How to parse/format dates with LocalDateTime? (Java 8)

Question

Java 8 added a new java.time API for working with dates and times (JSR 310).

I have date and time as string (e.g. \"2014-04-08 12:30\"). How can I obtai

Answer 1

Let's take two questions, example string "2014-04-08 12:30"

How can I obtain a LocalDateTime instance from the given string?

import java.time.format.DateTimeFormatter
import java.time.LocalDateTime

final DateTimeFormatter formatter = DateTimeFormatter.ofPattern("yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm")

// Parsing or conversion
final LocalDateTime dt = LocalDateTime.parse("2014-04-08 12:30", formatter)

dt should allow you to all date-time related operations

How can I then convert the LocalDateTime instance back to a string with the same format?

final String date = dt.format(formatter)