How to parse month full form string using DateFormat in Java?

I tried this:

DateFormat fmt = new SimpleDateFormat("MMMM dd, yyyy");
Date d = fmt.parse("June 27, 2007");

error:

Exception in thread "main" java.text.ParseException: Unparseable date: "June 27, 2007"

The java docs say I should use four characters to match the full form. I'm only able to use MMM successfully with abbreviated months like "Jun" but i need to match full form.

> Text: For formatting, if the number > of pattern letters is 4 or more, the > full form is used; otherwise a short > or abbreviated form is used if > available. For parsing, both forms are > accepted, independent of the number of > pattern letters.

<https://docs.oracle.com/javase/6/docs/api/java/text/SimpleDateFormat.html>

You are probably using a locale where the month names are not "January", "February", etc. but some other words in your local language.

Try specifying the locale you wish to use, for example Locale.US:

DateFormat fmt = new SimpleDateFormat("MMMM dd, yyyy", Locale.US);
Date d = fmt.parse("June 27,  2007");

Also, you have an extra space in the date string, but actually this has no effect on the result. It works either way.

Just to top this up to the new Java 8 API:

DateTimeFormatter formatter = new DateTimeFormatterBuilder().appendPattern("MMMM dd, yyyy").toFormatter();
TemporalAccessor ta = formatter.parse("June 27, 2007");
Instant instant = LocalDate.from(ta).atStartOfDay().atZone(ZoneId.systemDefault()).toInstant();
Date d = Date.from(instant);
assertThat(d.getYear(), is(107));
assertThat(d.getMonth(), is(5));

A bit more verbose but you also see that the methods of Date used are deprecated ;-) Time to move on.

LocalDate from java.time

Use LocalDate from java.time, the modern Java date and time API, for a date

	DateTimeFormatter dateFormatter = DateTimeFormatter.ofPattern("MMMM d, u", Locale.ENGLISH);
	LocalDate date = LocalDate.parse("June 27, 2007", dateFormatter);
	System.out.println(date);

Output:

> 2007-06-27

As others have said already, remember to specify an English-speaking locale when your string is in English. A LocalDate is a date without time of day, so a lot better suitable for the date from your string than the old Date class. Despite its name a Date does not represent a date but a point in time that falls on at least two different dates in different time zones of the world.

Only if you need an old-fashioned Date for an API that you cannot afford to upgrade to java.time just now, convert like this:

	Instant startOfDay = date.atStartOfDay(ZoneId.systemDefault()).toInstant();
	Date oldfashionedDate = Date.from(startOfDay);
	System.out.println(oldfashionedDate);

Output in my time zone:

> Wed Jun 27 00:00:00 CEST 2007

Link

Oracle tutorial: Date Time explaining how to use java.time.

val currentTime = Calendar.getInstance().time
SimpleDateFormat("MMMM", Locale.getDefault()).format(date.time)