How to format date and time in Android?

Question

How to format correctly according to the device configuration date and time when having a year, month, day, hour and minute?

Answer 1

I use it like this:

public class DateUtils {
    static DateUtils instance;
    private final DateFormat dateFormat;
    private final DateFormat timeFormat;

    private DateUtils() {
        dateFormat = android.text.format.DateFormat.getDateFormat(MainApplication.context);
        timeFormat = android.text.format.DateFormat.getTimeFormat(MainApplication.context);
    }

    public static DateUtils getInstance() {
        if (instance == null) {
            instance = new DateUtils();
        }
        return instance;
    }

    public synchronized static String formatDateTime(long timestamp) {
        long milliseconds = timestamp * 1000;
        Date dateTime = new Date(milliseconds);
        String date = getInstance().dateFormat.format(dateTime);
        String time = getInstance().timeFormat.format(dateTime);
        return date + " " + time;
    }
}

Answer 2

Date format class work with cheat code to make date. Like

1. M -> 7, MM -> 07, MMM -> Jul , MMMM -> July
2. EEE -> Tue , EEEE -> Tuesday
3. z -> EST , zzz -> EST , zzzz -> Eastern Standard Time

You can check more cheats here.

Answer 3

The android Time class provides 3 formatting methods http://developer.android.com/reference/android/text/format/Time.html

This is how I did it:

/**
* This method will format the data from the android Time class (eg. myTime.setToNow())   into the format
* Date: dd.mm.yy Time: hh.mm.ss
*/
private String formatTime(String time)
{
    String fullTime= "";
    String[] sa = new String[2];

    if(time.length()>1)
    {
        Time t = new Time(Time.getCurrentTimezone());
        t.parse(time);
        // or t.setToNow();
        String formattedTime = t.format("%d.%m.%Y %H.%M.%S");
        int x = 0;

        for(String s : formattedTime.split("\\s",2))
        {   
            System.out.println("Value = " + s);
            sa[x] = s;
            x++;
        }
        fullTime = "Date: " + sa[0] + " Time: " + sa[1];
    }
    else{
        fullTime = "No time data";
    }
    return fullTime;
}

I hope thats helpful :-)

Answer 4

This code would return the current date and time:

public String getCurrDate()
{
    String dt;
    Date cal = Calendar.getInstance().getTime();
    dt = cal.toLocaleString();
    return dt;
}

Answer 5

Avoid j.u.Date

The Java.util.Date and .Calendar and SimpleDateFormat in Java (and Android) are notoriously troublesome. Avoid them. They are so bad that Sun/Oracle gave up on them, supplanting them with the new java.time package in Java 8 (not in Android as of 2014). The new java.time was inspired by the Joda-Time library.

Joda-Time

Joda-Time does work in Android.

Search StackOverflow for "Joda" to find many examples and much discussion.

A tidbit of source code using Joda-Time 2.4.

Standard format.

String output = DateTime.now().toString(); 
// Current date-time in user's default time zone with a String representation formatted to the ISO 8601 standard.

Localized format.

String output = DateTimeFormat.forStyle( "FF" ).print( DateTime.now() ); 
// Full (long) format localized for this user's language and culture.

Answer 6

In my opinion, android.text.format.DateFormat.getDateFormat(context) makes me confused because this method returns java.text.DateFormat rather than android.text.format.DateFormat - -".

So, I use the fragment code as below to get the current date/time in my format.

android.text.format.DateFormat df = new android.text.format.DateFormat();
df.format("yyyy-MM-dd hh:mm:ss a", new java.util.Date());

or

android.text.format.DateFormat.format("yyyy-MM-dd hh:mm:ss a", new java.util.Date());

In addition, you can use others formats. Follow DateFormat.