Date formatting

[Aaron John]

I found the following code in the FAQs. I'd like to know how the date format can change depending on the locale, and without hardcoding the formatString, e.g. in the States, the general date format is MM-dd-yyyy (month first then date), while in the Australia the general date format is dd-MM-yyyy (date first then month).

   
Date date = new Date();
 
//you can specify the desired format here.
String formatString = "dd-MMM-YYYY";
 
//create an instance of SimpleDateFormat.
SimpleDateFormat dateFormat = new SimpleDateFormat(formatString);
 
//The parameter should be a date and it returns the date formatted as a String object.
String outputDate = dateFormat.format(date);
 

[Nicole Lacoste]

Hi,

You might want to try looking at the java.text.DateFormat
class. It has a method

static DateFormat getDateInstance(int style, Locale aLocale) 

Gets the date formatter with the given formatting style for the given locale.

Then you call format(Date) on the DateFormat object that this returns. You can use a DateFormat to read or write dates in a particular format. Have a look at the doc.
http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/docs/api/java/text/DateFormat.html

Niki