How to get Date formatted in locale with specific pattern?

After searching, i was unable to find a solution for this problem.

i have this:

Long parseDt = Long.valueOf(arrayJson.getJSONObject(i-j).getInt("dt")); // dt is a timestamp
Locale locale = ConfigurationCompat.getLocales(Resources.getSystem().getConfiguration()).get(0);
String date = new SimpleDateFormat("EEE d MMM", locale).format(new java.util.Date(parseDt * 1000));


So, the pattern works but when i change the phone language, it didn't swap the way it displays, i want to mean if the phone language is French it displays the date like this and it is good for most of the european language:

lun 2 juil

and if i switch language to English, it displays the date like that:

mon 2 july

instead of:

mon july 2

Do you have any clue to solve this problem respecting my pattern knowing that i want the name of the day with 3 characters maximum?

The existing predefined format (like FULL) could work but the name of the day is displayed entirely, for example it is "monday" and i would like only "mon", not "monday", so, any idea?

EEE d MMM

mon july 2

SimpleDateFormat

EEE d MMM

EEE MMMM d

3 Answers
3

You could toggle the format according to the locale you got.

Locale locale = ConfigurationCompat.getLocales(
Resources.getSystem().getConfiguration()).get(0);

String fmt = (locale == Locale.ENGLISH) ? "EEE MMM d" : "EEE d MMM";
String date = new SimpleDateFormat(fmt, locale)
.format(new java.util.Date(parseDt * 1000));


Java already “knows” in which locales the day of month goes before the month name and in which it goes after. This is what the full predefined format gave you. So for a general solution that may work in all or most locales I suggest that you rely on this. We can modify the predefined full pattern to use abbreviations for day of week and for month:

int parseDt = arrayJson.getJSONObject(i-j).getInt("dt"); // dt is a timestamp
Locale locale = ConfigurationCompat.getLocales(Resources.getSystem().getConfiguration()).get(0);
String formatPattern = DateTimeFormatterBuilder.getLocalizedDateTimePattern(
FormatStyle.FULL, null, IsoChronology.INSTANCE, locale);
formatPattern = formatPattern.replaceAll("E{3,}", "EEE").replaceAll("M{3,}", "MMM");
DateTimeFormatter dateFormatter = DateTimeFormatter.ofPattern(formatPattern, locale);
ZoneId zone = ZoneId.of("America/Whitehorse");
ZonedDateTime dateTime = Instant.ofEpochSecond(parseDt).atZone(zone);
String date = dateTime.format(dateFormatter);
System.out.println(date);


Example output:

Mon, 2 Jul 2018

Mon, Jul 2, 2018

lun. 2 juil. 2018

I am using regular expressions to make sure that if day of week and/or month is in the format pattern string (for example EEEE and MMMM), it is modified to its abbreviation. Since day of week may also be indicated by lowercase e or c and month by L, you may want to do the same trick with these letters.

EEEE

MMMM

e

c

L

I am using java.time, the modern Java date and time API. To use this on not-brand-new Android, get the ThreeTenABP library: use the links at the bottom. If you object to using a high-quality future-proof external library, you may be able to play a similar trick with SimpleDateFormat.

java.time

SimpleDateFormat

If you want to omit the year too (as in your examples), it is slightly more complicated, but doable. Here’s a simple attempt to remove the year if it comes last:

formatPattern = formatPattern.replaceFirst("^(.*[w'])([^w']*y+)$", "$1");


With this line inserted the output in French locale is just lun. 2 juil., for example. Year may also be given with letter u, you may want to take this into account too.

lun. 2 juil.

u

Converting your Unix time to a date is a time zone sensitive operation, so I give time zone in the code. Please put the one you desire where I put America/Whitehorse. If you trust that the JVM’s time zone setting reflects what the user wants, you may use ZoneId.systemDefault() (the SimpleDateFormat in your own code uses the VM setting too).

ZoneId.systemDefault()

SimpleDateFormat

java.time

java.time

java.time

According to the date format of the countries:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Date_format_by_country

and my app needs, i've choosen the easiest way to display it:

int parseDt = arrayJson.getJSONObject(i-j).getInt("dt"); // dt is a timestamp
Locale locale = ConfigurationCompat.getLocales(Resources.getSystem().getConfiguration()).get(0);
String dateFormat = ((locale.equals(Locale.US) || locale.equals(Locale.CHINA) || locale.equals(Locale.CANADA) || locale.equals(Locale.JAPAN)) ? "EEE, MMM d" : "EEE d MMM";
String date = new SimpleDateFormat(dateFormat, locale).format(new java.util.Date(parseDt * 1000));


cheers and thx to all.

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