Working with Date class & DateFormat class

This section contains the detail about the Date class & DateFormat class in java.

Working with Date class & DateFormat class

The 'java.util' package contains date class which contains current date and time.

Getting current Date and Time

For getting current date and time , you need to first initialize the object of class date. After creating it's object you can print it using 'tostring( )' method.

Example :

import java.util.Date;

public class DateDemo {
public static void main(String args[]) {
// Instantiate a Date object
Date date = new Date();

// display time and date using toString()
System.out.println(date.toString());
}
}

Output :

Date Formatting using SimpleDateFormat

The SimpleDateFormat is a class for format and parse date in a locale-sensitive manner. Any user can use it's predefine character codes to create it's own pattern for formatting date-time as follows :

Example :

import java.util.*;
import java.text.*;

class DateDemo {
   public static void main(String args[]) {

       Date dNow = new Date( );
       SimpleDateFormat ft = 
       new SimpleDateFormat ("E yyyy.MM.dd 'at' hh:mm:ss a zzz");

       System.out.println("Current Date: " + ft.format(dNow));
   }
}

Output :

In this code :

'E' means - Day in week

'y', 'm' & 'd' means - year, month & date respectively.

'h', 'm', 's' means - hour, minutes & second respectively.

'a' means -  A.M./P.M. marker.

'z' means - Time zone.

Date Formatting using printf :

We can also format date and time using printf. In this approach, we are using a two letter format starting with t and ending in one of the letters of the table given below. For example :

import java.util.Date;

class DateDemoBasic {
public static void main(String args[]) {
// Instantiate a Date object
Date date = new Date();

// display time and date using toString()
System.out.printf("%tc", "Current Time : ", date);
}
}

Output :

For formatting separate parts, it also has separate two letter codes which is also given below table. Given below the program for separate formatting :

import java.util.Date;

class DateDemo {
public static void main(String args[]) {
// Instantiate a Date object
Date date = new Date();

// display time and date using toString()
System.out.printf("%1$s %2$tB %2$td, %2$tY", 
"Due date:", date);
}

Output :

Date and Time Conversion Characters :

There are other useful classes related to Date and time. For more detail you can refer to Java Standard documentation.

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