DateFormat does not work?

Question

String selectedDate = \"2012-\" + createdMonth + \"-\" + createdDay;

SimpleDateFormat dateFormat = new SimpleDateFormat(\"yyyy-MM-dd\");

try {
    createdDate = dateFo         


        

Answer 1

You seem to think that createdDate, which is a Date object, has the format yyyy-MM-dd. It doesn't. Date objects don't have a format - they just contain a timestamp, just like numbers are just numbers, which don't have a format by themselves.

A SimpleDateFormat object is used to parse a String into a Date object, or format a Date object into a String.

If you have a Date object and you want to display the date in a particular format, then convert it to a String with the appropriate format using a SimpleDateFormat object:

SimpleDateFormat fmt = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd");
String text = fmt.format(createdDate);
System.out.println("Created: " + text);

If you print a Date object without explicitly formatting it, it will be formatted using a default format, which is why you see Thu Mar 08 00:00:00 CST 2012.

A Date object does not somehow remember what the format was of the String that you parsed it from.

Answer 2

The parse method returns a java.util.Date and that is the what the Date implementation of toString() returns.

Answer 3

You need to print as below. Point is that you need to use the formatter object you have created while printing as well.

System.out.println(dateFormat.format(createdDate));

Answer 4

use dateFormat.format(createdDate)