checking validity of date with ddMM format

[veena sasikumar]

Hi all,
I would like to check the validity of a string obtained from my GUI . It is in the format ddMM and when i used the following program, I coudn't get the required result. Please note that I have caught the Exceptions, but is not mentioned below.

   
        
         SimpleDateFormat  sdfClient = new SimpleDateFormat( "ddMM" );
 sdfClient.setLenient(false);
 System.out.println("date is " + sdfClient.parse("2902"));
 
 

I could read the reason for the behaviour from API doc and could get some information from archive. I could solve the problem by adding the current year with ddMM.

I would like to know whether there is a any other simple method to solve this problme.

Thanks in advance

Veena

[Ajay Singh]

Use this

    SimpleDateFormat sdfClient = new SimpleDateFormat("ddMM");
    sdfClient.setLenient(false);
    Calendar cal = Calendar.getInstance();
    sdfClient.setCalendar(cal);
    System.out.println("date is " + sdfClient.parse("2902"));

[Michael Dunn]

> I would like to know whether there is a any other simple method to solve this problme.

what is the problem?

you've specified ddMM, so it will default to 1970, which is not a leap year
i.e. there's no 29 Feb 1970, so will error with setLenient(false)

[veena sasikumar]

Hi,

Thanks for the replies.

My aim is to check the validity of the date for the present year, and for the coming years. What I meant is , if the date is a valid date for the present and next years, it should not throw exception and otherwise it should throw an exception.

When I run the code suggested by Ajay Singh, I got a result as "date is Sun Mar 01 00:00:00 GMT+05:30 1970". I want to get ParseException instead of this (This is the problem which I mentioned).

Also is there a method to check the validity of the date with respect to current year and next year by using java classes rather than checking the validity with respect to 1970.

Tha

[Michael Dunn]

this might be one way

    
import java.util.Calendar;
import java.text.SimpleDateFormat;
class Testing
{
  public Testing()
  {
    try
    {
      String dataIn = "2902";
      SimpleDateFormat  sdfClient = new SimpleDateFormat( "ddMMyyyy" );
      sdfClient.setLenient(false);
      Calendar cal = Calendar.getInstance();
      System.out.println("date is " + sdfClient.parse(dataIn + cal.get(Calendar.YEAR)));
      //System.out.println("date is " + sdfClient.parse(dataIn + 2008));//test works OK in valid 2902 year
    }catch(Exception e){System.out.println("error");}
  }
  public static void main(String args[]){new Testing();}
}

tests for current year.
for testing next year, just add 1 year to the calendar and re-test

[veena sasikumar]

Thanks for the immediate reply

I was unaware of the use of Calender class and the reply really helped a lot.

Thanks once again specially to Michael Dunn, Ajay Singh and JavaRanch

regards
veena

[Stan James]

A friend of mine once hand coded a COBOL table with 1231 entries in it and used mmdd as an index. In Java it would look something like ...

dateProperties = dateArray[ mmdd ];
if(dateProperties.validDate())...

There was a special check for 0229 but that's it. The program did about 50 complex date functions with an astonishingly short execution path, something like 400 assembler instructions on the average call.

[Stan James]

Boy, won't anything get a burst of outrage on this forum?

[Henry Wong]

Originally posted by Stan James:
Boy, won't anything get a burst of outrage on this forum?

Sorry, COBOL, especially when used with CICS, is incredibly powerful. We are not stupid enough to challenge what it can do...

Henry

[Stan James]

I agree - I enjoyed COBOL and make a point of not saying bad things about it. But I actually liked that table of 1231 entries. All but 366 were empty. I still have the source if anybody needs it. You can guess how he determines if it's a leap year ... it's not with modulo 4.
[ January 25, 2007: Message edited by: Stan James ]