Convert String to Date in java - Time zone

Question

I have a String, 2013-10-07T23:59:51.205-07:00, want to convert this to Java date object. I am getting parsing error.

date = new SimpleDateForma         


        

Answer 1

The problem is that -07:00 is not a valid Time zone . The Time Zone should have this format, for example something like -0800.

Answer 2

Your pattern is wrong, you should use the following:

date = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss.SSSXXX")
                        .parse("2013-10-07T23:59:51.205-07:00");                      

The 'X' indicates the Time zone in the ISO 8601 format as expressed in your String here: '.205-07:00'

For more information read the doc: SimpleDateFormat

Answer 3

try

date = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss.SSSZ")
                 .parse("2013-10-07T23:59:51.205-0700");

The Z is not a literal and the timezone does not have a colon

See the examples at http://docs.oracle.com/javase/6/docs/api/java/text/SimpleDateFormat.html

If java7 is being used then Z can be replaced with X and the timezone can have a colon

Answer 4

You should use XXX for the format -07:00, instead of Z and X.

   Date sdf = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss.SSSXXX")
           .parse("2013-10-07T23:59:51.205-07:00");

Look at the example of this docs.

Answer 5

Z shouldn't be inside quotes. I don't think Z would work for your given timezone. Before Java 7, I guess there wasn't any format to parse ISO 8601 format timezone with colon in between. You should use -0700 instead.

However, from Java 7 onwards, you have an option for parsing ISO 8601 format timezone using X instead of Z. See javadoc for SimpleDateFormat. Just use the following format:

// This would work from Java 7 onwards
date = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss.SSSX")    
                     .parse("2013-10-07T23:59:51.205-07:00");

Answer 6

Use this trick to parse ISO8601 datetime format. I admit have not tried this with millisecond part within a string value maybe it gives you an extra headache. This works for Java6.

import javax.xml.bind.DatatypeConverter;
Calendar cal = DatatypeConverter.parseDateTime(strDatetime);

If am remembering correct cal instance may not use a system-default timezone. Its initialized to the origin string value timezone. If you want instance to use system timezone you can do this conversion.

   long ts = cal.getTimeInMillis();
   cal = Calendar.getInstance();
   cal.setTimeInMillis(ts);