How do you format the day of the month to say "11th", "21st" or "23rd" (ordinal indicator)?

Ken Hume picture Ken Hume · Oct 25, 2010 · Viewed 151.9k times · Source

I know this will give me the day of the month as a number (11, 21, 23):

SimpleDateFormat formatDayOfMonth = new SimpleDateFormat("d");

But how do you format the day of the month to include an ordinal indicator, say 11th, 21st or 23rd?

Answer

Greg Mattes picture Greg Mattes · Oct 25, 2010
// https://github.com/google/guava
import static com.google.common.base.Preconditions.*;

String getDayOfMonthSuffix(final int n) {
    checkArgument(n >= 1 && n <= 31, "illegal day of month: " + n);
    if (n >= 11 && n <= 13) {
        return "th";
    }
    switch (n % 10) {
        case 1:  return "st";
        case 2:  return "nd";
        case 3:  return "rd";
        default: return "th";
    }
}

The table from @kaliatech is nice, but since the same information is repeated, it opens the chance for a bug. Such a bug actually exists in the table for 7tn, 17tn, and 27tn (this bug might get fixed as time goes on because of the fluid nature of StackOverflow, so check the version history on the answer to see the error).