -08 ; -0800 ; -08:00
- Text: For formatting, if the number of pattern letters is 4 or more, the full form is used; otherwise a short or abbreviated form is used if available. For parsing, both forms are accepted, independent of the number of pattern letters.
- For formatting, if the number of pattern letters is 2, the year is truncated to 2 digits; otherwise it is interpreted as a number.
- For parsing, if the number of pattern letters is more than 2, the year is interpreted literally, regardless of the number of digits. So using the pattern «MM/dd/yyyy», «01/11/12» parses to Jan 11, 12 A.D.
- For parsing with the abbreviated year pattern («y» or «yy»), SimpleDateFormat must interpret the abbreviated year relative to some century. It does this by adjusting dates to be within 80 years before and 20 years after the time the SimpleDateFormat instance is created. For example, using a pattern of «MM/dd/yy» and a SimpleDateFormat instance created on Jan 1, 1997, the string «01/11/12» would be interpreted as Jan 11, 2012 while the string «05/04/64» would be interpreted as May 4, 1964. During parsing, only strings consisting of exactly two digits, as defined by Character.isDigit(char) , will be parsed into the default century. Any other numeric string, such as a one digit string, a three or more digit string, or a two digit string that isn’t all digits (for example, «-1»), is interpreted literally. So «01/02/3» or «01/02/003» are parsed, using the same pattern, as Jan 2, 3 AD. Likewise, «01/02/-3» is parsed as Jan 2, 4 BC.
If week year ‘Y’ is specified and the calendar doesn’t support any week years, the calendar year ( ‘y’ ) is used instead. The support of week years can be tested with a call to getCalendar() . isWeekDateSupported() .
- Letter M produces context-sensitive month names, such as the embedded form of names. Letter M is context-sensitive in the sense that when it is used in the standalone pattern, for example, «MMMM», it gives the standalone form of a month name and when it is used in the pattern containing other field(s), for example, «d MMMM», it gives the format form of a month name. For example, January in the Catalan language is «de gener» in the format form while it is «gener» in the standalone form. In this case, «MMMM» will produce «gener» and the month part of the «d MMMM» will produce «de gener». If a DateFormatSymbols has been set explicitly with constructor SimpleDateFormat(String,DateFormatSymbols) or method setDateFormatSymbols(DateFormatSymbols) , the month names given by the DateFormatSymbols are used.
- Letter L produces the standalone form of month names.
GMTOffsetTimeZone:GMTSign Hours:Minutes Sign: one of+ -Hours: Digit Digit Digit Minutes: Digit Digit Digit: one of0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Hours must be between 0 and 23, and Minutes must be between 00 and 59. The format is locale independent and digits must be taken from the Basic Latin block of the Unicode standard. For parsing, RFC 822 time zones are also accepted.
RFC822TimeZone: Sign TwoDigitHours Minutes TwoDigitHours: Digit Digit
ISO8601TimeZone: OneLetterISO8601TimeZone TwoLetterISO8601TimeZone ThreeLetterISO8601TimeZone OneLetterISO8601TimeZone: Sign TwoDigitHoursZTwoLetterISO8601TimeZone: Sign TwoDigitHours MinutesZThreeLetterISO8601TimeZone: Sign TwoDigitHours:MinutesZ
Examples
The following examples show how date and time patterns are interpreted in the U.S. locale. The given date and time are 2001-07-04 12:08:56 local time in the U.S. Pacific Time time zone.
Examples of date and time patterns interpreted in the U.S. locale
Date and Time Pattern Result «yyyy.MM.dd G ‘at’ HH:mm:ss z» 2001.07.04 AD at 12:08:56 PDT «EEE, MMM d, »yy» Wed, Jul 4, ’01 «h:mm a» 12:08 PM «hh ‘o»clock’ a, zzzz» 12 o’clock PM, Pacific Daylight Time «K:mm a, z» 0:08 PM, PDT «yyyyy.MMMMM.dd GGG hh:mm aaa» 02001.July.04 AD 12:08 PM «EEE, d MMM yyyy HH:mm:ss Z» Wed, 4 Jul 2001 12:08:56 -0700 «yyMMddHHmmssZ» 010704120856-0700 «yyyy-MM-dd’T’HH:mm:ss.SSSZ» 2001-07-04T12:08:56.235-0700 «yyyy-MM-dd’T’HH:mm:ss.SSSXXX» 2001-07-04T12:08:56.235-07:00 «YYYY-‘W’ww-u» 2001-W27-3
Synchronization
Date formats are not synchronized. It is recommended to create separate format instances for each thread. If multiple threads access a format concurrently, it must be synchronized externally.
