turn string date to number date

[jon ruane]

does anyone know of any classes that i could use to turn a String date into its number equivalent?

i need to split a string "20 Apr, 2007" into day month year, so this would return:

day = 20
month = 4,
year = 2007

iv used a mixture of split() and parseInt() to get the day and year, but im left with String "apr" which i need to turn into 4. any simple way without using a massive IF statement.

[Ulf Dittmer]

That's what the java.text.SimpleDateFormat class is for. It can transform strings to Date objects (parse method) and Date objects to string (format method).

[Joanne Neal]

Converting a month string to a number will obviously be locale specific. I don't know if the standard API has a way of doing it, but if it doesn't, one way would be to set up a HashMap using the month strings as keys and the int values as values
i.e.

static HashMap dateStrToInt = new Hashmap();
static {
  dateStrToInt.put("jan", new Integer(1));
  dateStrToInt.put("feb", new Integer(2));
  .
  .
  .
}

and then do

String month = "Mar";
int iMonth = ((Integer ) dateStrToInt.get(month.toLowerCase())).intValue();

[jon ruane]

cheers guys. just thought id post the way i eventually did it:

SimpleDateFormat format = new SimpleDateFormat("dd MMM, yyyy");

try {
Date parsed = format.parse(str);
GregorianCalendar cal =
new GregorianCalendar(parsed.getDay(),parsed.getMonth (),parsed.getYear());
int day = (parsed.getDate());
int month = (parsed.getMonth()+1);
int year = (parsed.getYear()+1900);
System.out.println(day +" " + month + " "+ year);
} catch (ParseException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}

i realise that the get() methods from Date are in fact depreciated, but i've been told that they will function fine in an application thats not going to be run on a machine running a different time zone.

[Joanne Neal]

The recommended methods to use instead of the Date.getXXX() methods are all in the Calendar class. So, as you have a Calendar object, why don't you use them ?