Programming Tutorials

SimpleDateFormat sample program in Java

By: Norman Chap in Java Tutorials on 2022-09-15  

SimpleDateFormat is a concrete subclass of DateFormat. It allows you to define your own formatting patterns that are used to display date and time information. One of its constructors is shown here:

SimpleDateFormat(String formatString)

The argument formatString describes how date and time information is displayed. An example of its use is given here:

SimpleDateFormat sdf = SimpleDateFormat("dd MMM yyyy hh:mm:ss zzz");

Here's an example program that uses SimpleDateFormat to format a Date object:

import java.text.SimpleDateFormat;
import java.util.Date;

public class SimpleDateFormatExample {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        // Create a new SimpleDateFormat instance with the desired format
        SimpleDateFormat sdf = new SimpleDateFormat("dd/MM/yyyy HH:mm:ss");

        // Create a new Date object
        Date now = new Date();

        // Format the date using the SimpleDateFormat instance
        String formattedDate = sdf.format(now);

        // Print the formatted date string
        System.out.println("Formatted date: " + formattedDate);
    }
}

In this example, we create a new SimpleDateFormat instance with the format string "dd/MM/yyyy HH:mm:ss". This format string specifies the format of the date and time values we want to format. In this case, it specifies that the date should be formatted with the day of the month, month, and year in the format "dd/MM/yyyy", followed by the time in the format "HH:mm:ss".

We then create a new Date object representing the current date and time, and format it using the SimpleDateFormat instance by calling its format() method. This method returns a String object containing the formatted date and time value.

Finally, we print the formatted date and time string using System.out.println(). The output of the program will vary depending on the current date and time, but should look something like this:

Formatted date: 01/05/2023 10:30:45

SimpleDateFormat is a powerful class that allows you to customize the formatting of dates and times in many different ways. You can use various format strings to specify different formats for different locales, time zones, and languages.