SimpleDateFormat
is a concrete class for formatting and
parsing dates in a locale-sensitive manner. It allows for formatting
(date -> text), parsing (text -> date), and normalization.
SimpleDateFormat
allows you to start by choosing
any user-defined patterns for date-time formatting. However, you
are encouraged to create a date-time formatter with either
getTimeInstance
, getDateInstance
, or
getDateTimeInstance
in DateFormat
. Each
of these class methods can return a date/time formatter initialized
with a default format pattern. You may modify the format pattern
using the applyPattern
methods as desired.
For more information on using these methods, see
DateFormat
.
Date and time formats are specified by date and time pattern
strings.
Within date and time pattern strings, unquoted letters from
'A'
to 'Z'
and from 'a'
to
'z'
are interpreted as pattern letters representing the
components of a date or time string.
Text can be quoted using single quotes ('
) to avoid
interpretation.
"''"
represents a single quote.
All other characters are not interpreted; they're simply copied into the
output string during formatting or matched against the input string
during parsing.
The following pattern letters are defined (all other characters from
'A'
to 'Z'
and from 'a'
to
'z'
are reserved):
Pattern letters are usually repeated, as their number determines the exact presentation:
Letter Date or Time Component Presentation Examples G
Era designator Text AD
y
Year Year 1996
;96
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 in week Text Tuesday
;Tue
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
For parsing, if the number of pattern letters is more than 2, the year is interpreted literally, regardless of the number of digits. So using the pattern "MM/dd/yyyy", "01/11/12" parses to Jan 11, 12 A.D.
For parsing with the abbreviated year pattern ("y" or "yy"),
SimpleDateFormat
must interpret the abbreviated year
relative to some century. It does this by adjusting dates to be
within 80 years before and 20 years after the time the SimpleDateFormat
instance is created. For example, using a pattern of "MM/dd/yy" and a
SimpleDateFormat
instance created on Jan 1, 1997, the string
"01/11/12" would be interpreted as Jan 11, 2012 while the string "05/04/64"
would be interpreted as May 4, 1964.
During parsing, only strings consisting of exactly two digits, as defined by
, will be parsed into the default century.
Any other numeric string, such as a one digit string, a three or more digit
string, or a two digit string that isn't all digits (for example, "-1"), is
interpreted literally. So "01/02/3" or "01/02/003" are parsed, using the
same pattern, as Jan 2, 3 AD. Likewise, "01/02/-3" is parsed as Jan 2, 4 BC.
GMTOffsetTimeZone:Hours must be between 0 and 23, and Minutes must be between 00 and 59. The format is locale independent and digits must be taken from the Basic Latin block of the Unicode standard.GMT
Sign Hours:
Minutes Sign: one of+ -
Hours: Digit Digit Digit Minutes: Digit Digit Digit: one of0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
For parsing, RFC 822 time zones are also accepted.
RFC822TimeZone: Sign TwoDigitHours Minutes TwoDigitHours: Digit DigitTwoDigitHours must be between 00 and 23. Other definitions are as for general time zones.
For parsing, general time zones are also accepted.
SimpleDateFormat
also supports localized date and time
pattern strings. In these strings, the pattern letters described above
may be replaced with other, locale dependent, pattern letters.
SimpleDateFormat
does not deal with the localization of text
other than the pattern letters; that's up to the client of the class.
Date and Time Pattern Result "yyyy.MM.dd G 'at' HH:mm:ss z"
2001.07.04 AD at 12:08:56 PDT
"EEE, MMM d, ''yy"
Wed, Jul 4, '01
"h:mm a"
12:08 PM
"hh 'o''clock' a, zzzz"
12 o'clock PM, Pacific Daylight Time
"K:mm a, z"
0:08 PM, PDT
"yyyyy.MMMMM.dd GGG hh:mm aaa"
02001.July.04 AD 12:08 PM
"EEE, d MMM yyyy HH:mm:ss Z"
Wed, 4 Jul 2001 12:08:56 -0700
"yyMMddHHmmssZ"
010704120856-0700
"yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss.SSSZ"
2001-07-04T12:08:56.235-0700
Date formats are not synchronized. It is recommended to create separate format instances for each thread. If multiple threads access a format concurrently, it must be synchronized externally.
SimpleDateFormat
using the default pattern and
date format symbols for the default locale.
Note: This constructor may not support all locales.
For full coverage, use the factory methods in the DateFormat
class.SimpleDateFormat
using the given pattern and
the default date format symbols for the default locale.
Note: This constructor may not support all locales.
For full coverage, use the factory methods in the DateFormat
class.SimpleDateFormat
using the given pattern and
the default date format symbols for the given locale.
Note: This constructor may not support all locales.
For full coverage, use the factory methods in the DateFormat
class.SimpleDateFormat
using the given pattern and
date format symbols.SimpleDateFormat
. This also
clones the format's date format symbols.SimpleDateFormat
for
equality.Date
into a date/time string and appends
the result to the given StringBuffer
.
format
(obj,
new StringBuffer(), new FieldPosition(0)).toString();
AttributedCharacterIterator
.
You can use the returned AttributedCharacterIterator
to build the resulting String, as well as to determine information
about the resulting String.
Each attribute key of the AttributedCharacterIterator will be of type
DateFormat.Field
, with the corresponding attribute value
being the same as the attribute key.
get*Instance
methods of this class can return
localized instances.
