How to sanity check a date in Java [closed]

Answer 1

Above methods of date parsing are nice , i just added new check in existing methods that double check the converted date with original date using formater, so it works for almost each case as i verified. e.g. 02/29/2013 is invalid date. Given function parse the date according to current acceptable date formats. It returns true if date is not parsed successfully.

 public final boolean validateDateFormat(final String date) {
        String[] formatStrings = {"MM/dd/yyyy"};
        boolean isInvalidFormat = false;
        Date dateObj;
        for (String formatString : formatStrings) {
            try {
                SimpleDateFormat sdf = (SimpleDateFormat) DateFormat.getDateInstance();
                sdf.applyPattern(formatString);
                sdf.setLenient(false);
                dateObj = sdf.parse(date);
                System.out.println(dateObj);
                if (date.equals(sdf.format(dateObj))) {
                    isInvalidFormat = false;
                    break;
                }
            } catch (ParseException e) {
                isInvalidFormat = true;
            }
        }
        return isInvalidFormat;
    }

Answer 2

Here's what I did for Node environment using no external libraries:

Date.prototype.yyyymmdd = function() {
   var yyyy = this.getFullYear().toString();
   var mm = (this.getMonth()+1).toString(); // getMonth() is zero-based
   var dd  = this.getDate().toString();
   return zeroPad([yyyy, mm, dd].join('-'));  
};

function zeroPad(date_string) {
   var dt = date_string.split('-');
   return dt[0] + '-' + (dt[1][1]?dt[1]:"0"+dt[1][0]) + '-' + (dt[2][1]?dt[2]:"0"+dt[2][0]);
}

function isDateCorrect(in_string) {
   if (!matchesDatePattern) return false;
   in_string = zeroPad(in_string);
   try {
      var idate = new Date(in_string);
      var out_string = idate.yyyymmdd();
      return in_string == out_string;
   } catch(err) {
      return false;
   }

   function matchesDatePattern(date_string) {
      var dateFormat = /[0-9]+-[0-9]+-[0-9]+/;
      return dateFormat.test(date_string); 
   }
}

And here is how to use it:

isDateCorrect('2014-02-23')
true

Answer 3

Here is I would check the date format:

 public static boolean checkFormat(String dateTimeString) {
    return dateTimeString.matches("^\\d{4}-\\d{2}-\\d{2}") || dateTimeString.matches("^\\d{4}-\\d{2}-\\d{2}\\s\\d{2}:\\d{2}:\\d{2}")
            || dateTimeString.matches("^\\d{4}-\\d{2}-\\d{2}T\\d{2}:\\d{2}:\\d{2}") || dateTimeString
            .matches("^\\d{4}-\\d{2}-\\d{2}T\\d{2}:\\d{2}:\\d{2}Z") ||
            dateTimeString.matches("^\\d{4}-\\d{2}-\\d{2}\\s\\d{2}:\\d{2}:\\d{2}Z");
}

Answer 4

You can use SimpleDateFormat

For example something like:

boolean isLegalDate(String s) {
    SimpleDateFormat sdf = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd");
    sdf.setLenient(false);
    return sdf.parse(s, new ParsePosition(0)) != null;
}

Answer 5

I suggest you to use org.apache.commons.validator.GenericValidator class from apache.

GenericValidator.isDate(String value, String datePattern, boolean strict);

Note: strict - Whether or not to have an exact match of the datePattern.

Answer 6

Two comments on the use of SimpleDateFormat.

it should be declared as a static instance if declared as static access should be synchronized as it is not thread safe

IME that is better that instantiating an instance for each parse of a date.