0

I am having issue with formatting strings to dates to the format 'dd-MMM-yy'. Would anyone have any idea why its parsing strings to full format rather than 'dd-MMM-yy'.

String = 
["01-Dec-20","02-Dec-20","03-Dec-20","04-Dec-20","05-Dec-20","06-Dec-20","07-Dec-20","08-Dec-20","09-Dec-20","10-Dec-20","11-Dec-20","12-Dec-20","13-Dec-20","14-Dec-20","15-Dec-20","16-Dec-20","17-Dec-20","18-Dec-20","19-Dec-20","20-Dec-20","21-Dec-20","22-Dec-20","23-Dec-20","24-Dec-20","25-Dec-20","26-Dec-20","27-Dec-20","28-Dec-20","29-Dec-20","30-Dec-20","31-Dec-20"]

For date in the string I want to convert to Date with format 'dd-MMM-yy'

String dates = dateType.replace("\"", "").replace("[", "").replace("]", "");
        List<String> stringList = new ArrayList<String>(Arrays.asList(dates.split(",")));
        ArrayList<Date> dateList = new ArrayList<Date>();

        stringList.forEach(d -> {
            try {
                Date date = new SimpleDateFormat("dd-MMM-yy").parse(d);
                dateList.add(date);
            } catch (ParseException e) {
                e.printStackTrace();
            } 
        });

The date list converts the strings to :

[Tue Dec 01 00:00:00 UTC 2020, Wed Dec 02 00:00:00 UTC 2020, Thu Dec 03 00:00:00 UTC 2020, Fri Dec 04 00:00:00 UTC 2020, Sat Dec 05 00:00:00 UTC 2020... etc ```
Improve this question
6
  • 3
    The output you're showing is expected. When you print a Date object, it looks like that "full format", and not a different, arbitrary format. If you want to those dates to look like dd-MMM-yy, you have to use the formatter and convert them to strings in that format. A Date itself is not associated with any particular format. Commented Dec 2, 2020 at 20:03
  • Thanks @ernest_k for answering so quickly! So if I want to use the list in an sql query to search a date column, should the Date format work, or can I use the list of string formats? Commented Dec 2, 2020 at 20:08
  • Well, shouldn't you be using a prepared statement and calling setDate? It's been a while since I last did jdbc, but either that or that plus converting the date to java.sql.Date should work without you needing to convert the date to string (unless your database column is char-typed and not date/timestamp-typed) Commented Dec 2, 2020 at 20:10
  • 3
    I recommend you don’t use SimpleDateFormat and Date. Those classes are poorly designed and long outdated, the former in particular notoriously troublesome. Instead use LocalDate and DateTimeFormatter, both from java.time, the modern Java date and time API. For an SQL query pass your LocalDate to one of the PreparedStatement.setObject methods (no need to worry about format). Commented Dec 2, 2020 at 20:17
  • 2
    And @ernest_k, my recommendation to avoid Date goes for both java.util.Date and java.sql.Date (the latter being a hack on top of the former). Commented Dec 2, 2020 at 20:20
Related questions
3646
When to use LinkedList over ArrayList in Java?
4771
How do I read / convert an InputStream into a String in Java?
3541
How do I convert a String to an int in Java?
Load 4 more related questions Show fewer related questions

0

Reset to default

Start asking to get answers

Find the answer to your question by asking.

Ask question

Explore related questions

See similar questions with these tags.