Java parse string to date 2016-02-25 05:39

We use SimpleDateFormat to parse string to date in java. It allows you formatting(date -> string) and parsing(string -> date). Before using SimpleDateFormat you have to choose user-defined patterns for date-time formatting. The following pattern letters are defined (all other characters from 'A' to 'Z' and from 'a' to 'z' are reserved). You can use them define different patterns.

Letter Date or Time Component Presentation Examples
G Era designator Text AD
y Year Year 1996; 96
Y Week year Year 2009; 09
M Month in year Month July; Jul; 07
w Week in year Number 27
W Week in month Number 2
D Day in year Number 189
d Day in month Number 10
F Day of week in month Number 2
E Day name in week Text Tuesday; Tue
u Day number of week (1 = Monday, ..., 7 = Sunday) Number 1
a Am/pm marker Text PM
H Hour in day (0-23) Number 0
k Hour in day (1-24) Number 24
K Hour in am/pm (0-11) Number 0
h Hour in am/pm (1-12) Number 12
m Minute in hour Number 30
s Second in minute Number 55
S Millisecond Number 978
z Time zone General time zone Pacific Standard Time; PST; GMT-08:00
Z Time zone RFC 822 time zone -0800
X Time zone ISO 8601 time zone -08; -0800; -08:00

The following code show how to use SimpleDateFormat to parse string to date

    String dateString = "2016/02/25";
    SimpleDateFormat simpleDateFormat = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy/MM/dd");
    Date date = simpleDateFormat.parse(dateString);

You can define pattern in constructor of SimpleDateFormat or use applyPattern method to applies the given pattern. The following code is same as above.

    String dateString = "2016/02/25";
    SimpleDateFormat simpleDateFormat = new SimpleDateFormat();
    simpleDateFormat.applyPattern("yyyy/MM/dd");
    Date date = simpleDateFormat.parse(dateString);

About formatting date you can see here.