CODEWITHSUNDEEP
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Reputation: 545

Parse complex date format

I'm a beginner in java programmeing.

I want to parse a complex date format : YYYY-MM-DDthh:mm:ssTZD, for example 2014-09-24T21:32:39-04:00

I tried this :

String str_date="2014-09-24T21:32:39-04:00";
DateFormat formatter = new SimpleDateFormat("YYYY-MM-DDthh:mm:ss");
Date date = (Date)formatter.parse(str_date);

But for the timezone part (-04:00), i have no idea what to put (after the :ss)

Any help ?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 942

Answers (3)

Basil Bourque
Basil Bourque

Reputation: 339837

ISO 8601

Your string complies with the ISO 8601 standard. That standard is used as the default in parsing and generating strings by two excellent date-time libraries:

  • Joda-Time
  • java.time package (bundled with Java 8, inspired by Joda-Time, defined by JSR 310)

Merely pass your string to the constructor or factory method. A built-in formatter is automatically used to parse your string.

Unlike java.util.Date, in these two libraries a date-time object knows its own assigned time zone. The offset from UTC specified at the end of your string is used to calculate a number of milliseconds (or nanoseconds in java.time) since the Unix epoch of the beginning of 1970 in UTC time zone. After that calculation, the resulting date-time is assigned a time zone of your choice. In this example I arbitrarily assign a India time zone. For clarity this example creates a second date-time object in UTC.

Joda-Time

DateTimeZone timeZoneIndia = DateTimeZone.forID( "Asia/Kolkata" ); 
DateTime dateTimeIndia = new DateTime( "2014-09-24T21:32:39-04:00" , timeZoneIndia );
DateTime dateTimeUtc = dateTimeIndia.withZone( DateTimeZone.UTC );

Upvotes: 0

clcto
clcto

Reputation: 9648

Java7

SimpleDateFormat documentation lists the timezone as z, Z, and X and for you it looks like you want XXX.

Java6

Java7 added X specifier, but 6 still has the Z and z. However, you will have to modify the string first so that it either has no colon in the timezone or has GMT before the -:

String str_date="2014-09-24T21:32:39-04:00";
int index = str_date.lastIndexOf( '-' );

str_date = str_date.substring( 0, index ) + "GMT" + str_date.substring( index+1 );

Then you can use the format specifier z

Upvotes: 2

user3487063
user3487063

Reputation: 3682

If you are using Java < 7 then you'd need to remove ':' from your input and parse it:

Here is an example:

public static void main(String[] args) throws ParseException {
        String str_date="2014-09-24T21:32:39-04:00";
        str_date = str_date.replaceAll(":(\\d\\d)$", "$1");
        System.out.println("Input modified according to Java 6: "+str_date);
        DateFormat formatter = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ssZ");
        Date date = (Date)formatter.parse(str_date);
        System.out.println(date);
    }

prints:

Input modified according to Java 6: 2014-09-24T21:32:39-0400
Wed Sep 24 21:32:39 EDT 2014

Upvotes: 2

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