Removing time from a Date object?

I want to remove time from Date object.

DateFormat df;
String date;
df = new SimpleDateFormat("dd/MM/yyyy");
d = eventList.get(0).getStartDate(); // I'm getting the date using this method
date = df.format(d); // Converting date in "dd/MM/yyyy" format

But when I’m converting this date (which is in String format) it is appending time also.

I don’t want time at all. What I want is simply “21/03/2012”.

Answer

The quick answer is :

No, you are not allowed to do that. Because that is what Date use for.

From javadoc of Date :

The class Date represents a specific instant in time, with millisecond precision.

However, since this class is simply a data object. It dose not care about how we describe it. When we see a date 2012/01/01 12:05:10.321, we can say it is 2012/01/01, this is what you need. There are many ways to do this.

Example 1 : by manipulating string

Input string : 2012/01/20 12:05:10.321

Desired output string : 2012/01/20

Since the yyyy/MM/dd are exactly what we need, we can simply manipulate the string to get the result.

String input = "2012/01/20 12:05:10.321";
String output = input.substring(0, 10);  // Output : 2012/01/20

Example 2 : by SimpleDateFormat

Input string : 2012/01/20 12:05:10.321

Desired output string : 01/20/2012

In this case we want a different format.

String input = "2012/01/20 12:05:10.321";
DateFormat inputFormatter = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy/MM/dd HH:mm:ss.SSS");
Date date = inputFormatter.parse(input);

DateFormat outputFormatter = new SimpleDateFormat("MM/dd/yyyy");
String output = outputFormatter.format(date); // Output : 01/20/2012

For usage of SimpleDateFormat, check SimpleDateFormat JavaDoc.