In Java, converting date objects to string is difficult, because the built-in APIs are similar and confusing. However, as a developer, we cannot avoid this topic — manipulating date objects is essential in our daily mission. Let’s see how to convert different dates to string correctly.
In the following paragraphs, I’ll use ISO 8601, an international standard covering the exchange of date and time-related data, as the string format. Date and time expressed according to ISO 8601 is:
2017-02-16T20:22:28+00:00
2017-02-16T20:22:28.000+00:00
java.util.Date
Here’s an example to demonstrate how to convert a java.util.Date to ISO 8601
date string. This is a little bit tricky because we’re using the current time,
which is the easiest use-case. For other cases, I believe using
java.util.Calendar, java.util.GregorianCalendar would be a better solution.
You can see the difference in the following paragraphs.
// Input
Date date = new Date(System.currentTimeMillis());
// Conversion
SimpleDateFormat sdf;
sdf = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss.SSSXXX");
sdf.setTimeZone(TimeZone.getTimeZone("CET"));
String text = sdf.format(date);
// Output
// "2017-02-16T21:00:00.000+01:00"java.util.Calendar
When using Calendar, we need to get an instance, then build a date object with
it. Please be aware that setting the field of millisecond is necessary: lack of
such line will lead to an erroneous value for millisecond. A non-zero value will
be filled.
// Input
Calendar calendar = Calendar.getInstance();
calendar.set(2017, Calendar.FEBRUARY, 16, 20, 22, 28);
calendar.set(Calendar.MILLISECOND, 0);
Date date = calendar.getTime();
// Conversion
SimpleDateFormat sdf;
sdf = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss.SSSXXX");
sdf.setTimeZone(TimeZone.getTimeZone("CET"));
String text = sdf.format(date);
// Output
// "2017-02-16T20:22:28.000+01:00"java.util.GregorianCalendar
For gregorian calendar, we don’t need to set explicitly the millisecond datepart
to 0, which is better than calendar. However, we still need to use
java.util.Date as an intermediate to format the date.
// Input
GregorianCalendar calendar;
calendar = new GregorianCalendar(2017, Calendar.FEBRUARY, 16, 20, 22, 28);
Date date = calendar.getTime();
// Conversion
SimpleDateFormat sdf;
sdf = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss.SSSXXX");
sdf.setTimeZone(TimeZone.getTimeZone("CET"));
String text = sdf.format(date);
// Output
// "2017-02-16T20:22:28.000+01:00"java.time.ZonedDateTime
The package java.time, formerly Joda-Time, provides the most elegant
solution among all the possibiliites here. It uses a builder to construct the
date time with time zone step-by-step. Then this object accepts a formatter to
format the date representation in string. Its month is a base-1 number, which
means that January is equal to 1 instead of 0, so you can use the digit
instead of the static Java field. Let’s see the code:
// Input
ZonedDateTime d = LocalDate
.of(2017, 2, 16)
.atTime(20, 22, 28)
.atZone(ZoneId.of("CET"));
// Conversion
String text = DateTimeFormatter.ISO_DATE_TIME.format(d);
// Output
// "2017-02-16T20:22:28+01:00[CET]"Use customized date-time pattern:
// Conversion
DateTimeFormatter.ofPattern("yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss.SSSXXX").format(d);
// Output
// "2017-02-16T20:22:28.000+01:00"Patterns for formatting and parsing are available in the Javadoc of DateTimeFormatter (Java 8).
Conclusion
In this blog, we have seen different methods to create a date object and the
associated way to cast that object into an ISO 8601 date representation. I
demonstrated that common date object types can be used to convert into string,
but most of them are hard to understand, and time-zone is not well supported.
However, thanks to the implementation of JSR 310, Joda-Time is now
migrated into Java SE 8 as package java.time.
By the way, if you need to use any of the code shown in this blog, feel free to use them and adapt into your own code. Happy coding and have a nive weekend!