Module jakarta.mail
Package jakarta.mail.internet

Class MailDateFormat

java.lang.Object
java.text.Format
java.text.DateFormat
java.text.SimpleDateFormat
jakarta.mail.internet.MailDateFormat
All Implemented Interfaces:
Serializable, Cloneable
public class MailDateFormat extends SimpleDateFormat
Formats and parses date specification based on RFC 2822.

This class does not support methods that influence the format. It always formats the date based on the specification below.

3.3. Date and Time Specification

Date and time occur in several header fields. This section specifies the syntax for a full date and time specification. Though folding white space is permitted throughout the date-time specification, it is RECOMMENDED that a single space be used in each place that FWS appears (whether it is required or optional); some older implementations may not interpret other occurrences of folding white space correctly. 

 date-time       =       [ day-of-week "," ] date FWS time [CFWS]

 day-of-week     =       ([FWS] day-name) / obs-day-of-week

 day-name        =       "Mon" / "Tue" / "Wed" / "Thu" /
                         "Fri" / "Sat" / "Sun"

 date            =       day month year

 year            =       4*DIGIT / obs-year

 month           =       (FWS month-name FWS) / obs-month

 month-name      =       "Jan" / "Feb" / "Mar" / "Apr" /
                         "May" / "Jun" / "Jul" / "Aug" /
                         "Sep" / "Oct" / "Nov" / "Dec"

 day             =       ([FWS] 1*2DIGIT) / obs-day

 time            =       time-of-day FWS zone

 time-of-day     =       hour ":" minute [ ":" second ]

 hour            =       2DIGIT / obs-hour

 minute          =       2DIGIT / obs-minute

 second          =       2DIGIT / obs-second

 zone            =       (( "+" / "-" ) 4DIGIT) / obs-zone
The day is the numeric day of the month. The year is any numeric year 1900 or later.

The time-of-day specifies the number of hours, minutes, and optionally seconds since midnight of the date indicated.

The date and time-of-day SHOULD express local time.

The zone specifies the offset from Coordinated Universal Time (UTC, formerly referred to as "Greenwich Mean Time") that the date and time-of-day represent. The "+" or "-" indicates whether the time-of-day is ahead of (i.e., east of) or behind (i.e., west of) Universal Time. The first two digits indicate the number of hours difference from Universal Time, and the last two digits indicate the number of minutes difference from Universal Time. (Hence, +hhmm means +(hh * 60 + mm) minutes, and -hhmm means -(hh * 60 + mm) minutes). The form "+0000" SHOULD be used to indicate a time zone at Universal Time. Though "-0000" also indicates Universal Time, it is used to indicate that the time was generated on a system that may be in a local time zone other than Universal Time and therefore indicates that the date-time contains no information about the local time zone.

A date-time specification MUST be semantically valid. That is, the day-of-the-week (if included) MUST be the day implied by the date, the numeric day-of-month MUST be between 1 and the number of days allowed for the specified month (in the specified year), the time-of-day MUST be in the range 00:00:00 through 23:59:60 (the number of seconds allowing for a leap second; see [STD12]), and the zone MUST be within the range -9959 through +9959.

Synchronization

Date formats are not synchronized. It is recommended to create separate format instances for each thread. If multiple threads access a format concurrently, it must be synchronized externally.

Since:
JavaMail 1.2
See Also: