How do I convert string of time to time object?

Date: 2010-09-16. Category: java.util examples. Hits: 63K time(s).

You want to convert a string reprsenting a time into a time object in Java. As we know that Java is representing a time information in a class java.util.Date, this class keep information about date and time.

Now if you have a string of time you can use a SimpleDateFormat object to parse the string date and return a date object. The pattern of the string should be passed to the simple date format constructor. In the example below the string is formatted as hh:mm:ss (hour:minutes:second).

package org.kodejava.example.util;

import java.text.DateFormat;
import java.text.SimpleDateFormat;
import java.util.Date;

public class StringToTimeExample {
    public static void main(String[] args) {        
        //
        // A string of time information
        //
        String time = "15:30:18";

        //
        // Create an instance of SimpleDateFormat with the specified
        // format.
        //
        DateFormat sdf = new SimpleDateFormat("hh:mm:ss");
        try {
            // 
            // The get the date object from the string just called the 
            // parse method and pass the time string to it. The method 
            // throws ParseException if the time string is in an 
            // invalid format. But remember as we don't pass the date 
            // information this date object will represent the 1st of
            // january 1970.
            Date date = sdf.parse(time);            
            System.out.println("Date and Time: " + date);
        } catch (Exception e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
    }
}

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