Convert String to Date in Java

String string = "January 2, 2010";
DateTimeFormatter formatter = DateTimeFormatter.ofPattern("MMMM d, yyyy", Locale.ENGLISH);
LocalDate date = LocalDate.parse(string, formatter);
System.out.println(date); // 2010-01-02

Symbol	Meaning	Presentation	Examples
G	era	text	AD; Anno Domini; A
u	year	year	2004; 04
y	year-of-era	year	2004; 04
D	day-of-year	number	189
M/L	month-of-year	number/text	7; 07; Jul; July; J
d	day-of-month	number	10
Q/q	quarter-of-year	number/text	3; 03; Q3; 3rd quarter
Y	week-based-year	year	1996; 96
w	week-of-week-based-year	number	27
W	week-of-month	number	4
E	day-of-week	text	Tue; Tuesday; T
e/c	localized day-of-week	number/text	2; 02; Tue; Tuesday; T
F	week-of-month	number	3
a	am-pm-of-day	text	PM
h	clock-hour-of-am-pm (1-12)	number	12
K	hour-of-am-pm (0-11)	number	0
k	clock-hour-of-am-pm (1-24)	number	0
H	hour-of-day (0-23)	number	0
m	minute-of-hour	number	30
s	second-of-minute	number	55
S	fraction-of-second	fraction	978
A	milli-of-day	number	1234
n	nano-of-second	number	987654321
N	nano-of-day	number	1234000000
V	time-zone ID	zone-id	America/Los_Angeles; Z; -08:30
z	time-zone name	zone-name	Pacific Standard Time; PST
O	localized zone-offset	offset-O	GMT+8; GMT+08:00; UTC-08:00;
X	zone-offset 'Z' for zero	offset-X	Z; -08; -0830; -08:30; -083015; -08:30:15;
x	zone-offset	offset-x	+0000; -08; -0830; -08:30; -083015; -08:30:15;
Z	zone-offset	offset-Z	+0000; -0800; -08:00;

Convert String to Date with Milliseconds

The Date class stores the time as milliseconds, and if you look into your date object you will see that it actually has a time of 1598515567413 milliseconds.

You are fooled by the System.out.println() which uses Date's toString() method. This method is using the "EEE MMM dd HH:mm:ss zzz yyyy" format to display the date and simply omits all milliseconds.

If you use your formatter, which has milliseconds in its format string, you will see that the milliseconds are correct:

System.out.println(formatter.format(dateFormatter));

outputs 2020-08-27T10:06:07.413

How can i convert String to Date when it has TRT in it

Where your code failed:

SimpleDateFormat sdf1=new SimpleDateFormat("EEE MMM dd HH:mm:ss z yyyy");
String dateStr = "06.08.2020";
sdf1.parse(dateStr);

As you can see, the pattern of the SimpleDateFormat and that of the date string do not match and therefore, this code will throw ParseException.

How to make it work?

SimpleDateFormat sdf = new SimpleDateFormat("dd.MM.yyyy");
String dateStr = "06.08.2020";
Date date = sdf.parse(dateStr);

You must have already got why it worked. It worked because the pattern of the SimpleDateFormat matches with that of the dateStr string.

Can I format the Date object (i.e. date) into the original string?

Yes, just use the same format which you used to parse the original string as shown below:

SimpleDateFormat sdf = new SimpleDateFormat("dd.MM.yyyy");
String dateStr = "06.08.2020";
Date date = sdf.parse(dateStr);

// Display in the default format
System.out.println(date);

// Format into the string
dateStr = sdf.format(date);
System.out.println(dateStr);

A piece of advice:

I recommend you switch from the outdated and error-prone java.util date-time API and SimpleDateFormat to the modern java.time date-time API and the corresponding formatting API (package, java.time.format). Learn more about the modern date-time API from Trail: Date Time.

Using the modern date-time API:

DateTimeFormatter formatter = DateTimeFormatter.ofPattern("dd.MM.yyyy");
String dateStr = "06.08.2020";
LocalDate date = LocalDate.parse(dateStr, formatter);

// Display in the default format
System.out.println(date);

// Format into the string
dateStr = formatter.format(date);
System.out.println(dateStr);

I don't see any difference using the legacy API and the modern API:

That's true for this simple example but when you will need to do complex operations using date and time, you will find the modern date-time API smart and clean while the legacy API complex and error-prone.

Demo:

import java.time.LocalDateTime;
import java.time.ZonedDateTime;
import java.time.format.DateTimeFormatter;

public class Main {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        // Given date-time string
        String strDate = "Thu Aug 06 00:00:00 TRT 2020";

        // Replace TRT with standard time-zone string
        strDate = strDate.replace("TRT", "Europe/Istanbul");

        // Define formatter
        DateTimeFormatter formatter = DateTimeFormatter.ofPattern("EEE MMM dd HH:mm:ss zzzz yyyy");

        // Parse the date-time string into ZonedDateTime
        ZonedDateTime zdt = ZonedDateTime.parse(strDate, formatter);
        System.out.println(zdt);

        // If you wish, convert ZonedDateTime into LocalDateTime
        LocalDateTime ldt = zdt.toLocalDateTime();
        System.out.println(ldt);
    }
}

Output:

2020-08-06T00:00+03:00[Europe/Istanbul]
2020-08-06T00:00

convert string to date without changing timezone in the string using java

Just omit the timezone format from the end of the String (letter Z).
For example, this will print Thu Nov 12 06:30:00 CET 2020

String s = "2020-11-12T6:30:00-0800";
DateFormat format = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd'T'hh:mm:ss");
var date = format.parse(s);
System.out.println(date);

But if I add the letter Z at the end, it will interpret the given timezone and change time to my local timezone, when printed. So this will print Thu Nov 12 15:30:00 CET 2020

String s = "2020-11-12T6:30:00-0800";
DateFormat format = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd'T'hh:mm:ssZ");
var date = format.parse(s);
System.out.println(date);

More about the patterns can be found in the JavaDoc of SimpleDateFormat.

how to convert java string to Date object

You basically effectively converted your date in a string format to a date object. If you print it out at that point, you will get the standard date formatting output. In order to format it after that, you then need to convert it back to a date object with a specified format (already specified previously)

String startDateString = "06/27/2007";
DateFormat df = new SimpleDateFormat("MM/dd/yyyy"); 
Date startDate;
try {
    startDate = df.parse(startDateString);
    String newDateString = df.format(startDate);
    System.out.println(newDateString);
} catch (ParseException e) {
    e.printStackTrace();
}

Convert String Date to String date different format

SimpleDateFormat format1 = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd");
SimpleDateFormat format2 = new SimpleDateFormat("dd-MM-yyyy");
Date date = format1.parse("2013-02-21");
System.out.println(format2.format(date));

Java convert string to date not converting correctly

You were using the wrong date format mask. From the documentation, Y corresponds to the week year, and D is the day in year.

Try this version:

Date dateCommence = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss")
    .parse("2021-01-06 00:00:00");
System.out.println(dateCommence);

This prints:

Wed Jan 06 00:00:00 CET 2021

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