Date check

Question

I have to check if a string is a correct date. I have already checked topics about this in the forum but all of them talk about formatting string as a date.
In other words if I have a string like dd-mm-yyyy how can I control if it is a real date or not?
For example 99-01-2003 is not correct but if I check only the format it is OK.
Is there a class that can do it?
I'm sure of that but I haven't found it.
Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

You can make use of java.text.SimpleDateFormat to perform verification of the Date
import java.text.SimpleDateFormat;
import java.text.ParseException;
public final class DateTest {
  // The Date Format to be used to verify the String
  private static final SimpleDateFormat DATEFORMAT = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd");
  // Set the Date Format to be non-lenient. This is what determines
  // if a date is valid or invalid
  static {
    DATEFORMAT.setLenient(false);
   * The Main Method
   * param args The Arguments from the Command Line
   * @since 1.1
  public static void main(final String[] args) {
    if (args.length != 1) {
      System.out.println("Usage : java DateTest <date>\nDate must be of the format \"YYYY-MM-DD\"");
    } else {
      try {
        DATEFORMAT.parse(args[0]);
        System.out.println("\"" + args[0] + "\" is Valid");
      } catch (ParseException e) {
        System.err.println("Date Could not be parsed Successfully. " + e.getMessage());
}Please note that SimpleDateFormat is not thread safe. If you need one that is thread safe, you can consider FastDateFormat from the jakarta commons project at http://jakarta.apache.org/commons/ . The FastDateFormat class is from the Lang component
Hope that helps
Jega