Parse dates from one format to another - scala

Question

I have an initial date as a String which I need to convert to date with a specific format. I tried to defined date format in a string and parse it, then I formatted it to the desired format. The problem is that I need a date as a final result.
Here is the code I used:
def parseDateToOriginal(date: String): String = {
val initialDateFormat = new SimpleDateFormat("EEE MMM dd hh:mm:ss zzz yyyy")
val finalDateFormat = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-mm-dd")
val result = finalDateFormat.format(initialDateFormat.parse(date))
result
}
So I need Date as the return type for this method. I tried to parse the result string to get a proper date but for some reason, the result defaults back to the original date format. How can I fix this problem?
Here is how I tried to parse it again:
val parsedDate = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-mm-dd").parse(parseDateToOriginal(date))
The result is of the pattern "EEE MMM dd hh:mm:ss zzz yyyy"

Answer 1

First, SimpleDate is old and outdated. The current java.time library is recommended.
Next, if you need to return a Date then parse the input and return the Date. You need to format a Date only when you present it, i.e. change it to a String.
import java.time.LocalDate
import java.time.format.DateTimeFormatter
def parseToDate(date: String): LocalDate =
LocalDate.parse(date
,DateTimeFormatter.ofPattern("EEE MMM dd hh:mm:ss zzz yyyy"))

Answer 2

Try
import java.time.LocalDateTime
import java.time.format.DateTimeFormatter
def parseDateToOriginal(date: String): String = {
LocalDateTime
.parse(date, DateTimeFormatter.ofPattern("EEE MMM d HH:mm:ss zzz yyyy"))
.format(DateTimeFormatter.ofPattern("yyyy-MM-dd"))
}
which outputs
parseDateToOriginal("Thu Jun 18 20:56:02 EDT 2009") // res2: String = 2009-06-18
Note you have a bug in the format of finalDateFormat
val finalDateFormat = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-mm-dd")
You are using lowercase mm in the month positions, but should be upper case MM. Lowercase mm represents minutes, so it would erroneously result in res2: String = 2009-56-18 as outputs.