Question

I have string like this:

Mon, 14 May 2012 13:56:38 GMT

Now I just want only date i.e. 14 May 2012

What should I need to do for that?

Answer 1

The proper way to do it is to parse it into a Date object and format this date object the way you want.

DateFormat inputDF  = new SimpleDateFormat("EEE, d MMM yyyy H:m:s z");
DateFormat outputDF = new SimpleDateFormat("d MMM yyyy");

String input = "Mon, 14 May 2012 13:56:38 GMT";
Date date = inputDF.parse(input);
String output = outputDF.format(date);

System.out.println(output);

Output:

14 May 2012

This code is

• easier to maintain (what if the output format changes slightly, while the input format is preserved? or vice versa?)
• arguably easier to read

than any solution relying on splitting strings, substrings on fixed indexes or regular expressions.