It’s a common task to convert dates found in external sources to the PDI/Apache Hop date format. While PDI/Apache Hop offers some typcial conversion masks as a drop down, you may need to create an own one. Here a cheat sheet how to use the masking parameters:

Symbol	Meaning	Type	Example
G	Era	Text	“GG” -> “AD”
y	Year	Number	“yy” -> “03””yyyy” -> “2003”
M	Month	Text or Number	“M” -> “7””M” -> “12””MM” -> “07””MMM” -> “Jul””MMMM” -> “December”
d	Day in month	Number	“d” -> “3””dd” -> “03”
h	Hour(1-12, AM/PM)	Number	“h” -> “3””hh” -> “03”
H	Hour (0-23)	Number	“H” -> “15””HH” -> “15”
k	Hour (1-24)	Number	“k” -> “3””kk” -> “03”
K	Hour (0-11, AM/PM)	Number	“K” -> “15””KK” -> “15”
m	Minute	Number	“m” -> “7””m” -> “15””mm” -> “15”
s	Second	Number	“s” -> “15””ss” -> “15”
S	Millisecond (0-999)	Number	“SSS” -> “007”
E	Day in week	Text	“EEE” -> “Tue””EEEE” -> “Tuesday”
D	Day in year (1-365 or 1-364)	Number	“D” -> “65””DDD” -> “065”
F	Day of week in month (1-5)	Number	“F” -> “1”
w	Week in year (1-53)	Number	“w” -> “7”
W	Week in month (1-5)	Number	“W” -> “3”
a	AM/PM	Text	“a” -> “AM””aa” -> “AM”
z	Time zone	Text	“z” -> “EST””zzz” -> EST””zzzz” -> Eastern Standard Time”
X	Time zone offset	Text	“XXX” -> “-08:00”
‘	Escape for text	Delimiter	“hour’h” -> “hour 9”
”	Single quote	Literal	“ss”SSS” -> “45’876”. Use two quote marks in a row to create a single quote in a string.