Parsing Date String Using SimpleDateFormat

Question

I want to parse a date that is sent to me like this..

2011-03-02T09:06:07.404-07:00

The problem is when using the SimpleDateFormat object, I get a parse exception and I'm fairly sure its because of the colon in the timezone.

Here is my setup of SimpleDateFormat.

SimpleDateFormat sdf = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss.SSSZ");

And here is the list of possible variances in parseable date strings from the developer documentation. As you can see, none of them have a colon in the timezone.

                     yyyy-MM-dd 1969-12-31
                     yyyy-MM-dd 1970-01-01
               yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm 1969-12-31 16:00
               yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm 1970-01-01 00:00
              yyyy-MM-dd HH:mmZ 1969-12-31 16:00-0800
              yyyy-MM-dd HH:mmZ 1970-01-01 00:00+0000
       yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss.SSSZ 1969-12-31 16:00:00.000-0800
       yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss.SSSZ 1970-01-01 00:00:00.000+0000
     yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss.SSSZ 1969-12-31T16:00:00.000-0800
     yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss.SSSZ 1970-01-01T00:00:00.000+0000

My second problem is when I get a date string where the timezone is set to Z. This is the standard for setting a timezone as GMT which is the equivalent of 0000. However I get a ParseException again. Here is an example of the date string.

2011-01-14T10:50:31.520Z

EDIT

Here is how I parse my date string..

SimpleDateFormat sdf = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss.SSSZ");
Date date = null;
try {
    Log.d("CCDateUtilss", "Need to remove the colon from the date string in the timeszone");
    date = sdf.parse(string);
} catch (ParseException e) {
    // TODO Auto-generated catch block
    e.printStackTrace();
}
return date.getTime();

Possible Solution

Could I just go through and replace the problem occurrences in the String so the it parses properly or is there a more elegant solution I don't know about?

Thanks in advance

I am able to parse it, Its giving me Date like, Wed Mar 02 16:06:07 GMT+00:00 2011. — user370305
– user370305, Commented Nov 20, 2012 at 11:40

Luis · Accepted Answer · 2012-11-20 12:33:13Z

I use the following approcah to parse text dates from diferent sources which may return different formats (including timezone with colon):

private SimpleDateFormat format = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ssZ");


private long getTime(String time) throws Exception {
    try {
        return this.format.parse(time).getTime();
    } catch (Exception e) {
        format = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ssZ");
    }
    try {
        return this.format.parse(time).getTime();
    } catch (Exception e) {
        format = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss'Z'");
        //For this you may need to manually adjust time offset
    }
    try {
        return this.format.parse(time).getTime();
    } catch (Exception e) {
        format = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ssZ");
    }
    try {
        return this.format.parse(time).getTime();
    } catch (Exception e) {
        format = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss'Z'");
        //For this you may need to manually adjust time offset
    }
    return this.format.parse(time).getTime();
}

Note: You may need to adjust manually the time zone offset in case where string ends with Z.

For efficiency, this always try first the last working format.

Regards.

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