CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javaregex
Daniel
Daniel

Reputation: 1861

Validate input given to SimpleDateFormat new instance

Is there any way( regex or other way) to validate the input given to a new instance of SimpleDateFormat?

e.g. :

 String input = getInputFromSomewhere();
 if(validate(input)){
    SimpleDateFormat sdf = new SimpleDateFormat(input);
    //do my job with sdf
 }

boolean validate(String input){
    //what should be here????
}



String input = "yyyy-MM-dd" ; //or any other value which I can't control
String badFormatInput = "NOTHING" ; 

System.out.println(validate(input)) ; //--> true
System.out.println(validate(badFormatInput)); //--> false

Upvotes: 0

Views: 89

Answers (1)

sanbhat
sanbhat

Reputation: 17622

I think you can do dummy parsing to check whether the format is valid

boolean validate(String input){
    try {
        new SimpleDateFormat(input).format(new Date());
        return true;
    }
    catch(Exception e) {
        return false;
    }
}

Upvotes: 3

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