Help with a SIMPLE java thing

Question

I've only got ONE handful of hair left.
I'm trying to build a series of dropdown boxes; a day dropdown (Mon, Tue, Wed...), a month dropdown (Jan, Feb, Mar...), a year dropdown, hour dropdown, minute dropdown, and an am/pm dropdown.
I think I want to build my dropdowns using "for" loops something like this:
for (i=0;i<12;i++) {
myStringBuffer.append("<option>" + [someUnknownFunctionThatReturnsTheFirstThreeLettersOfTheMonth(i)] + "</option>")
I've been trying to mix up various combinations of Date objects (most date functions seem to be depreciated), Calendar Objects, DateFormat Objects and SimpleDateFormat Objects but nothing seems to want to perform the function that I need.
I've had iffy success creating a calendar object, setting the Month to "i", using the getTime function to return a Date object which I can then pass to the SimpleDateFormat object using the .format(Date) function, after setting the pattern to "EEE", but it seems like just an incredibly complicated way to do what ought to be a simple function...i.e. convert a number 0-11 (or 1-12, I'm not picky) into the name of a stinking Month! Arrgh.
If anyone can help, I thank you.

Answer 1

I've done that before, so i'll share it with you.
import java.text.SimpleDateFormat;
import java.text.DateFormatSymbols;
import java.util.Calendar;
import java.util.Date;
public String createListOfMonth(String pName) {
StringBuffer sbMonth = new StringBuffer();
DateFormatSymbols fm = new DateFormatSymbols();
String[] arrMonth = fm.getMonths();
sbMonth.append("<select name=\"" + pName + "\">");
sbMonth.append("     <option value=\"\">Month</option>\n");
for (int i=0; i<arrMonth.length; i++) {
if (!arrMonth.trim().equals("")) {
String sValue = "0000" + (i + 1);
sValue = sValue.substring(sValue.length() - 2);               
sbMonth.append("     <option value=\"" + sValue + "\">" + arrMonth[i] + "</option>\n");
sbMonth.append("</select>");
return (sbMonth.toString());
You can manipulate the symbol (either for months, days) using different locale. You can see the API for java.text.DateFormatSymbols in Java2 SE.
Regards,
Hariyanto