SimpleDateFormat: Parse String To Date

Question

Hi
I'm trying to parse Date-String to Date. But the Date-String I want to parse is embedded in a Text like:
Bla bla bla bla bla bla 2004-05-05 bla bla bla bla bla.
So I tried the attached Class to solve the problem, but it didn't work.
Any ideas?
Thanks Bona
public class Test {
private static SimpleDateFormat dateFormat = new SimpleDateFormat();
private String text;
private Date date;
public Test() {
/ry {
text = "Bla bla bla bla bla bla 2004-05-05 bla bla bla bla bla.";
date = toDate(text, "yyyy-MM-dd");
System.out.println("Datum: "+date);
} catch (ParseException pe) {
System.out.println(pe.getMessage());
public static void main(String[] args) {
Test test1 = new Test();
public static Date toDate(String dateString, String dateFormatPattern)
throws ParseException {
Date date = null;
dateFormat.applyPattern(dateFormatPattern);
dateFormat.setLenient(true);
date = dateFormat.parse(dateString);
return date;
}

Answer 1

Well, you need to extract the date pattern from that String.
You can use regular expressions to do that. See theRegex package for info on how to do that.
BTW - AFAIK, lenient date parsing means, that the parser accepts stuff that matches the pattern, but contains illegal values like "2004-02-30" ...