How to convert a date String into the right format in Java?

Question

Can somebody please explain to me how I can convert

2009-10-27 14:36:59.580250

into

27.10.2009, 14:36 ?

Th

Answer 1

You can use SimpleDateFormat. Although there's no format specification for micro-seconds (the last fragment of your input), you can make use of the fact that the parser ignores the rest of the string if it has already managed to match the configured pattern:

SimpleDateFormat parser = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm");
SimpleDateFormat formatter = new SimpleDateFormat("dd.MM.yyyy HH:mm");
System.out.println(formatter.format(parser.parse("2009-10-27 14:36:59.580250")));

The parser will in this case simply ignore the last part ":59.580250" of the input string.