Class Date
Prior to JDK 1.1, the class Date had two additional functions. It allowed the interpretation of dates as year, month, day, hour, minute, and second values. It also allowed the formatting and parsing of date strings. Unfortunately, the API for these functions was not amenable to internationalization. As of JDK 1.1, the Calendar class should be used to convert between dates and time fields and the DateFormat class should be used to format and parse date strings. The corresponding methods in Date are deprecated.
Although the Date class is intended to reflect coordinated universal time (UTC), it may not do so exactly, depending on the host environment of the Java Virtual Machine. Nearly all modern operating systems assume that 1 day = 24 × 60 × 60 = 86400 seconds in all cases. In UTC, however, about once every year or two there is an extra second, called a «leap second.» The leap second is always added as the last second of the day, and always on December 31 or June 30. For example, the last minute of the year 1995 was 61 seconds long, thanks to an added leap second. Most computer clocks are not accurate enough to be able to reflect the leap-second distinction.
Some computer standards are defined in terms of Greenwich mean time (GMT), which is equivalent to universal time (UT). GMT is the «civil» name for the standard; UT is the «scientific» name for the same standard. The distinction between UTC and UT is that UTC is based on an atomic clock and UT is based on astronomical observations, which for all practical purposes is an invisibly fine hair to split. Because the earth’s rotation is not uniform (it slows down and speeds up in complicated ways), UT does not always flow uniformly. Leap seconds are introduced as needed into UTC so as to keep UTC within 0.9 seconds of UT1, which is a version of UT with certain corrections applied. There are other time and date systems as well; for example, the time scale used by the satellite-based global positioning system (GPS) is synchronized to UTC but is not adjusted for leap seconds. An interesting source of further information is the United States Naval Observatory (USNO):
and the material regarding «Systems of Time» at:
which has descriptions of various different time systems including UT, UT1, and UTC.
- A year y is represented by the integer y — 1900 .
- A month is represented by an integer from 0 to 11; 0 is January, 1 is February, and so forth; thus 11 is December.
- A date (day of month) is represented by an integer from 1 to 31 in the usual manner.
- An hour is represented by an integer from 0 to 23. Thus, the hour from midnight to 1 a.m. is hour 0, and the hour from noon to 1 p.m. is hour 12.
- A minute is represented by an integer from 0 to 59 in the usual manner.
- A second is represented by an integer from 0 to 61; the values 60 and 61 occur only for leap seconds and even then only in Java implementations that actually track leap seconds correctly. Because of the manner in which leap seconds are currently introduced, it is extremely unlikely that two leap seconds will occur in the same minute, but this specification follows the date and time conventions for ISO C.
In all cases, arguments given to methods for these purposes need not fall within the indicated ranges; for example, a date may be specified as January 32 and is interpreted as meaning February 1.
Constructor Summary
Allocates a Date object and initializes it so that it represents the time at which it was allocated, measured to the nearest millisecond.
As of JDK version 1.1, replaced by Calendar.set(year + 1900, month, date) or GregorianCalendar(year + 1900, month, date) .
As of JDK version 1.1, replaced by Calendar.set(year + 1900, month, date, hrs, min) or GregorianCalendar(year + 1900, month, date, hrs, min) .
As of JDK version 1.1, replaced by Calendar.set(year + 1900, month, date, hrs, min, sec) or GregorianCalendar(year + 1900, month, date, hrs, min, sec) .
Allocates a Date object and initializes it to represent the specified number of milliseconds since the standard base time known as «the epoch», namely January 1, 1970, 00:00:00 GMT.