Formatting Date And Time In Java With Example

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Siva Nookala - 06 Apr 2016

Formatting Time and Date is done using conversion specifier %t. %t requires a suffix to describe the portion and precise format of the time or date desired. The argument corresponding to the %t must be of the type Calendar, Date, Long, orlong.

The following table gives us the description of the suffixes of %t:

Suffix	Replaced By
`a`	Abbreviated weekday name
`A`	Full weekday name
`b`	Abbreviated month name
`B`	Full month name
`c`	Standard date and time string formatted as `day month date hh::mm::ss tzone year`
`C`	First two digits of a year
`d`	Day of month as decimal(01-31)
`D`	month/day/year
`e`	Day of month as decimal(1-31)
`F`	year-month-day
`h`	Abbreviated month name
`H`	Hour(00 to 23)
`I`	Hour(01 to 12)
`j`	Day of year as a decimal (001 to 366)
`k`	Hour(0 to 23)
`l`	Hour(1 to 12)
`L`	Millisecond(000 to 999)
`m`	Month as decimal(01 to 13)
`M`	Minute as decimal(00 to 59)
`N`	Nanosecond(000000000 to 999999999)
`p`	Locale's equivalent of AM or PM in lower case
`Q`	Milliseconds from 1/1/1970
`r`	`hh:mm:ss`(12-hour format)
`R`	`hh:mm`(24-hour format)
`S`	Seconds(00 to 60)
`s`	Seconds from 1/1/1970 UTC
`T`	`hh:mm:ss`(24-hour format)
`y`	Year in decimal without century (00 to 99)
`Y`	Year in decimal with century (0001 to 9999)
`z`	Offset from UTC
`Z`	Time zone name

The following example program demonstrates several formats of %t:

Time and Date Formatter

CODE

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import java.util.*;

class FormatTimeDate
{
    public static void main(String arg[])
    {
        Calendar cal = Calendar.getInstance();
        Formatter fmt = new Formatter();
        fmt.format("%tc", cal);
        System.out.println(fmt);
        fmt = new Formatter();
        fmt.format("%tT", cal);
        System.out.println(fmt);
        fmt = new Formatter();
        fmt.format("%tF %tB %tA", cal, cal, cal);
        System.out.println(fmt);
             
    }
}

OUTPUT

Mon Jan 13 01:27:38 PST 2014
01:27:38
2014-01-13 January Monday

DESCRIPTION

Note that the output of this program changes according to the date and time of the compilation. This is because we have used Calendar.getInstance() which returns the current date and time.

The first output line displays the standard date and time string formatted as day month date hh::mm::ss tzone year since we used %tc. The second output line is the display of hh:mm:ss (24-hour format) since we used %tT. The third output line is the display of year-month-day, full month name, full week-day name since we used %tF, %tB, %tA.

THINGS TO TRY

Try for all the suffixes mentioned in the table.

Instead ofCalendar, try to use Date, Long, or long as arguments for %t. Date can be created using new Date()

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