Reputation: 373
I have a string in the form MMM/dd/yyyy, ie. May/21/2010. Now I want to convert it to yyyyMMdd, ie. 20100521.
My code is:
public static void main(String[] args) {
ArrayList<String> dates = new ArrayList<String>();
dates.add("Jan/13/2011");
dates.add("Feb/03/2001");
dates.add("Mar/19/2012");
dates.add("Apr/20/2011");
dates.add("May/21/2010");
dates.add("Jun/23/2008");
dates.add("Jul/12/2009");
dates.add("Aug/14/2010");
dates.add("Sep/01/2011");
dates.add("Oct/07/2010");
dates.add("Nov/05/2011");
dates.add("Dec/30/2011");
for(String s : dates) {
System.out.println(transformPrevDate(s));
}
}
And the method to transform:
public String transformPrevDate(String datoe) {
String[] splitter = datoe.split("/");
String m = splitter[0].toUpperCase();
String d = splitter[1];
String y = splitter[2];
DateFormat formatter = new SimpleDateFormat("MMM");
DateFormat formatter2 = new SimpleDateFormat("MM");
try {
Date date = formatter.parse(m);
m = formatter2.format(date);
} catch (ParseException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
String date = y + m + d;
return date;
}
The problem is that I get an Unparseable date exception, on May and Oct. I'm from Denmark and if I change it to danish "Maj" and "Okt" it succeeds. So what am I doing wrong here?
Upvotes: 2
Views: 2737
Reputation: 74750
Your transformDate
method can be much simpler written like this:
DateFormat input = new SimpleDateFormat("MMM/dd/yyyy", Locale.ENGLISH);
DateFormat output = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyyMMdd");
public String transformPrevDate(String datoe) throws ParseException {
return output.format(input.parse(datoe));
}
You don't need to do your parsing yourself.
Upvotes: 4
Reputation: 89169
Use SimpleDateFormat(String pattern, Locale locale)
to add Locale
to your date parsing (for english, use Locale.ENGLISH
).
Better solution:
public String transformPrevDate(String datoe) {
SimpleDateFormat dateFormat = new SimpleDateFormat("MMM/dd/yyyy", Locale.ENGLISH);
SimpleDateFormat dateFormat2 = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyyMMdd");
try {
return dateFormat2.format(dateFormat.parse(datoe));
} catch (ParseException e) {
// TODO Auto-generated catch block
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
Upvotes: 2
Reputation: 40160
You will need to apply the locale on SimpleDateFormat.
Here's a more shorter version:-
public String transformPrevDate(String date) {
DateFormat oldFormat = new SimpleDateFormat("MMM/dd/yyyy", Locale.ENGLISH);
DateFormat newFormat = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyyMMdd", Locale.ENGLISH);
String formattedDate = "";
try {
formattedDate = newFormat.format(oldFormat.parse(date));
}
catch (ParseException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
return formattedDate;
}
@Test
public void testTransformPrevDate() {
assertEquals("20110113", transformPrevDate("Jan/13/2011"));
assertEquals("20010203", transformPrevDate("Feb/03/2001"));
}
Upvotes: 2
Reputation: 229291
SimpleDateFormat
uses your locale - so your computer is probably set to use Danish by default. Specify the English Locale explicitly:
DateFormat formatter = new SimpleDateFormat("MMM", Locale.ENGLISH);
Upvotes: 0
Reputation: 56390
SimpleDateFormat
is locale-dependent, and it's using your own locale by default. If you would like to use an English-based locale, you can create it by passing in a Locale
when you create your SimpleDateFormat
.
So to use a US-based locale, change your SimpleDateFormat
initialization to:
DateFormat formatter = new SimpleDateFormat("MMM", Locale.US);
DateFormat formatter2 = new SimpleDateFormat("MM", Locale.US);
Upvotes: 1