The array returned must contain at least a Locale
instance equal to Locale.US
.SimpleDateFormat
object.wait
methods.
The awakened thread will not be able to proceed until the current thread relinquishes the lock on this object. The awakened thread will compete in the usual manner with any other threads that might be actively competing to synchronize on this object; for example, the awakened thread enjoys no reliable privilege or disadvantage in being the next thread to lock this object.
This method should only be called by a thread that is the owner of this object's monitor. A thread becomes the owner of the object's monitor in one of three ways:
synchronized
statement
that synchronizes on the object.
Class,
by executing a
synchronized static method of that class.
Only one thread at a time can own an object's monitor.
wait
methods.
The awakened threads will not be able to proceed until the current thread relinquishes the lock on this object. The awakened threads will compete in the usual manner with any other threads that might be actively competing to synchronize on this object; for example, the awakened threads enjoy no reliable privilege or disadvantage in being the next thread to lock this object.
This method should only be called by a thread that is the owner
of this object's monitor. See the notify
method for a
description of the ways in which a thread can become the owner of
a monitor.
Date
.
The method attempts to parse text starting at the index given by
pos
.
If parsing succeeds, then the index of pos
is updated
to the index after the last character used (parsing does not necessarily
use all characters up to the end of the string), and the parsed
date is returned. The updated pos
can be used to
indicate the starting point for the next call to this method.
If an error occurs, then the index of pos
is not
changed, the error index of pos
is set to the index of
the character where the error occurred, and null is returned.
Date
.
The method attempts to parse text starting at the index given by
pos
.
If parsing succeeds, then the index of pos
is updated
to the index after the last character used (parsing does not necessarily
use all characters up to the end of the string), and the parsed
date is returned. The updated pos
can be used to
indicate the starting point for the next call to this method.
If an error occurs, then the index of pos
is not
changed, the error index of pos
is set to the index of
the character where the error occurred, and null is returned.
toString
method returns a string that
"textually represents" this object. The result should
be a concise but informative representation that is easy for a
person to read.
It is recommended that all subclasses override this method.
The toString
method for class Object
returns a string consisting of the name of the class of which the
object is an instance, the at-sign character `@
', and
the unsigned hexadecimal representation of the hash code of the
object. In other words, this method returns a string equal to the
value of:
getClass().getName() + '@' + Integer.toHexString(hashCode())
The current thread must own this object's monitor. The thread
releases ownership of this monitor and waits until another thread
notifies threads waiting on this object's monitor to wake up
either through a call to the notify
method or the
notifyAll
method. The thread then waits until it can
re-obtain ownership of the monitor and resumes execution.
As in the one argument version, interrupts and spurious wakeups are possible, and this method should always be used in a loop:
synchronized (obj) { while (<condition does not hold>) obj.wait(); ... // Perform action appropriate to condition }This method should only be called by a thread that is the owner of this object's monitor. See the
notify
method for a
description of the ways in which a thread can become the owner of
a monitor.The current thread must own this object's monitor.
This method causes the current thread (call it T) to place itself in the wait set for this object and then to relinquish any and all synchronization claims on this object. Thread T becomes disabled for thread scheduling purposes and lies dormant until one of four things happens:
A thread can also wake up without being notified, interrupted, or timing out, a so-called spurious wakeup. While this will rarely occur in practice, applications must guard against it by testing for the condition that should have caused the thread to be awakened, and continuing to wait if the condition is not satisfied. In other words, waits should always occur in loops, like this one:
synchronized (obj) { while (<condition does not hold>) obj.wait(timeout); ... // Perform action appropriate to condition }(For more information on this topic, see Section 3.2.3 in Doug Lea's "Concurrent Programming in Java (Second Edition)" (Addison-Wesley, 2000), or Item 50 in Joshua Bloch's "Effective Java Programming Language Guide" (Addison-Wesley, 2001).
If the current thread is interrupted by another thread while it is waiting, then an InterruptedException is thrown. This exception is not thrown until the lock status of this object has been restored as described above.
Note that the wait method, as it places the current thread into the wait set for this object, unlocks only this object; any other objects on which the current thread may be synchronized remain locked while the thread waits.
This method should only be called by a thread that is the owner
of this object's monitor. See the notify
method for a
description of the ways in which a thread can become the owner of
a monitor.
This method is similar to the wait
method of one
argument, but it allows finer control over the amount of time to
wait for a notification before giving up. The amount of real time,
measured in nanoseconds, is given by:
1000000*timeout+nanos
In all other respects, this method does the same thing as the method of one argument. In particular, wait(0, 0) means the same thing as wait(0).
The current thread must own this object's monitor. The thread releases ownership of this monitor and waits until either of the following two conditions has occurred:
notify
method
or the notifyAll
method.
timeout
milliseconds plus nanos
nanoseconds arguments, has
elapsed.
The thread then waits until it can re-obtain ownership of the monitor and resumes execution.
As in the one argument version, interrupts and spurious wakeups are possible, and this method should always be used in a loop:
synchronized (obj) { while (<condition does not hold>) obj.wait(timeout, nanos); ... // Perform action appropriate to condition }This method should only be called by a thread that is the owner of this object's monitor. See the
notify
method for a
description of the ways in which a thread can become the owner of
a monitor.