Best way to convert date from MM/dd/yyyy to yyyy-mm-dd ?

[Gopakumar Naryanan]

Hi Guys,

I'm developing an application where the user selects the date in (MM/dd/yyyy) format.
Now, i convert the String (date recieved from user) to (yyyy-mm-dd) format by using the following java code ,
send it to valueOf() method of java.sql.Date class and then storing into DB.

public String convertToSqlDate(String date){
String converted_date="";

converted_date+=date.substring(date.lastIndexOf('/')+1,date.length());
converted_date+="-"+date.substring(0,date.indexOf('/'));
converted_date+="-"+date.substring(date.indexOf('/')+1,date.lastIndexOf('/'));

return converted_date;

}

Is there any better way to implement the same?

Thanks in advance

[Zandis Murāns]

Yes, there is - by using date fromats:

        import java.text.DateFormat;
        import java.text.SimpleDateFormat;
        import java.util.Date;
        ...
        String dateReceivedFromUser = "12/13/2012";
        DateFormat userDateFormat = new SimpleDateFormat("MM/dd/yyyy");
        DateFormat dateFormatNeeded = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-mm-dd");
        Date date = userDateFormat.parse(dateReceivedFromUser);
        String convertedDate = dateFormatNeeded.format(date);

Anyways, this is not right approach to handle dates in context of database.

[Joe Areeda]

Zandis Murāns wrote:Anyways, this is not right approach to handle dates in context of database.

Zandis, please expand on what is wrong with that (SimpleDateFormat) approach.

The only thing else I can think of is to use a LOCALE to determine if the user prefers DD/MM/YYYY (or some other variation). Is that what you're thinking about?

Joe