Question

I’m using struts2.x with jquery date picker.
I want to dispaly in the format dd/mm/yyyy. But from the database when fetching it is coming like yyyy-mm-dd.Then i converted it into the required format but the type is String. So next i Converted it to Date type. But the format is changed.

Date getRiskCommDate()
{
String fString = null;
System.out.println("Coming Date from DB"+riskCommDate);
if(riskCommDate!=null)
{
SimpleDateFormat format = new SimpleDateFormat();
format.applyPattern("dd/MM/yyyy");
fString = format.format(riskCommDate);
}
System.out.println("Formated Date in  String Form "+fString);
Date d = new Date(fString);
System.out.println("Formated Date in Date form Date "+d);
return d;  
}  

Output :

Coming Date from DB 2012-07-04
Formated Date in String Form 04/07/2012
Formated Date in Date form Date Sat Apr 07 00:00:00 IST 2012

Any idea is highly appreciated.

Answer 1

The java.util.Date class does not have any property to hold a format.

To display the value of the Date in a custom format, call the format method on SimpleDateFormat.

When you do this:

System.out.println(dateInstance)

…you are simply calling the toString() on the Date. That method returns the date in fixed format in String version.

Based on the comments

If you anyhow wants the custom format with date instance then you can either create a custom class wrapping date instance

class MyDate{
  private Date date;
  //provide appropriate accessor
  //override toString() method to support required output
}

or extend Date

class MyDate extends Date{
   //override toString() method to support required output
   @Override
   public String toString(){
        //convert `this` to  String with required format with the help of `SimpleDateFormat`
   }
}