Java in a Nutshell, 5th Edition

Name

SimpleDateFormat

Synopsis

This is the concrete Format subclass used by DateFormat to handle the formatting and parsing of dates. Most applications should not use this class directly; instead, they should obtain a localized DateFormat object by calling one of the static methods of DateFormat.

SimpleDateFormat formats dates and times according to a pattern, which specifies the positions of the various fields of the date, and a DateFormatSymbols object, which specifies important auxiliary data, such as the names of months. Applications that require highly customized date or time formatting can create a custom SimpleDateFormat object by specifying the desired pattern. This creates a SimpleDateFormat object that uses the DateFormatSymbols object for the default locale. You may also specify an locale explicitly, to use the DateFormatSymbols object for that locale. You can even provide an explicit DateFormatSymbols object of your own if you need to format dates and times for an unsupported locale.

You can use the applyPattern( ) method of a SimpleDateFormat to change the formatting pattern used by the object. The syntax of this pattern is described in the following table. Any characters in the format string that do not appear in this table appear literally in the formatted date.

Field	Full form	Short form
Year	yyyy (4 digits)	yy (2 digits)
Month	MMM (name)	MM (2 digits), M (1 or 2 digits)
Day of week	EEEE	EE
Day of month	dd (2 digits)	d (1 or 2 digits)