Display dates with zeros for month, day, year.

Question

I have a date coming from a database as an int (20021215 means 12/15/2002). If the database gives me a "0", meaning no date value is assigned, then it should be displayed as "00/00/0000". The following code snippet works for the non-zero int database values ...
public static String formatDisplayDate(int date) {
    String dateAsString = null;
    if (date == 0) {
        dateAsString = "00000000";
    else {
        dateAsString = Integer.toString(date);
    String strYear = dateAsString.substring(0,4);
    String strMonth = dateAsString.substring(4,6);
    String strDay = dateAsString.substring(6);
    int year = Integer.parseInt(strYear);
    int month = (Integer.parseInt(strMonth)) - 1;
    int day = Integer.parseInt(strDay);
    DateFormat myFormat = DateFormat.getDateInstance(DateFormat.SHORT);
    Calendar cal = myFormat.getCalendar();
    cal.set(year, month, day);
    Date myDate = cal.getTime();
    String formattedDate = myFormat.format(myDate);
    return formattedDate;
}Although I didn't really expect the zero values case to work, I am not sure how to implement it. How would I go about building a string using all zeros and still have it automatically display in the correct locale format?
Any help is appreciated.

Answer 1

Thank you for your response. I agree a blank field would be better, but I think the "zeros" format is there to give the user an idea of expected date entry formatting, not that they'll necessarily follow it. I have made a few changes per your suggestions (shown below for the record, minus the exception handling), and it works perfectly.
public static String formatExternalDate8(int date) {
  String dateAsString = null;
  if (date == 0) {
    dateAsString = "00010101";
  else {
    dateAsString = Integer.toString(date);
  int year = Integer.parseInt(dateAsString.substring(0,4));
  int month = (Integer.parseInt(dateAsString.substring(4,6))) - 1;
  int day = Integer.parseInt(dateAsString.substring(6));
  DateFormat myFormat = DateFormat.getDateInstance(DateFormat.SHORT);
  Calendar cal = myFormat.getCalendar();
  cal.set(year, month, day);
  Date myDate = cal.getTime();
  String formattedDate = myFormat.format(myDate);
  if (date == 0) {
    formattedDate = formattedDate.replace('1', '0');
  return formattedDate;
}Thanks again for your assistance.