Date formatter with specified pattern.
NOTE: we are using jodatime patterns right now, but may switch to jsr-310 when thats available in java 8.
Not sure whether these patterns will still work then, so use this formatter at the risk of having to
change it eventually. OTOH, its likely that the same functionality will be present in jsr-310.
The pattern syntax is mostly compatible with java.text.SimpleDateFormat -
time zone names cannot be parsed and a few more symbols are supported.
All ASCII letters are reserved as pattern letters, which are defined as follows:
Symbol Meaning Presentation Examples
------ ------- ------------ -------
G era text AD
C century of era (>=0) number 20
Y year of era (>=0) year 1996
x weekyear year 1996
w week of weekyear number 27
e day of week number 2
E day of week text Tuesday; Tue
y year year 1996
D day of year number 189
M month of year month July; Jul; 07
d day of month number 10
a halfday of day text PM
K hour of halfday (0~11) number 0
h clockhour of halfday (1~12) number 12
H hour of day (0~23) number 0
k clockhour of day (1~24) number 24
m minute of hour number 30
s second of minute number 55
S fraction of second number 978
z time zone text Pacific Standard Time; PST
Z time zone offset/id zone -0800; -08:00; America/Los_Angeles
' escape for text delimiter
'' single quote literal '