Get Day of Week from Specific Date in Java: Easy Tutorial

If you're working on a Java project that requires you to get the day of the week from a specific date, you're in luck. Java provides a simple way to do this using the Calendar class.

First, create a Calendar object and set it to the desired date using the set method. For example, to get the day of the week for January 1, 2022:

Calendar cal = Calendar.getInstance();
cal.set(2022, Calendar.JANUARY, 1); 

Next, use the get method with the Calendar.DAY_OF_WEEK constant to retrieve the day of the week as an integer, where Sunday is 1 and Saturday is 7.

int dayOfWeek = cal.get(Calendar.DAY_OF_WEEK);

To convert this integer to a more readable format, you can use a switch statement or an array to map the integer to the corresponding day of the week name.

Here's an example using a switch statement:

String dayOfWeekName;
switch (dayOfWeek) {
    case Calendar.SUNDAY:
        dayOfWeekName = "Sunday";
        break;
    case Calendar.MONDAY:
        dayOfWeekName = "Monday";
        break;
    case Calendar.TUESDAY:
        dayOfWeekName = "Tuesday";
        break;
    case Calendar.WEDNESDAY:
        dayOfWeekName = "Wednesday";
        break;
    case Calendar.THURSDAY:
        dayOfWeekName = "Thursday";
        break;
    case Calendar.FRIDAY:
        dayOfWeekName = "Friday";
        break;
    case Calendar.SATURDAY:
        dayOfWeekName = "Saturday";
        break;
    default:
        dayOfWeekName = "Invalid day of week";
        break;
}

Now you have the day of the week as a string in the dayOfWeekName variable.

In conclusion, getting the day of the week from a specific date in Java is easy using the Calendar class. Simply create a Calendar object, set it to the desired date, and retrieve the day of the week using the get method with the Calendar.DAY_OF_WEEK constant. With a little extra code, you can convert the integer value to a more readable string format.