Dealing with month names in different languages

Question

I have input with dates in many differing formats. I'm basically trying to take all the different formats and standardize them into ISO 8601 format.

If the date contains a month name, e.g., March, then I'm using the following function to get the month number, e.g. 03.

month = String.valueOf(Month.valueOf(month.toUpperCase()).getValue());

Anyway, the problem I am having is that the month names are in many different languages, with no indication what language they will be. I'm getting the following error when running the above function:

Caused by: java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: No enum constant java.time.Month.AUGUSTI
    at java.lang.Enum.valueOf(Enum.java:238)
    at java.time.Month.valueOf(Month.java:106)

Is there any library that can deal with month names in many different languages, returning the numeric value, or even just translating the month name to English?

Here's a sample of the input date:

1370037600
1385852400
1356994800
2014-03-01T00:00:00
2013-06-01T00:00:00
2012-01-01
2012
May 2012
März 2010
Julio 2009

Answer 1

If you have no idea in what language the month name is, the only way is to loop through all the available values of java.util.Locale, use a java.time.format.DateTimeFormatter and try to parse the month until you find one that works:

String input = "März 2010";
// formatter with month name and year
DateTimeFormatter fmt = DateTimeFormatter.ofPattern("MMMM yyyy");
Month month = null;
for (Locale loc : Locale.getAvailableLocales()) {
    try {
        // set the locale in the formatter and try to get the month
        month = Month.from(fmt.withLocale(loc).parse(input));
        break; // found, no need to parse in other locales
    } catch (DateTimeParseException e) {
        // can't parse, go to next locale
    }
}
if (month != null) {
    System.out.println(month.getValue()); // 3
}

In the code above, the month will be Month.MARCH and the output will be 3.