That's the hard way and those java.util.Date setter methods have been deprecated since Java 1.1 (1997). Simply format the date using SimpleDateFormat using a format pattern matching the input string.
In your specific case of "January 2, 2010" as the input string:
- "January" is the full text month, so use the MMMM pattern for it
- "2" is the short day-of-month, so use the d pattern for it.
- "2010" is the 4-digit year, so use the yyyy pattern for it.
String string = "January 2, 2010";
DateFormat format = new SimpleDateFormat("MMMM d, yyyy", Locale.ENGLISH);
Date date = format.parse(string);
System.out.println(date); // Sat Jan 02 00:00:00 GMT 2010
Note the importance of the explicit Locale argument. If you omit it, then it will use the default locale which is not necessarily English as used in the month name of the input string. If the locale doesn't match with the input string, then you would confusingly get a java.text.ParseException even though when the format pattern seems valid.
Here's an extract of relevance from the javadoc, listing all available format patterns:
Letter Date or Time Component Presentation Examples
------ ---------------------- ------------------ -------------------------------------
G Era designator Text AD
y Year Year 1996; 96
Y Week year Year 2009; 09
M/L Month in year Month July; Jul; 07
w Week in year Number 27
W Week in month Number 2
D Day in year Number 189
d Day in month Number 10
F Day of week in month Number 2
E Day in week Text Tuesday; Tue
u Day number of week Number 1
a Am/pm marker Text PM
H Hour in day (0-23) Number 0
k Hour in day (1-24) Number 24
K Hour in am/pm (0-11) Number 0
h Hour in am/pm (1-12) Number 12
m Minute in hour Number 30
s Second in minute Number 55
S Millisecond Number 978
z Time zone General time zone Pacific Standard Time; PST; GMT-08:00
Z Time zone RFC 822 time zone -0800
X Time zone ISO 8601 time zone -08; -0800; -08:00
Note that the patterns are case sensitive and that text based patterns of four characters or more represent the full form; otherwise a short or abbreviated form is used if available. So e.g. MMMMM or more is unnecessary.
Here are some examples of valid SimpleDateFormat patterns to parse a given string to date:
Input string Pattern
------------------------------------ ----------------------------
2001.07.04 AD at 12:08:56 PDT yyyy.MM.dd G 'at' HH:mm:ss z
Wed, Jul 4, '01 EEE, MMM d, ''yy
12:08 PM h:mm a
12 o'clock PM, Pacific Daylight Time hh 'o''clock' a, zzzz
0:08 PM, PDT K:mm a, z
02001.July.04 AD 12:08 PM yyyyy.MMMM.dd GGG hh:mm aaa
Wed, 4 Jul 2001 12:08:56 -0700 EEE, d MMM yyyy HH:mm:ss Z
010704120856-0700 yyMMddHHmmssZ
2001-07-04T12:08:56.235-0700 yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss.SSSZ
2001-07-04T12:08:56.235-07:00 yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss.SSSXXX
2001-W27-3 YYYY-'W'ww-u
An important note is that SimpleDateFormat is not thread safe. In other words, you should never declare and assign it as a static or instance variable and then reuse it from different methods/threads. You should always create it brand new within the method local scope
Hope this helps!
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