Parsing the Time

Question

Hello everyone
Iam trying to parse a string to a SimpleDateFormat and then again to simply display the time. The incoming date is in the format "yyyyMMddHHmmss", the first section of the code <string2Date> converts the string into an eligible standard java date format and this works fine, the second half <string2Time> I'm having a bit of problem with. I wanted to parse the date further and display the time only "HHmmss", the obstacles I've come across is
HHmmss is not the same length and form as the input yyyyMMddHHmmss
Casting a Date to a String
Can anyone help? Please note I'm using jdk1.1
import java.text.*;
import java.util.*;
import java.text.DateFormat;
import java.io.*;
import java.lang.Integer;
public class TimeConvertor extends SimpleDateFormat
          protected Date theDate;     
          protected Date d;
          protected Date theTime;
public Date string2date(String DateString){     
          String tf="yyyyMMddHHmmss";
          SimpleDateFormat df = new SimpleDateFormat (tf);
          try{
          theDate=df.parse(DateString);
          catch (Exception ex) {
          System.out.println("error in time conv");
     return theDate;
public Date string2time (String DateString){
          DateFormat tf = new SimpleDateFormat ("yyyyMMddHHmmss");
          DateFormat tdf = new SimpleDateFormat ("hh:mm:ss");
          try
               d = tf.parse (DateString);
     /*<theTime> wants to parse a string and it wants it the same length as <tf>
     *so this line <df> is an attempt to convert <d> into a string and look only
     at the time of the string/
               String df=(String)toString(d(Integer.parseInt.substring(8,14)));
               theTime = tdf.parse (df);
          catch (ParseException e)
               System.out.println ("Problem parsing hour value");
               System.out.println (e);
               e.printStackTrace ();
          System.out.println ("Output = " + theTime);
          return theTime;
}

Answer 1

Thanks I followed your advice... i'm getting closer- it compiles and runs but it has a "-depreciator" warning. I wanted to plot a graph: measurements versus time. Having the option of displaying day, week or month plot. The day plot would just display the times associated with that day, then a week with date+time etc. I'd still want the time associated with the date, parsing would be purely for display purposes. Using the Calendar is the best solution, Thanks! My last questions {see comments on code below} are why am i getting this "-dep" warning & can i get rid of it; also how can i display hour:minutes:seconds with out getting the error ")"?
Thanks again
import java.text.*;
import java.util.*;
import java.text.DateFormat;
import java.io.*;
import java.lang.Integer;
import java.lang.String;
public class TimeConvertor extends SimpleDateFormat
          protected Date theDate;     
          protected Date d;
          protected Date theTime;
          String tf="yyyyMMddHHmmss";
          SimpleDateFormat df = new SimpleDateFormat (tf);
         Calendar c = Calendar.getInstance();
public Date string2date(String DateString){     
          try{
               theDate=df.parse(DateString);
          catch (Exception ex) {
                System.out.println("error in time conv");
           return theDate;
public Date string2time (Date theDate){
                  c.setTime(theDate);
                  /*theDate.getMinutes(),theDate.getHours(),etc causes the -dep warning*/   
              c.set(Calendar.HOUR, theDate.getHours());
              c.set(Calendar.MINUTE,theDate.getMinutes());  
              c.set(Calendar.SECOND,theDate.getSeconds());
    /*Error ')' expected*/          
     System.out.println("Time = " c.get(Calendar.HOUR)":" c.get(Calendar.MINUTE) ":" c.get(Calendar.SECOND)); 
     /* This works fine prints out the right hour, minutes, sec but Individually i wanted HH:mm:ss*/     
     System.out.println(c.get(Calendar.HOUR));
     System.out.println(c.get(Calendar.MINUTE));
     System.out.println(+c.get(Calendar.SECOND));
     return c.getTime();
}