CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javaxmlparsingdate
DashControl
DashControl

Reputation: 284

Parsing Date from String

I have the following timestamp stored as a String that I would like to parse using SimpleDateFormat but I'm having some issues with converting:

My TimeStamp which I read in from an xml file: Tue Dec 31 09:29:08 PDT 2013

My Code:

String timeStamp = innerNode.getTextContent();   //innerNode is a Node object that contains my TimeStamp from an xml file.
System.out.println(timeStamp);
SimpleDateFormat dateFormat = new SimpleDateFormat("E MMM dd HH:mm:ss z yyyy");
dateFormat.setTimeZone(TimeZone.getTimeZone("PDT"));
dateFormat.parse(timeStamp);

Date firstParsedDate = dateFormat.parse(timeStamp);
System.out.println(firstParsedDate);

So that works great but my result is strange. Instead of printing Tue Dec 31 09:29:08 PDT 2013 my result is instead: Tue Dec 31 11:29:08 CDT 2013

Any ideas what is wrong? Thanks.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 169

Answers (2)

dkaustubh
dkaustubh

Reputation: 454

A date object in java will use the system time zone. Your system is in CDT timezone and not in PDT. So the date is being printed in CDT.

Upvotes: 1

Brian
Brian

Reputation: 17309

Date.toString won't use the time zone you entered for the SimpleDateFormat that created it. Instead, you should do:

System.out.println(dateFormat.format(firstParsedDate));

This should use the correct time zone that you set on the formatter. toString just uses the system time zone.

Upvotes: 2

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