Date Format Characters

The following is a list of the date format characters available in Java – which makes them available to the formatDate function:

Put the format letter/patterns listed below together – with other characters – to create your needed date and time patterns.

Date Characters

• D - Day in year (189)
• d - Day in month (1-31)
• dd - Day in month (01-31)
• F - Day of week in month (2)
• E - Day name in week (Tuesday; Tue)
• u - Day number in week (1 = Monday, ..., 7 = Sunday)
• M - Month in year (1-12)
• MM - Month in year (01-12)
• MMM - Month in year (Jan-Dec)
• MMMM - Month in year (January - December)
• yy - Year (25)
• yyyy - Year (2025)
• G - Era designator (AD)
• w - Week in year (27)
• W - Week in month (2)
• Y - Week Year (2009; 09)

Time Format Characters:

• a - AM/PM marker

• H - Hour in day (0-23)
• k - Hour in day (1-24)
• K - Hour in am/pm (0-11)
• h - Hour in am/pm (1-12)
• m - Minute in hour (30)
• s - Second in minute (55)
• S - Millisecond (978)
• z - General time zone (Pacific Standard Time; PST; GMT-08:00)
• Z - RFC 822 time zone (-0800)
• X - ISO 8601 time zone (-08; -0800; -08:00)

Sample Patterns:

• Birthday:   MMMM dd   (e.g. July 24)
• Birthday:   M/d  (e.g. 4/7)
• Hours, minutes:   hh:mm a  (e.g. 12:45 pm)
• Full Date:   M/d/yyyy   (e.g. 4/4/2025)

Using the formatDate Function

The 'formatDate' function (rw:formatDate(time-object, format)) is used to format Date and Timestamp objects for output. 

formatDate takes two arguments:

formatDate(date-time, format)

• date-time:  The first argument is either a Date or a Timestamp object.  This is the object that will be formatted for output.
• format - The second argument is the format.  This is a quoted string of the characters listed above, depending on what you want your output pattern to be.  e.g.  
  • rw:formatDate( myTime, 'hh:ss a')   --> This will produce  times.  E.g. 12:45 pm    
  • rw:formatDate(myDate, 'MMM dd, yyyyy')  --> This produces dates format such as: Jul 17, 2025   

Why Does 1/1/1970 appear?

1/1/1970 is the "zeroth" date.  When 1/1/1970 appears, it means the Date was not initialized properly OR the object is a Timestamp and simply contains "zero" date fields.    You can remove 1/1/1970 by using formatDate to only output the Time fields:   rw:formatDate( myTime, 'hh:ss a')  

An "empty" Date - one that was never set to a real date - will print as 1/1/1970.