Question

I’m just wondering if there is a way (maybe with regex) to validate that an input on a Java desktop app is exactly a string formatted as: "YYYY-MM-DD".

Answer 1

Use the following regular expression:

^\d{4}-\d{2}-\d{2}$

as in

if (str.matches("\\d{4}-\\d{2}-\\d{2}")) {
    ...
}

With the matches method, the anchors ^ and $ (beginning and end of string, respectively) are present implicitly.

The pattern above checks conformance with the general “shape” of a date, but it will accept more invalid than valid dates. You may be surprised to learn that checking for valid dates — including leap years! — is possible using a regular expression, but not advisable. Borrowing from an answer elsewhere by Kuldeep, we can all find amusement and admiration for persistence in

((18|19|20)[0-9]{2}[\-.](0[13578]|1[02])[\-.](0[1-9]|[12][0-9]|3[01]))|(18|19|20)[0-9]{2}[\-.](0[469]|11)[\-.](0[1-9]|[12][0-9]|30)|(18|19|20)[0-9]{2}[\-.](02)[\-.](0[1-9]|1[0-9]|2[0-8])|(((18|19|20)(04|08|[2468][048]|[13579][26]))|2000)[\-.](02)[\-.]29

In a production context, your colleagues will appreciate a more straightforward implementation. Remember, the first rule of optimization is Don’t!