java.text.Parse Exception : Unparseable Date

Question

I have the following code:

  String ModifiedDate = \"1993-06-08T18:27:02.000Z\" ;  
  SimpleDateFormat sdf = new SimpleDateFormat(\"yyyy-MM-         


        

Answer 1

The Z pattern latter indicates an RFC 822 time zone. Your string

String ModifiedDate = "1993-06-08T18:27:02.000Z" ;  

does not contain such a time zone. It contains a Z literally.

You'll want a date pattern, that similarly to the literal T, has a literal Z.

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

If you meant for Z to indicate Zulu time, add that as a timezone when constructing the SimpleDateFormat

sdf.setTimeZone(TimeZone.getTimeZone("Zulu"));;

Answer 2

The answer by Sotirios Delimanolis is correct. The Z means Zulu time, a zero offset from UTC (+00:00). In other words, not adjusted to any time zone.

Joda-Time

FYI, the Joda-Time library make this work much easier, as does the new java.time package in Java 8.

The format you are using is defined by the ISO 8601 standard. Joda-Time and java.time both parse & generate ISO 8601 strings by default.

A DateTime in Joda-Time knows its own assigned time zone. So as part of the process of parsing, specify a time zone to adjust.

DateTimeZone timeZone = DateTimeZone.forID( "Europe/Paris" );
DateTime dateTime = new DateTime( "1993-06-08T18:27:02.000Z", timeZone );
String output = dateTime.toString();

You can keep the DateTime object in Universal Time if desired.

DateTime dateTime = new DateTime( "1993-06-08T18:27:02.000Z", DateTimeZone.UTC );

When required by other classes, you can generate a java.util.Date object.

java.util.Date date = dateTime.toDate();