Android parse String to Date - unknown pattern character 'X'

Question

I have Service fetch date string from web and then I want to pare it to Date object. But somehow application crashes. This is my string that I\'m parsi

Answer 1

Based on idea from Alexander K, I optimize it and support parsing from and to UTC timezone format like 1970-01-01T00:00:00Z, to make all behaviour exactly same as yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ssXXX.

public class IsoSimpleDateFormatBeforeNougat extends SimpleDateFormat {

    public IsoSimpleDateFormatBeforeNougat() {
        super("yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ssZ");
    }

    public IsoSimpleDateFormatBeforeNougat(Locale locale) {
        super("yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ssZ", locale);
    }

    public IsoSimpleDateFormatBeforeNougat(DateFormatSymbols formatSymbols) {
        super("yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ssZ", formatSymbols);
    }

    @Override
    public Date parse(String text, ParsePosition pos) {
        if (text.endsWith("Z")) {
            return super.parse(text.substring(0, text.length() - 1) + "+0000", pos);
        }
        if (text.length() > 3 && text.substring(text.length() - 3, text.length() - 2).equals(":")) {
            text = text.substring(0, text.length() - 3) + text.substring(text.length() - 2);
        }
        return super.parse(text, pos);
    }

    @Override
    public StringBuffer format(Date date, StringBuffer toAppendTo, FieldPosition pos) {
        StringBuffer rfcFormat = super.format(date, toAppendTo, pos);
        if (rfcFormat.substring(rfcFormat.length() - 5).equals("+0000")) {
            return rfcFormat.replace(rfcFormat.length() - 5, rfcFormat.length(), "Z");
        }
        return rfcFormat.insert(rfcFormat.length() - 2, ":");
    }
}

Test code:

@Test
public void test() throws ParseException {
    //SimpleDateFormat sdf = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ssXXX");
    SimpleDateFormat sdf = new IsoSimpleDateFormatBeforeNougat();
    sdf.setTimeZone(TimeZone.getTimeZone("GMT+8"));

    assertEquals("1970-01-01T08:00:00+08:00", sdf.format(new Date(0)));
    assertEquals(0L, sdf.parse("1970-01-01T08:00:00+08:00").getTime());

    sdf.setTimeZone(TimeZone.getTimeZone("GMT+0"));

    assertEquals("1970-01-01T00:00:00Z", sdf.format(new Date(0)));
    assertEquals(0L, sdf.parse("1970-01-01T00:00:00Z").getTime());
}