How to parse month full form string using DateFormat in Java?

I tried this:

DateFormat fmt = new SimpleDateFormat("MMMM dd, yyyy");
Date d = fmt.parse("June 27, 2007");

error:

Exception in thread "main" java.text.ParseException: Unparseable date: "June 27, 2007"

The java docs say I should use four characters to match the full form. I'm only able to use MMM successfully with abbreviated months like "Jun" but i need to match full form.

Text: For formatting, if the number of pattern letters is 4 or more, the full form is used; otherwise a short or abbreviated form is used if available. For parsing, both forms are accepted, independent of the number of pattern letters.

https://docs.oracle.com/javase/6/docs/api/java/text/SimpleDateFormat.html

Solution 1:

You are probably using a locale where the month names are not "January", "February", etc. but some other words in your local language.

Try specifying the locale you wish to use, for example Locale.US:

DateFormat fmt = new SimpleDateFormat("MMMM dd, yyyy", Locale.US);
Date d = fmt.parse("June 27,  2007");

Also, you have an extra space in the date string, but actually this has no effect on the result. It works either way.

Solution 2:

Just to top this up to the new Java 8 API:

DateTimeFormatter formatter = new DateTimeFormatterBuilder().appendPattern("MMMM dd, yyyy").toFormatter();
TemporalAccessor ta = formatter.parse("June 27, 2007");
Instant instant = LocalDate.from(ta).atStartOfDay().atZone(ZoneId.systemDefault()).toInstant();
Date d = Date.from(instant);
assertThat(d.getYear(), is(107));
assertThat(d.getMonth(), is(5));

A bit more verbose but you also see that the methods of Date used are deprecated ;-) Time to move on.

Solution 3:

LocalDate from java.time

Use LocalDate from java.time, the modern Java date and time API, for a date

    DateTimeFormatter dateFormatter = DateTimeFormatter.ofPattern("MMMM d, u", Locale.ENGLISH);
    LocalDate date = LocalDate.parse("June 27, 2007", dateFormatter);
    System.out.println(date);

Output:

2007-06-27

As others have said already, remember to specify an English-speaking locale when your string is in English. A LocalDate is a date without time of day, so a lot better suitable for the date from your string than the old Date class. Despite its name a Date does not represent a date but a point in time that falls on at least two different dates in different time zones of the world.

Only if you need an old-fashioned Date for an API that you cannot afford to upgrade to java.time just now, convert like this:

    Instant startOfDay = date.atStartOfDay(ZoneId.systemDefault()).toInstant();
    Date oldfashionedDate = Date.from(startOfDay);
    System.out.println(oldfashionedDate);

Output in my time zone:

Wed Jun 27 00:00:00 CEST 2007

Link

Oracle tutorial: Date Time explaining how to use java.time.