Custom DateFormats mmm:ss

Is there a way to format a date to have mmm:ss instead of hh:mm:ss? Basically, 7:15:28 should show up instead as 435:28 instead.

The SimpleDateFormat class does not support this format is there one that does or will I have to implement a variation myself?

From stackoverflow

• You'll have to implement it yourself, but you should bear in mind that implementing a Formatter is not a simple task, as it has many l10n considerations.

  yx : is this as far as you know or you are sure there's no package out there that can handle this format?

  David Grant : @yx: there may well be packages to help you. My answer is limited to extending the Java SE class.

• You could use Joda Time to build a custom formatter. With the DateTimeFormatterBuilder class you could at least show the minutes of a day:

  import org.joda.time.format.DateTimeFormatter;
  import org.joda.time.format.DateTimeFormatterBuilder;
  
  DateTimeFormatter customFormat = new DateTimeFormatterBuilder()
        .appendMinuteOfDay(1)
        .appendLiteral(':')
        .appendSecondOfMinute(2)
        .toFormatter();
  System.out.println(customFormat.print(System.currentTimeMillis()));
  

• If all you want to do is format a Date into the format you specified (with no other parts of the Date included) you can just do it very simply:

     public String format(Date date) {      
        Calendar cal = new GregorianCalendar();
        cal.setTime(date);
        return cal.get(Calendar.HOUR) * 60 + cal.get(Calendar.MINUTE) + ":" + cal.get(Calendar.SECOND);      
     }