Find Day of Week using SimpleDateFormat class in Java

Last Updated : 15 Jul, 2025

Given the day, month, and year, the task is to find the corresponding day of the week using SimpleDateFormat class in Java.

Examples

Input: 11-08-2020

Output: Tuesday

Explanation: The day corresponding to the date 11-08-2020 is tuesday.

Input: 17-08-2006

Output: Thursday

Explanation: The day corresponding to the date 17-08-2006 is thursday.

Approach: 

  • Input the date, month, and year from the user as integer type.
  • Check if the date, month, and year are in the required range. If not, raise an error message.
  • Convert the input into Date type using SimpleDateFormat class.
  • Format the date to the corresponding day of the week using SimpleDateFormat class.
  • Print the corresponding day of the week.

Note: If you want the full name of the day (ex: Sunday, Monday), use “EEEE”. If you want the shorter version of the name of the day (ex: Sun, Mon), use “EE”.

Below is the implementation of the above approach:

Java
// Java program for the above approach
import java.util.Date;
import java.text.SimpleDateFormat;
import java.text.ParseException;

public class GFG {

    public void findDay(int day, int month, int year)
    {
        String dayOfWeek = "";
        boolean wrongDate = false;

        if (day < 1 || day > 31) {
            dayOfWeek += "Give day in range. ";
            wrongDate = true;
        }

        if (month < 1 || month > 12) {
            dayOfWeek += "Give month in range. ";
            wrongDate = true;
        }

        if (year <= 0) {
            wrongDate = true;
            dayOfWeek += "Give year in range.";
        }

        if (!wrongDate) {

            SimpleDateFormat dateFormatter
                = new SimpleDateFormat("dd-MM-yyyy");
            String dateString
                = day + "-" + month + "-" + year;

            try {
                // Parse the String representation of date
                // to Date
                Date date = dateFormatter.parse(dateString);
                dayOfWeek
                    = "Day of week on " + dateString + " : "
                      + new SimpleDateFormat("EEEE").format(
                            date);
            }
            catch (ParseException e) {
                e.printStackTrace();
            }
        }

        System.out.println(dayOfWeek);
    }

    // Driver Code  
    public static void main(String arg[])
    {

        GFG gfg = new GFG();
        gfg.findDay(17, 8, 2006);
    }
}

Output
Day of week on 17-8-2006 : Thursday
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