How to convert “YYYY-MM-DD hh:mm:ss” to UNIX timestamp in Java?

Question

Or, maybe you know a better approach how to solve this problem. I get dates in the format of \"YYYY—MM-DD HH:MM:SS\" and need to calculate time difference between now then i

Answer 1

First you need to parse your date string to a Date and then get the timestamp from that:

final SimpleDateFormat dateFormat = new SimpleDateFormat("YYYY-MM-dd HH:mm:ss");

final String myDateString = "someDateString";
final Date date = dateFormat.parse(myDateString);

final long timestamp = date.getTime();

Have a look at the SimpleDateFormat javadocs for information on which format string to use.