How do you format the day of the month to say “11th”, “21st” or “23rd” (ordinal indicator)?

Question

I know this will give me the day of the month as a number (11, 21, 23):

SimpleDateFormat formatDayOfMonth = new Simple         


        

Answer 1

Question is little old. As this question is very noisy so posting what I did solved with static method as a util. Just copy, paste and use it!

 public static String getFormattedDate(Date date){
            Calendar cal=Calendar.getInstance();
            cal.setTime(date);
            //2nd of march 2015
            int day=cal.get(Calendar.DATE);

            if(!((day>10) && (day<19)))
            switch (day % 10) {
            case 1:  
                return new SimpleDateFormat("d'st' 'of' MMMM yyyy").format(date);
            case 2:  
                return new SimpleDateFormat("d'nd' 'of' MMMM yyyy").format(date);
            case 3:  
                return new SimpleDateFormat("d'rd' 'of' MMMM yyyy").format(date);
            default: 
                return new SimpleDateFormat("d'th' 'of' MMMM yyyy").format(date);
        }
        return new SimpleDateFormat("d'th' 'of' MMMM yyyy").format(date);
    }

For testing purose

Example: calling it from main method!

Date date = new Date();
        Calendar cal=Calendar.getInstance();
        cal.setTime(date);
        for(int i=0;i<32;i++){
          System.out.println(getFormattedDate(cal.getTime()));
          cal.set(Calendar.DATE,(cal.getTime().getDate()+1));
        }

Output:

22nd of February 2018
23rd of February 2018
24th of February 2018
25th of February 2018
26th of February 2018
27th of February 2018
28th of February 2018
1st of March 2018
2nd of March 2018
3rd of March 2018
4th of March 2018
5th of March 2018
6th of March 2018
7th of March 2018
8th of March 2018
9th of March 2018
10th of March 2018
11th of March 2018
12th of March 2018
13th of March 2018
14th of March 2018
15th of March 2018
16th of March 2018
17th of March 2018
18th of March 2018
19th of March 2018
20th of March 2018
21st of March 2018
22nd of March 2018
23rd of March 2018
24th of March 2018
25th of March 2018

Answer 2

Here is an approach that updates a DateTimeFormatter pattern with the correct suffix literal if it finds the pattern d'00', e.g. for day of month 1 it would be replaced with d'st'. Once the pattern has been updated it can then just be fed into the DateTimeFormatter to do the rest.

private static String[] suffixes = {"th", "st", "nd", "rd"};

private static String updatePatternWithDayOfMonthSuffix(TemporalAccessor temporal, String pattern) {
    String newPattern = pattern;
    // Check for pattern `d'00'`.
    if (pattern.matches(".*[d]'00'.*")) {
        int dayOfMonth = temporal.get(ChronoField.DAY_OF_MONTH);
        int relevantDigits = dayOfMonth < 30 ? dayOfMonth % 20 : dayOfMonth % 30;
        String suffix = suffixes[relevantDigits <= 3 ? relevantDigits : 0];
        newPattern = pattern.replaceAll("[d]'00'", "d'" + suffix + "'");
    }

    return newPattern;
}

It does require that the original pattern is updated just prior to every formatting call, e.g.

public static String format(TemporalAccessor temporal, String pattern) {
    DateTimeFormatter formatter = DateTimeFormatter.ofPattern(updatePatternWithDayOfMonthSuffix(temporal, pattern));
    return formatter.format(temporal);
}

So this is useful if the formatting pattern is defined outside of Java code, e.g. a template, where as if you can define the pattern in Java then the answer by @OleV.V. might be more appropriate

Answer 3

I should like to contribute the modern answer. The SimpleDateFormat class was OK to use when the question was asked 8 years ago, but you should avoid it now as it is not only long outdated, but also notoriously troublesome. Use java.time instead.

Edit

DateTimeFormatterBuilder.appendText(TemporalField, Map<Long, String>) is great for this purpose. Using it we build a formatter that does the work for us:

    Map<Long, String> ordinalNumbers = new HashMap<>(42);
    ordinalNumbers.put(1L, "1st");
    ordinalNumbers.put(2L, "2nd");
    ordinalNumbers.put(3L, "3rd");
    ordinalNumbers.put(21L, "21st");
    ordinalNumbers.put(22L, "22nd");
    ordinalNumbers.put(23L, "23rd");
    ordinalNumbers.put(31L, "31st");
    for (long d = 1; d <= 31; d++) {
        ordinalNumbers.putIfAbsent(d, "" + d + "th");
    }

    DateTimeFormatter dayOfMonthFormatter = new DateTimeFormatterBuilder()
            .appendText(ChronoField.DAY_OF_MONTH, ordinalNumbers)
            .appendPattern(" MMMM")
            .toFormatter();

    LocalDate date = LocalDate.of(2018, Month.AUGUST, 30);
    for (int i = 0; i < 6; i++) {
        System.out.println(date.format(dayOfMonthFormatter));
        date = date.plusDays(1);
    }

The output from this snippet is:

30th August
31st August
1st September
2nd September
3rd September
4th September

Old answer

This code is shorter, but IMHO not so elegant.

