Android - Displaying month name for different date formats

Question

I have an app that displays dates and times in a localized format for different areas, that is - it shows a user dates and times based on his preference. But my issue is that it always displays numbers, ie yyyy.mm.dd, or mm/dd/yyy, or dd,mm,yyyy. What I would like to have is this: show date so that the day is a number, year is a number, but the month is displayed as a string, ie. Jan / Xin / Gen / Jān / Yan... or 01 Jan 2018 / Jan 01 2018 / 2018 Jan 01, and so on, but still keep the current local formatting. I know that I could do that if I hardcode it like MMM, but I want it to change, depending on the localized format.

So basically this is my question: how can I display localized time, from a value I get from the server (yyyy-MM-dd HH: mm: ss), with month displayed as a three letter word, no matter what locale it uses?

I know this question sounds familiar, but so far I have tried a lot of answers, both on stack overflow, and other sources, but without any success. Some of the things I have tried include: 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 ... but I couldn't make it work in my example.

My Adapter:

public void onBindViewHolder(RestaurantsAdapter.RestaurantsViewHolder holder, int position) {
    // getting restaurant data for the row
    Restaurant restaurant = restaurant Items.get(position);

    holder.userName.setText(restaurant .getUserName());
    holder.date.setText(convertDate(restaurant .getDateTime())); //string dobiti u formatu, pretvoriti ga u localized i podijeliti na dva dijela
    holder.time.setText(convertTime(restaurant .getDateTime()));

    TextDrawable.IBuilder builder = TextDrawable.builder()
            .beginConfig()
            .withBorder(0)
            .toUpperCase()
            .endConfig()
            .roundRect(10);
    ColorGenerator generator = ColorGenerator.MATERIAL;
    int color = generator.getColor(restaurant.getUserId());
    TextDrawable textDrawable = builder.build(restaurant Items.get(position).getUserName().substring(0, 1), color);
    holder.thumbNail.setImageDrawable(textDrawable);

    Picasso.with(context)
            .load(AppConfig.URL_PROFILE_PHOTO + restaurant.getThumbnailUrl())
            .placeholder(textDrawable)
            .error(textDrawable)
            .transform(new RoundedTransform(12, 0))
            .fit()
            .centerCrop()
            .into(holder.thumbNail);
}

 private String convertDate(String time) {
    final DateFormat shortDateFormat = android.text.format.DateFormat.getDateFormat(context.getApplicationContext());

    SimpleDateFormat dateFormatReceived = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss", Locale.getDefault());
    SimpleDateFormat dateFormatConverted = new SimpleDateFormat(((SimpleDateFormat) shortDateFormat).toPattern(), Locale.getDefault());

    java.util.Date date = null;

    try {
        date = dateFormatReceived.parse(time);
    } catch (ParseException e) {
        e.printStackTrace();
    }

    return dateFormatConverted.format(date);
}

private String convertTime(String time) {
    final DateFormat shortTimeFormat = android.text.format.DateFormat.getTimeFormat(context.getApplicationContext());
    SimpleDateFormat timeFormatReceived = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss", Locale.getDefault());
    SimpleDateFormat timeFormatConverted = new SimpleDateFormat(((SimpleDateFormat) shortTimeFormat).toPattern(), Locale.getDefault());

    java.util.Date date = null;

    try {
        date = timeFormatReceived.parse(time);
    } catch (ParseException e) {
        e.printStackTrace();
    }

    return timeFormatConverted.format(date);
}

UPDATE:

I tried adding this to my solution:

 private String convertDate(String time) {
    final DateFormat shortDateFormat = android.text.format.DateFormat.getDateFormat(context.getApplicationContext());
    Calendar Now = Calendar.getInstance();
    Now.getDisplayName(Calendar.HOUR, Calendar.SHORT, Locale.getDefault());
    SimpleDateFormat dateFormatReceived = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss", Locale.getDefault());
    SimpleDateFormat dateFormatConverted = new SimpleDateFormat(((SimpleDateFormat) shortDateFormat).toPattern(), Locale.getDefault());
    dateFormatConverted.getDisplayName(Calendar.HOUR, Calendar.SHORT, Locale.getDefault());
    java.util.Date date = null;

    try {
        date = dateFormatReceived.parse(time);
    } catch (ParseException e) {
        e.printStackTrace();
    }

    return dateFormatConverted.format(date);
}

Answer 1

Please try to use getDisplayName(...) method

In order to get more information you had better go through this documentation

---

Editted

More sufficiently you can try this way:

int monthOfYear = Calendar.JULY; // 6
String monthName = new 
DateFormatSymbols(Locale.getDefault()).getShortMonths()[monthOfYear];

Answer 2

I think the following method will give you the date-time formatter you want.

public static DateTimeFormatter getLocalizedDateFormatter(Locale requestedLocale) {
    String formatPatternString = DateTimeFormatterBuilder.getLocalizedDateTimePattern(
            FormatStyle.SHORT, null, 
            Chronology.ofLocale(requestedLocale), requestedLocale);
    // if not already showing month name, modify so it shows abbreviated month name
    if (! formatPatternString.contains("MMM")) {
        formatPatternString = formatPatternString.replaceAll("M+", "MMM");
    }
    return DateTimeFormatter.ofPattern(formatPatternString, requestedLocale);
}

Test:

    Locale[] locales = { Locale.US, Locale.FRANCE, Locale.GERMANY,
            Locale.forLanguageTag("da-DK"), Locale.forLanguageTag("sr-BA") };
    LocalDate today = LocalDate.now(ZoneId.of("Europe/Sarajevo"));
    for (Locale currentLocale : locales) {
        DateTimeFormatter ldf = getLocalizedDateFormatter(currentLocale);
        System.out.format(currentLocale, "%-33S%s%n", 
                currentLocale.getDisplayName(), today.format(ldf));
    }

Output:

ENGLISH (UNITED STATES)          Dec/24/17
FRENCH (FRANCE)                  24/déc./17
GERMAN (GERMANY)                 24.Dez.17
DANSK (DANMARK)                  24-dec.-17
SERBIAN (BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA) 17-дец-24

JSR-310 also known as java.time

You tried to use the long outdated and notoriously troublesome classes DateFormat and SimpleDateFormat. Instead I recommend you make it a habit to use JSR-310, the modern Java date and time API. So I do that in the method above.

I don’t think it was part of the question, but for the sake of completeness, parse the date-time string as follows. The formatter you get from my getLocalizedDateFormatter can be used for formatting a LocalDateTime and many other date-time types in addition to LocalDate.

    LocalDateTime ldt = LocalDateTime.parse("2017-12-24 22:51:34",
            DateTimeFormatter.ofPattern("uuuu-MM-dd HH:mm:ss"));
    String formattedDate = ldt.format(getLocalizedDateFormatter(Locale.UK));

Question: Can I use JSR-310 on Android?

Yes you can. It just requires at least Java 6.

• In Java 8 and later the new API comes built-in.
• In Java 6 and 7 get the ThreeTen Backport, the backport of the new classes (ThreeTen for JSR 310).
• On Android, use the Android edition of ThreeTen Backport. It’s called ThreeTenABP.

In the latter two cases, make sure to add the appropriate edition of the backport library to your project, use the links below, and to import the classes I use from org.threeten.bp and org.threeten.bp.format.

Links

• Oracle tutorial: Date Time, explaining how to use java.time.
• ThreeTen Backport project
• ThreeTenABP, Android edition of ThreeTen Backport
• Question: How to use ThreeTenABP in Android Project, with a very thorough explanation.
• Java Specification Request (JSR) 310, where the modern date and time API was first described.