How to create Date object from String value in Java?

Using the SimpleDateFormat class

One of the constructors of this class accepts a String value representing the desired date format and creates SimpleDateFormat class. To parse/convert a string as a Date object −

• Instantiate this class by passing desired format string.
• Parse the date string using the parse() method.

Example

Live Demo

import java.text.ParseException; import java.text.SimpleDateFormat; import java.util.Date; public class Sample {    public static void main(String args[]) throws ParseException {         String date_string = "2007-25-06";       //Instantiating the SimpleDateFormat class       SimpleDateFormat formatter = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-dd-MM");             //Parsing the given String to Date object       Date date = formatter.parse(date_string);             System.out.println("Date value: "+date);    } }

Output

Date value: Mon Jun 25 00:00:00 IST 2007

Using the LocalDate class

The parse() method of the LocalDate class accepts a String value representing a date and returns a LocalDate object.

Example

Live Demo

import java.time.LocalDate; public class Test {    public static void main(String args[]) {         LocalDate date = LocalDate.parse("2007-12-03");       System.out.println(date);    } }

Output

2007-12-03

Using the DateUtils class:

The DateUtils provides utility to format date you can find it in apache.commons package following is the maven dependency for the package −

<dependency>     <groupId>org.apache.commons</groupId>     <artifactId>commons-lang3</artifactId>     <version>3.7</version> </dependency>

The parseDate() method of the DateUtils class accepts a format string and a date string as parameters and returns a Date object.

Example

import java.util.Date; import org.apache.commons.lang3.time.DateUtils; public class Test {    public static void main(String args[]) {         String dateInString = "07-06-2013";       Date date = DateUtils.parseDate(dateInString, "yyyy-MM-dd");       System.out.println(date);    } }

Output

Sat Dec 03 00:00:00 IST 12

Using the Instant class

The parse() method of the java.time.Instant class accepts a date string as a parameter and returns an object (Instant) representing the given date.

Example

Live Demo

import java.time.Instant; public class Test {    public static void main(String args[]) {         String dateInString = "2014-10-05T15:23:01Z";       Instant instant = Instant.parse(dateInString);       System.out.println(instant);    } }

Output

2014-10-05T15:23:01Z