Just use SimpleDateFormat
(click the link to see all format patterns).
String string = "2014-02-22";
Date date = new SimpleDateFormat("yyy-M-d", Locale.ENGLISH).parse(string);
System.out.println(date); // Sat Jan 02 00:00:00 BOT 2010
Here's an extract of relevance from the javadoc, listing all available format patterns:
G Era designator Text AD
y Year Year 1996; 96
M Month in year Month July; Jul; 07
w Week in year Number 27
W Week in month Number 2
D Day in year Number 189
d Day in month Number 10
F Day of week in month Number 2
E Day in week Text Tuesday; Tue
u Day number of week Number 1
a Am/pm marker Text PM
H Hour in day (0-23) Number 0
k Hour in day (1-24) Number 24
K Hour in am/pm (0-11) Number 0
h Hour in am/pm (1-12) Number 12
m Minute in hour Number 30
s Second in minute Number 55
S Millisecond Number 978
z Time zone General time zone Pacific Standard Time; PST; GMT-08:00
Z Time zone RFC 822 time zone -0800
X Time zone ISO 8601 time zone -08; -0800; -08:00