Java simple date format

The Utility class SimpleDateFormat extends DateFormat . SimpleDateFormat  is a concrete class for formatting and parsing dates in a locale-sensitive manner and normalization. It allows you to start by choosing any user-defined patterns for date-time formatting.

Do you wanna know more about “How to format dates in any format”? Read my post : Date format in Java

Time Format Syntax:

To specify the time format use a time pattern string. In this pattern, all ASCII letters are reserved as pattern letters, which are defined as the following:

Symbol	Meaning	Presentation	Example
G	era designator	Text	AD
Y	year	Number	2003
M	month in year	Text & Number	July & 07
D	day in month	Number	25
H	hour in am/pm (1~12)	Number	12
H	hour in day (0~23)	Number	0
M	minute in hour	Number	45
S	second in minute	Number	55
S	millisecond	Number	958
E	day in week	Text	Tuesday

D	day in year	Number	289
F	day of week in month	Number	2 (2nd Wed in July)
W	week in year	Number	47
W	week in month	Number	4
A	am/pm marker	Text	AM
K	hour in day (1~24)	Number	24
K	hour in am/pm (0~11)	Number	0
Z	time zone	Text	Pacific Standard Time
‘	escape for text	Delimiter	‘hour’ h -> “hour 9”
”	single quote	Literal	ss”SSS -> “45’876”

The count of pattern letters determine the format.
Text:  4 or more pattern letters–use full form, for < 4 – use short or abbreviated form if one exists.

Number:  The minimum number of digits. Shorter numbers are zero-padded to this amount. Year is handled specially; that is, if the count of ‘y’ is 2, the Year will be truncated to 2 digits.

Text & Number:  3 or over, use text, otherwise use number.

Any characters in the pattern that are not in the ranges of [‘a’..’z’] and [‘A’..’Z’] will be treated as quoted text. For instance, characters like ‘#’ and ‘@’ will appear in the resulting time text even they are not embraced within single quotes.

A pattern containing any invalid pattern letter will result in a thrown exception during formatting or parsing.

Examples:

Format Pattern Result
“yyyy.MM.dd G ‘at’ hh:mm:ss z” 2003.07.10 AD at 15:48:56 PDT
“EEE, MMM d, ”yy” Tue, July 10, ’03
“h:mm a” 12:48 PM
“hh ‘o””clock’, zzzz” 12 o’clock PM, Pacific Daylight Time
“K:mm a, z” 0:00 PM, PST
“yyyyy.MMMMM.dd GGG hh:mm aaa” 2003.July.10 AD 12:48 PM

Java Code Sample:

[code language=”java”]
/* This function in example below returns the current
date time in format similar to “04/25/2013 12:47:56 AM”*/

import java.text.SimpleDateFormat;
import java.util.Date;
public static String getCurrentTime(){

/*This will return current date time like
this example:11/25/2013 12:47:56 AM*/
String TimeFormat = "MM/dd/yyyy hh:mm:ss a"
Date currDate = new Date();
SimpleDateFormat smpDateFormatter = new SimpleDateFormat(TimeFormat);
String currTime= smpDateFormatter.format(currDate);
return currTime;
}[/code]

References: 
http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/docs/api/java/text/SimpleDateFormat.html