    // ordinal indicators by numbers (1-based, cell 0 is wasted)
    String[] ordinalIndicators = new String[31 + 1];
    Arrays.fill(ordinalIndicators, 1, ordinalIndicators.length, "th");
    ordinalIndicators[1] = ordinalIndicators[21] = ordinalIndicators[31] = "st";
    ordinalIndicators[2] = ordinalIndicators[22] = "nd";
    ordinalIndicators[3] = ordinalIndicators[23] = "rd";

    DateTimeFormatter dayOfMonthFormatter = DateTimeFormatter.ofPattern("d");

    LocalDate today = LocalDate.now(ZoneId.of("America/Menominee")).plusWeeks(1);
    System.out.println(today.format(dayOfMonthFormatter) 
                        + ordinalIndicators[today.getDayOfMonth()]);

Running this snippet just now I got

23rd

One of the many features of java.time is that it’s straightforward and reliable to get the day of month as an int, which is obviously needed for picking the right suffix from the table.

I recommend you write a unit test too.

PS A similar formatter can also be used for parsing a date string containing ordinal numbers like 1st, 2nd, etc. That was done in this question: Java - Parse date with optional seconds.

Link: Oracle tutorial: Date Time explaining how to use java.time.

Answer 4

There is nothing in JDK to do this.

  static String[] suffixes =
  //    0     1     2     3     4     5     6     7     8     9
     { "th", "st", "nd", "rd", "th", "th", "th", "th", "th", "th",
  //    10    11    12    13    14    15    16    17    18    19
       "th", "th", "th", "th", "th", "th", "th", "th", "th", "th",
  //    20    21    22    23    24    25    26    27    28    29
       "th", "st", "nd", "rd", "th", "th", "th", "th", "th", "th",
  //    30    31
       "th", "st" };

 Date date = new Date();
 SimpleDateFormat formatDayOfMonth  = new SimpleDateFormat("d");
 int day = Integer.parseInt(formatDateOfMonth.format(date));
 String dayStr = day + suffixes[day];

Or using Calendar:

 Calendar c = Calendar.getInstance();
 c.setTime(date);
 int day = c.get(Calendar.DAY_OF_MONTH);
 String dayStr = day + suffixes[day];

Per comments by @thorbjørn-ravn-andersen, a table like this can be helpful when localizing:

  static String[] suffixes =
     {  "0th",  "1st",  "2nd",  "3rd",  "4th",  "5th",  "6th",  "7th",  "8th",  "9th",
       "10th", "11th", "12th", "13th", "14th", "15th", "16th", "17th", "18th", "19th",
       "20th", "21st", "22nd", "23rd", "24th", "25th", "26th", "27th", "28th", "29th",
       "30th", "31st" };

Answer 5

Try below function:

public static String getFormattedDate(Date date) 
{
  Calendar cal = Calendar.getInstance();
  cal.setTime(date);
  //2nd of march 2015
  int day = cal.get(Calendar.DATE);
  if (!((day > 10) && (day < 19)))
   switch (day % 10) {
    case 1:
     return new SimpleDateFormat("d'st' 'of' MMMM yyyy").format(date);
    case 2:
     return new SimpleDateFormat("d'nd' 'of' MMMM yyyy").format(date);
    case 3:
     return new SimpleDateFormat("d'rd' 'of' MMMM yyyy").format(date);
    default:
     return new SimpleDateFormat("d'th' 'of' MMMM yyyy").format(date);
   }
  return new SimpleDateFormat("d'th' 'of' MMMM yyyy").format(date);
}

Answer 6

If you try to be aware of i18n the solution get even more complicated.

The problem is that in other languages the suffix may depend not only on the number itself, but also on the noun it counts. For example in Russian it would be "2-ой день", but "2-ая неделя" (these mean "2nd day", but "2nd week"). This is not apply if we formatting only days, but in a bit more generic case you should be aware of complexity.

I think nice solution (I didn't have time to actually implement) would be to extend SimpleDateFormetter to apply Locale-aware MessageFormat before passing to the parent class. This way you would be able to support let say for March formats %M to get "3-rd", %MM to get "03-rd" and %MMM to get "third". From outside this class looks like regular SimpleDateFormatter, but supports more formats. Also if this pattern would be by mistake applied by regular SimpleDateFormetter the result would be incorrectly formatted, but still readable.