Java date format - including additional characters

Question

Is there an equivalent to php date() style formatting in Java? I mean, in php I can backslash-escape characters to have them treated literally. I.e. yyyy \\y\\e\\a\\

Answer 1

java.time

Mark Jeronimus said it already. I am fleshing it out a bit more. Just put the text to be printed literally inside single quotes.

    DateTimeFormatter yearFormatter = DateTimeFormatter.ofPattern("yyyy 'year'");
    System.out.println(LocalDate.of(2010, Month.FEBRUARY, 3).format(yearFormatter));
    System.out.println(Year.of(2010).format(yearFormatter));
    System.out.println(ZonedDateTime.now(ZoneId.of("Europe/Vilnius")).format(yearFormatter));

Output when running just now:

2010 year
2010 year
2019 year

If you are using a DateTimeFormatterBuilder and its appendPattern method, use single quotes in the same way. Or use its appendLiteral method instead and no single quotes.

How do we put a single quote in the format, then? Two single quotes produce one. It doesn’t matter if the double single quote is inside single quotes or not:

    DateTimeFormatter formatterWithSingleQuote = DateTimeFormatter.ofPattern("H mm'' ss\"");
    System.out.println(LocalTime.now(ZoneId.of("Europe/London")).format(formatterWithSingleQuote));

10 28' 34"

    DateTimeFormatter formatterWithSingleQuoteInsideSingleQuotes
            = DateTimeFormatter.ofPattern("hh 'o''clock' a, zzzz", Locale.ENGLISH);
    System.out.println(ZonedDateTime.now(ZoneId.of("America/Los_Angeles"))
            .format(formatterWithSingleQuoteInsideSingleQuotes));

02 o'clock AM, Pacific Daylight Time

All of the formatters above can be used for parsing too. For example:

    LocalTime time = LocalTime.parse("16 43' 56\"", formatterWithSingleQuote);
    System.out.println(time);

16:43:56

The SimpleDateFormat class used when this question was asked nearly 10 years ago is notoriously troublesome and long outdated. I recommend that instead you use java.time, the modern Java date and time API. Which is why I demonstrate just that.

Links

• Oracle tutorial: Date Time explaining how to use java.time.
• Documentation of DateTimeFormatter

Answer 2

Sure, with the SimpleDateFormat you can include literal strings:

Within date and time pattern strings, unquoted letters from 'A' to 'Z' and from 'a' to 'z' are interpreted as pattern letters representing the components of a date or time string. Text can be quoted using single quotes (') to avoid interpretation. "''" represents a single quote. All other characters are not interpreted; they're simply copied into the output string during formatting or matched against the input string during parsing.

 "hh 'o''clock' a, zzzz"    12 o'clock PM, Pacific Daylight Time

Answer 3

java.text.SimpleDateFormat

SimpleDateFormat formatter = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy/MM/dd"); 
String formattedDate = formatter.format(date);

You'll get more info here link text

Answer 4

You can use String.format as documented in java.util.Formatter:

Calendar c = ...;
String s = String.format("%tY year", c);
// -> s == "2010 year" or whatever the year actually is

Answer 5

Just for completeness, Java 8's DateTimeFormatter also supports this:

DateTimeFormatter.ofPattern("yyyy 'year'");