Month name as a string

Question

I\'m trying to return the name of the month as a String, for instance \"May\", \"September\", \"November\".

I tried:

int month = c.get(Calendar.MONTH         


        

Answer 1

Russian.

Month
.MAY
.getDisplayName(
    TextStyle.FULL_STANDALONE ,
    new Locale( "ru" , "RU" )
)

май

English in the United States.

Month
.MAY
.getDisplayName(
    TextStyle.FULL_STANDALONE ,
    Locale.US
)

May

See this code run live at IdeOne.com.

ThreeTenABP and java.time

Here’s the modern answer. When this question was asked in 2011, Calendar and GregorianCalendar were commonly used for dates and times even though they were always poorly designed. That’s 8 years ago now, and those classes are long outdated. Assuming you are not yet on API level 26, my suggestion is to use the ThreeTenABP library, which contains an Android adapted backport of java.time, the modern Java date and time API. java.time is so much nicer to work with.

Depending on your exact needs and situation there are two options:

1. Use Month and its getDisplayName method.
2. Use a DateTimeFormatter.

Use Month

    Locale desiredLanguage = Locale.ENGLISH;
    Month m = Month.MAY;
    String monthName = m.getDisplayName(TextStyle.FULL, desiredLanguage);
    System.out.println(monthName);

Output from this snippet is:

May

In a few languages it will make a difference whether you use TextStyle.FULL or TextStyle.FULL_STANDALONE. You will have to see, maybe check with your users, which of the two fits into your context.

Use a DateTimeFormatter

If you’ve got a date with or without time of day, I find a DateTimeFormatter more practical. For example:

    DateTimeFormatter monthFormatter = DateTimeFormatter.ofPattern("MMMM", desiredLanguage);

    ZonedDateTime dateTime = ZonedDateTime.of(2019, 5, 31, 23, 49, 51, 0, ZoneId.of("America/Araguaina"));
    String monthName = dateTime.format(monthFormatter);

I am showing the use of a ZonedDateTime, the closest replacement for the old Calendar class. The above code will work for a LocalDate, a LocalDateTime, MonthDay, OffsetDateTime and a YearMonth too.

What if you got a Calendar from a legacy API not yet upgraded to java.time? Convert to a ZonedDateTime and proceed as above:

    Calendar c = getCalendarFromLegacyApi();
    ZonedDateTime dateTime = DateTimeUtils.toZonedDateTime(c);

The rest is the same as before.

Question: Doesn’t java.time require Android API level 26?

java.time works nicely on both older and newer Android devices. It just requires at least Java 6.

• In Java 8 and later and on newer Android devices (from API level 26) the modern API comes built-in.
• In non-Android Java 6 and 7 get the ThreeTen Backport, the backport of the modern classes (ThreeTen for JSR 310; see the links at the bottom).
• On (older) Android use the Android edition of ThreeTen Backport. It’s called ThreeTenABP. And make sure you import the date and time classes from org.threeten.bp with subpackages.

Links

• Oracle tutorial: Date Time explaining how to use java.time.
• Java Specification Request (JSR) 310, where java.time was first described.
• ThreeTen Backport project, the backport of java.time to Java 6 and 7 (ThreeTen for JSR-310).
• ThreeTenABP, Android edition of ThreeTen Backport
• Question: How to use ThreeTenABP in Android Project, with a very thorough explanation.