Convert Mon/yyyy to a date

Question

I have a date in String format as Jun/2014. I want to convert it to a date. It is ok to have any day for this date.

How to achieve this? I tried following code but it did not work.

  String fromdate="Jun/2014";
  SimpleDateFormat  format = new SimpleDateFormat("mm/yyyy");   
  String date = format.format(fromdate);  

Answer 1

You should try

        String fromdate = "Jun/2014";
    SimpleDateFormat format = new SimpleDateFormat("MMM/yyyy");
    Date date = null;
    try {
        date = format.parse(fromdate);
    } catch (ParseException e) {
        // TODO Auto-generated catch block
        e.printStackTrace();
    }
    System.out.println(date);

Your result : Sun Jun 01 00:00:00 ECT 2014

Answer 2

The javadoc has pretty decent explanation on this. http://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/api/java/text/SimpleDateFormat.html

I am just pasting the example provided in the above link. As can be seen, it should be MMM for Jul

    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

Answer 3

        String fromdate="Jun/2014";
        SimpleDateFormat f = new SimpleDateFormat("MMM/yyyy");
        try {
            Date  date = f.parse(fromdate);
            String d = f.format(date);
            System.out.println(d);
        } catch (ParseException e) {
            e.printStackTrace();  
        }

Answer 4

Avoid java.util.Date

The classes used in the other answers (.Date, .Calendar, .SimpleDateFormat) are notoriously troublesome, flawed in both design and implementation. Avoid them. Instead use either Joda-Time or the java.time package new in Java 8.

Date-Only Class

Another problem with the classes used in the other answers: No way to represent a date-only without any time-of-day portion. Both Joda-Time and java.time offer a LocalDate class for that purpose.

Joda-Time

Here is example code in Joda-Time 2.3.

String input = "Jun/2014";
DateTimeFormatter formatter = DateTimeFormat.forPattern( "MMM/yyyy" );
LocalDate localDate = formatter.parseLocalDate( input ); // Assumes the first of the month.

Dump to console.

System.out.println( "input: " + input );
System.out.println( "localDate: " + localDate );

When run.

input: Jun/2014
localDate: 2014-06-01