Java Date & Time: SimpleDateFormat, Current Date & Compare

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Last Updated: 02 February 2021

Display Date in Java

Now let us see how Java provide us the Date. First, we shall see how to get the current date-

Java provides a Date class under the java.util package, The package provides several methods to play around with the date.

You can use the Date object by invoking the constructor of Date class as follows:

import java.util.Date;
class Date_Ex1 {
 public static void main(String args[]) {
  // Instantiate a Date object by invoking its constructor
  Date objDate = new Date();
  // Display the Date & Time using toString()
  System.out.println(objDate.toString());
 }
}

Output:

Wed Nov 29 06:36:22 UTC 2017

In above example date shown in default format, If we want to show the date and time in another format, first understand the Formatting of date.

SimpleDateFormat: Parse and Format Dates

You all must have learned the alphabets in your kindergarten ….

Let us now learn the ABC’s of the date format.

Don’t worry, you don’t need to remember all of these, they can be referred anytime you need to format a particular date.

How to use the SimpleDateFormat?

Java provides a class called a SimpleDateFormat that allows you to format and parse dates in the as per your requirements.

You can use the above characters to specify the format - For example:

1) Date format required: 2012.10.23 20:20:45 PST

The appropriate date format specified will be- yyyy.MM.dd HH:mm:ss zzz

2) Date format required:09:30:00 AM 23-May-2012

The appropriate date format specified will be-hh:mm:ss a dd-MMM-yyyy

Tip: Be careful with the letter capitalization. If you mistake M with m, you will undesired results!

Let's learn this with a code example.

import java.text.SimpleDateFormat;
import java.util.Date;
class TestDates_Format {
 public static void main(String args[]) {
  Date objDate = new Date(); // Current System Date and time is assigned to objDate
  System.out.println(objDate);
  String strDateFormat = "hh:mm:ss a dd-MMM-yyyy"; //Date format is Specified
  SimpleDateFormat objSDF = new SimpleDateFormat(strDateFormat); //Date format string is passed as an argument to the Date format object
  System.out.println(objSDF.format(objDate)); //Date formatting is applied to the current date
 }
}

Output:

Wed Nov 29 06:31:41 UTC 2017
06:31:41 AM 29-Nov-2017

Compare Dates Example

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