how to convert string into time format and add two hours

Question

I have the following requirement in the project.

I have a input field by name startDate and user enters in the format YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS.

Answer 1

Being a fan of the Joda Time library, here's how you can do it that way using a Joda DateTime:

import org.joda.time.format.*;
import org.joda.time.*;

...    

String dateString = "2009-04-17 10:41:33";

// parse the string
DateTimeFormatter formatter = DateTimeFormat.forPattern("yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss");
DateTime dateTime = formatter.parseDateTime(dateString);

// add two hours
dateTime = dateTime.plusHours(2); // easier than mucking about with Calendar and constants

System.out.println(dateTime);

If you still need to use java.util.Date objects before/after this conversion, the Joda DateTime API provides some easy toDate() and toCalendar() methods for easy translation.

The Joda API provides so much more in the way of convenience over the Java Date/Calendar API.