SimpleDateFormat and locale based format string

user_85010 0
Viewed 248410

I'm trying to format a date in Java in different ways based on the given locale. For instance I want English users to see "Nov 1, 2009" (formatted by "MMM d, yyyy") and Norwegian users to see "1. nov. 2009" ("d. MMM. yyyy").

The month part works OK if I add the locale to the SimpleDateFormat constructor, but what about the rest?

I was hoping I could add format strings paired with locales to SimpleDateFormat, but I can't find any way to do this. Is it possible or do I need to let my code check the locale and add the corresponding format string?

simpledateformat locale date java
10 Answers

Java 8 Style for a given date

LocalDate today = LocalDate.of(1982, Month.AUGUST, 31);
System.out.println(today.format(DateTimeFormatter.ofLocalizedDate(FormatStyle.MEDIUM).withLocale(Locale.ENGLISH)));
System.out.println(today.format(DateTimeFormatter.ofLocalizedDate(FormatStyle.MEDIUM).withLocale(Locale.FRENCH)));
System.out.println(today.format(DateTimeFormatter.ofLocalizedDate(FormatStyle.MEDIUM).withLocale(Locale.JAPANESE)));
user_16437110

Hope this helps someone. Please find in the below code which accepts Locale instance and returns the locale specific date format/pattern.

public static String getLocaleDatePattern(Locale locale) {
    // Validating if Locale instance is null
    if (locale == null || locale.getLanguage() == null) {
        return "MM/dd/yyyy";
    }
    // Fetching the locale specific date pattern
    String localeDatePattern = ((SimpleDateFormat) DateFormat.getDateInstance(
            DateFormat.SHORT, locale)).toPattern();
    // Validating if locale type is having language code for Chinese and country
    // code for (Hong Kong) with Date Format as - yy'?'M'?'d'?'
    if (locale.toString().equalsIgnoreCase("zh_hk")) {
        // Expected application Date Format for Chinese (Hong Kong) locale type
        return "yyyy'MM'dd";
    }
    // Replacing all d|m|y OR Gy with dd|MM|yyyy as per the locale date pattern
    localeDatePattern = localeDatePattern.replaceAll("d{1,2}", "dd")
            .replaceAll("M{1,2}", "MM")
            .replaceAll("y{1,4}|Gy", "yyyy");
    // Replacing all blank spaces in the locale date pattern
    localeDatePattern = localeDatePattern.replace(" ", "");
    // Validating the date pattern length to remove any extract characters
    if (localeDatePattern.length() > 10) {
        // Keeping the standard length as expected by the application
        localeDatePattern = localeDatePattern.substring(0, 10);
    }
    return localeDatePattern;
}
user_24363140
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