How to parse a date string, including Mαϊ (Greek May) in Java

Question

I cannot parse strings containing dates that include the short version of the month of May in Greek (Μαϊ, which is short for Mαΐου - a note about the difference ϊ-ΐ).

For instance:

25 Μαϊ 1989 24 Μαΐ 1967 

will not be parsed if I use the following formats:

 "d MMM yyyy" "dd MMM yyyy" 

through the following code:

 String dateString = "24 Μαΐ 1967"; // just an example of an input String SimpleDateFormat format = new SimpleDateFormat(someFormat); format.parse(dateString); 

EDIT: The values ​​I'm trying to parse are strings stored in sqlite3 database on Android. In particular, this applies to birthdays. Although Android is dependent, I will share the code for any understanding:

 Cursor cur = context.getContentResolver().query(ContactsContract.Data.CONTENT_URI,null,null,null,null); while(cur.moveToNext()){ String birthdayString = cur.getString(INDEX_OF_BIRTHDAY); } 

Answer 1

Other answers are correct, for example, Franz Becker's Answer . But they use the old java.util.Date and java.text.SimpleDateFormat classes.

java.time

Here is similar code, but using the new java.time and java.time.format in Java 8 and later.

String parsing

The question presented two examples of input strings. Pay attention to various diacritics . The first works, but the second fails. I have no explanation, because I do not know this language ... "All this is Greek for me."; -)

 String input1 = "25 Μαϊ 1989"; String input2 = "24 Μαΐ 1967"; // Different diacritical over the "i". 

Retrieve the Locale instance using the static Locale.forLanguageTag method new in Java 7. Specify the ISO 639 code (via IETF BCP 47 ) for Modern Greek .

 Locale locale = Locale.forLanguageTag("el"); 

Indicate the exact template that we expect.

 DateTimeFormatter formatter = DateTimeFormatter.ofPattern( "dd MMM yyyy" ).withLocale( locale ); 

Parse using the recommended parse method, which takes a reference to the ( Tutorial ) method, LocalDate :: from , in the new Java 8 Lambda syntax.

 LocalDate localDate1 = formatter.parse( input1, LocalDate :: from ); LocalDate localDate2 = formatter.parse( input2, LocalDate :: from ); // Fails… Exception in thread "main" java.time.format.DateTimeParseException: Text '24 Μαΐ 1967' could not be parsed at index 3. 

Dump for the console.

 System.out.println( "localDate1 = " + localDate1 ); 

At startup.

 localDate1 = 1989-05-25 

Line generation

To go another way to generate a localDate string representation, let java.time do the job of defining a localized format. Using automatic localization can be simpler and more flexible than hard-coding a particular format.

 DateTimeFormatter formatterOutput = DateTimeFormatter.ofLocalizedDate( FormatStyle.MEDIUM ).withLocale( locale ); String output = formatterOutput.format( localDate1 ); System.out.println( "output = " + output ); // output = 25 Μαϊ 1989 

Full month name

This second line of input with a different diacritic seems to be an inappropriate abbreviation for the full name of the month Μαΐου . Using this fully qualified month name with a different formatting (four characters of the M pattern) successfully analyzes. Again, I don’t know the modern Greek language, so this explanation is just an assumption from me and the people commenting on this answer.

This sample code demonstrates the successful parsing of input3 .

 String input1 = "25 Μαϊ 1989"; String input2 = "24 Μαΐ 1967"; // Different diacritical over the "i". Incorrect abbreviation of full month name? String input3 = "23 Μαΐου 1978"; // Full month name with different diacritical. Locale locale = Locale.forLanguageTag( "el" ); DateTimeFormatter formatterShort = DateTimeFormatter.ofPattern( "dd MMM yyyy" ).withLocale( locale ); DateTimeFormatter formatterFull = DateTimeFormatter.ofPattern( "dd MMMM yyyy" ).withLocale( locale ); LocalDate localDate1 = formatterShort.parse( input1, LocalDate :: from ); // LocalDate localDate2 = formatter.parse( input2, LocalDate :: from ); // Fails… Exception in thread "main" java.time.format.DateTimeParseException: Text '24 Μαΐ 1967' could not be parsed at index 3. LocalDate localDate3 = formatterFull.parse( input3, LocalDate :: from ); System.out.println( "localDate1 = " + localDate1 ); System.out.println( "localDate3 = " + localDate3 ); 

Answer 2

This works on my machine (Java 8):

 String dateString = "24 Μαϊ 1967"; // just an example of an input String SimpleDateFormat format = new SimpleDateFormat("dd MMM yyyy", new Locale("el", "GR")); format.parse(dateString); 

You can print the available short months as follows:

 Locale locale = new Locale("el", "GR"); DateFormatSymbols dfs = DateFormatSymbols.getInstance(locale); for (String m : dfs.getShortMonths()) { System.out.println(m); } 

Answer 3

It works fine here (in Java 8) if

• you pass Greek to the constructor of SimpleDateFormat: Locale.forLanguageTag("el")

• you use Μαϊ , not Μαΐ .

   String dateString = "24 Μαϊ 1967"; // just an example of an input String SimpleDateFormat format = new SimpleDateFormat("dd MMM yyyy", Locale.forLanguageTag("el")); Date parsed = format.parse(dateString); System.out.println("parsed = " + parsed); // parsed = Wed May 24 00:00:00 CET 1967