Multi tool use

DateFormatter transforms am/pm to a. m./p. m. in spanish

I am parsing with DateFormatter "Thu Jun 28 14:25:00 GMT+03:00 2018", and it correctly outputs Jun 28, 2018 2:25:00 pm. However when the user switches to Spanish locale the formatter outputs jun. 28, 2018 2:25:00 p. m. Is this normal?

here is how I'm parsing the date

DateFormatter dateFormatter = new DateFormatter();
dateFormatter.setDateFormatPattern("MMM dd, yyyy hh:mm:ss a");
mCalendar = new GregorianCalendar(mTimeZone);
mCalendar.setTime(date);
mSimpleDateFormat.applyPattern(pattern);
mSimpleDateFormat.setTimeZone(mTimeZone);

mSimpleDateFormat.format(mCalendar.getTime());


2 Answers
2

It is the correct representation. For example, compare the Spanish AM/PM Strings and the Italian AM/PM Strings. You'll see that Spanish is p.m and Italian is PM.

Although you may want to refer to this Quora answer which states that Spanish times are always presented in a 24-hour format.

Για σου. I believe that vguzzi’s answer is correct. I would like to add two messages:

GregorianCalendar

Date

TimeZone

SimpleDateFormat

java.time

Code example:

DateTimeFormatter originalFormatter
= DateTimeFormatter.ofPattern("EEE MMM dd HH:mm:ss zzz yyyy", Locale.ROOT);
DateTimeFormatter userFormatter
= DateTimeFormatter.ofLocalizedDateTime(FormatStyle.MEDIUM);
String originalDateTimeString = "Thu Jun 28 14:25:00 GMT+03:00 2018";
ZonedDateTime dateTime = ZonedDateTime.parse(originalDateTimeString, originalFormatter);
String formattedDateTime = dateTime.format(userFormatter);
System.out.println(formattedDateTime);


When run in US locale this prints a result that resembles yours:

Jun 28, 2018, 2:25:00 PM

Already British locale is a bit different:

28 Jun 2018, 14:25:00

There’s English and English. And Java knows that Spanish doesn’t use AM and PM either:

28 jun. 2018 14:25:00

It was a surprise to me to learn that Greek does:

28 Ιουν 2018, 2:25:00 μ.μ.

The output examples are from the code running on my Java 9. The locale data on Android may differ giving slightly different output in some cases, but still well suited to the different local audiences.

Yes, java.time works nicely on older and newer Android devices. It just requires at least Java 6.

java.time

org.threeten.bp

java.time

java.time

java.time

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