Converting Month Number to Month Name In Java!

How long have I wanted to know how to do this! So long so many months! Finally:

import java.text.*;

String getMonthForInt(int m) {
    String month = "invalid";
    DateFormatSymbols dfs = new DateFormatSymbols();
    String[] months = dfs.getMonths();
    if (m >= 0 && m <= 11 ) {
        month = months[m];
    }
    return month;
}

Praise the lord! Praise the lord!

27 Replies to “Converting Month Number to Month Name In Java!”

  1. God, I really can’t remember now. It was three years ago! Maybe off the web somewhere or perhaps trawling the standard documentation. I can’t believe I couldn’t find out how to do it for so long!

    Calendar and GregorianCalendar are so big and confusing I think I kept thinking it was in there somewhere. I really hate dates in java. Not that they are much fun in any language. But java is the worst.

    I’m not sure I think much of that code with hindsight. Perhaps something a bit more like:

    import java.text.DateFormatSymbols;
    public String getMonth(int month) {
        return new DateFormatSymbols().getMonths()[month];
    }
    
  2. Almost 5 years since you wrote this posting and still useful. I must confese i was tempted to write my own solution but now i’ll use that time in seeing the chess tournament games!!! : )

    Thanks Thomas

  3. My Code was wrote in spanish……returns month name in spanish if p_idioma = 0 or english if p_idioma = 1

        /**
         * Método que retorna el nombre del mes actual del sistema
         * @param p_idioma Entero que determina el idioma en que se retornara la respuesta (0 -> español, 1-> ingles)
         * @return Nombre del mes actual en el idioma determinado en el parametro
         */
        public static String getNombreMes(int p_idioma) throws Exception{
            String[][] mesNombre = {
                                    {"Enero","January"},{"Febrero","Febrary"},{"Marzo","March"},{"Abril","April"},
                                    {"Mayo","May"},{"Junio","June"},{"July","Julio"},{"Agosto","August"},
                                    {"Septiembre","September"},{"Octubre","October"},{"Noviembre","November"},{"Diciembre","December"},
                                    };
            /** se verifica que el parametro idioma sea valido **/
            if(p_idioma  1) throw new Exception("Error al intentar obtener el nombre del mes con el código de idioma " + p_idioma);
            /** se calcula el mes del sistema */
            Calendar cal = Calendar.getInstance();
            /** se obtiene de la matris el nombre del mes **/
            String mes = mesNombre[cal.get(Calendar.MONTH)][p_idioma];
            /** se retorna el nombre del mes **/
            return mes;  
        }
    
  4. Thanks a ton 🙂 cannot imagine a world where we don’t get such articles easily available for our use. You guys are great.

  5. Hi,

    Thanks for the beautiful code.
    Sharing something I found…Calendar Object in Java 6 have methods to show month.

    calendar.getDisplayName(Calendar.MONTH, Calendar.LONG, Locale.ENGLISH);

    I hope it will work too.

    Regards
    Ravi

  6. You could use the VM built in function called String.format

    take a look at this example:

    Date date = new Date();
    System.out.println(String.format(“%1$tB / %1$tY”,date));

    Program output: December / 2011

    it’s already conditioned to use Locales getting the default one from your computer.
    you can also specify a custom Locale there..

    Obs.: it works out with Date and Calendar as well

  7. I’m noob in Java but i found this one…

    calendar.getDisplayName(Calendar.MONTH, Calendar.LONG, Locale.ENGLISH)
    this actually returns You string with name of the month in English that You desire 🙂

    works for me (change from my language to English)

  8. I would hope that 11 years later they’ve come up with something better 🙂

    Looks like getDisplayName was added to Calendar in Java 1.6 (December 2006).

    I always thought there should be something on Calendar/GregorianCalendar …

    Good find!

  9. For more Java Date and Calendar Examples and Conversions please go through this blog http://adnjavainterview.blogspot.in/2014/08/java-date-and-calendar-examples.html.

  10. Here is a clean code version for getting the months with an index. This will throw an ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException when the number sent in isn’t between 0 and 11:

    public static String getMonthName(int monthIndex) {
    return new DateFormatSymbols().getMonths()[monthIndex].toString();
    }

    You can also have a better formatted error like this:

    public static String getMonthName(int monthIndex) {
    //since this is zero based, 11 = December
    if (monthIndex > 11 ) {
    throw new IllegalArgumentException(monthIndex + " is not a valid month index.");
    }
    return new DateFormatSymbols().getMonths()[monthIndex].toString();
    }

    Thanks for the original code, it was really helpful.

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