Issue with SimpleDateFormat parsing date generated by strftime [closed]

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Closed 8 years ago.

I have a timestamp string 2013-03-01T11:22:18.01Z generated by strftime("%Y:%m:%dT%H:%M:%SZ"), which is in Python.

Now I'm trying to use Java's SimpleDateFormat to parse this timestamp. Lot's of sample code that I found seem to do this:

String DATE_FORMAT = "YYYY-MM-DD'T'hh:mm:ss.ssZ"
SimpleDateFormat sdf = new SimpleDateFormat(DATE_FORMAT)
sdf.setLenient(false)
sdf.parse(timestamp) <---- throws ParseException here

However, I get an error dialog that says Unparseable date: "2013-03-01T11:22:18.01Z"

I've been tweaking DATE_FORMAT here and there, trying all sorts of things but I've been stuck on the same roadblock for quite a while now. Looks like I'll need to borrow the power of the stackoverflow community on this.

Answer 1

Other than the yyyy vs YYYY and dd versus DD, the Z is also causing a problem. Your SimpleDateFormat with a pattern like

yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss.ssZ
 |   |  |  | |  |  |  | |
 |   |  |  | |  |  |  | -----timezone (RFC 822 time zone, ex: -0800)
 |   |  |  | |  |  |  -------seconds again (maybe you wanted SS for milliseconds)
 |   |  |  | |  |  ----------seconds (0-59)
 |   |  |  | |  -------------minutes (0-59)
 |   |  |  | ----------------hours (0-23)
 |   |  |  ------------------the character T
 |   |  ---------------------day in month 
 |   ------------------------month in year
 ----------------------------year

But the String you pass, "2013-03-01T11:22:18.01Z", simply has a Z at the end, not a timezone.

If you are actually expecting a Z at the end, then you need to quote it in the format string:

yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss.ss'Z'

just like you did for T. From the javadoc:

Text can be quoted using single quotes (') to avoid interpretation.

Answer 2

1) correct pattern for 2013-03-01T11:22:18.01 is "yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss.SSS" (if .01 is millis)

2) Z timezone in 2013-03-01T11:22:18.01Z cannot be parsed by SimpleDateFormat 'Z' which accepts only -0800 format (RFC 822). Even if you change it to 'z' (General time zone) it still wont parse Z, it should be GMT

see SimmpleDateFormat API.

3) 2013-03-01T11:22:18.01Z looks like very much XSD dateTime format http://www.schemacentral.com/sc/xsd/t-xsd_dateTime.html and can be parse with DatatypeConverter.parseDateTime from java.xml.bind package (Java standard library)