Android SimpleDateFormat Parsing Error

Question

I know there are many other questions on stackoverflow that deal with SimpleDateFormatter in Android or Java, but I have been unable to find any questions that help me answer my own question.

I have a String with this time format 2014-06-28T21:00:00-05:00 and I am trying to convert it to 9:00 PM (or at least 9:00). I'm pretty sure my issue is with actually writing out the correct notation for the above time, but here is my code:

        String input = '2014-06-28T21:00:00-05:00';
        DateFormat fromFormat = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss+|-hh:mm");
        fromFormat.setLenient(false);
        DateFormat toFormat = new SimpleDateFormat("hh:mm");
        toFormat.setLenient(false);
        try{
            String output = toFormat.format(fromFormat.parse(input));
            return output;
        } catch(ParseException pe){
            pe.printStackTrace();
        }
        return "No Date Listed";

If I look at the stack trace, it tells me unparseable date at offset #19.

I am fairly certain the logic behind the code does work because I switched the SimpleDateFormats to something a little simpler like yyyy-MM-dd and MMMM dd, yy and it worked perfectly. So, can anyone point me in the right direction and help me figure out the proper time notation?

I appreciate all of your help.

Try to replace this line:DateFormat fromFormat = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ssZZ"); — Hareshkumar Chhelana
– Hareshkumar Chhelana, Commented Jun 25, 2014 at 4:20

azurefrog · Accepted Answer · 2014-06-25 04:28:28Z

The main problem you're having is that you are being given a time with a time zone format which is not supported by SimpleDateFormat.

There are two supported time zone formats that it can parse,

General time zones:

General time zone: Time zones are interpreted as text if they have names. For time zones representing a GMT offset value, the following syntax is used:
     GMTOffsetTimeZone:
             GMT Sign Hours : Minutes
     Sign: one of
             + -
     Hours:
             Digit
             Digit Digit
     Minutes:
             Digit Digit
     Digit: one of
             0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Hours must be between 0 and 23, and Minutes must be between 00 and 59. The format is locale independent and digits must be taken from the Basic Latin block of the Unicode standard.

...and RFC 822 time zones:

RFC 822 time zone: For formatting, the RFC 822 4-digit time zone format is used:
     RFC822TimeZone:
             Sign TwoDigitHours Minutes
     TwoDigitHours:
             Digit Digit
TwoDigitHours must be between 00 and 23. Other definitions are as for general time zones.

As you can see, the general time zone has a colon in it, but must be prefixed with "GMT", whereas the RFC 822 format has no colon. What you are trying to parse is a sort of bastardization of the two.

One of the following would work, depending on the time zone format, if you had a legal syntax:

    String generalInput = "2014-06-28T21:00:00GMT-05:00"; // legal General time zone
    String rfcInput = "2014-06-28T21:00:00-0500"; // legal RFC 822 time zone

    DateFormat generalFormat = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ssz"); // format for general time zone
    DateFormat rfcFormat = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ssZ"); // format for RFC 822 time zone

Since your input is malformed, I would suggest that you simply don't try to parse the time zone part of it at all, and treat it as a local time. Since you're trying to convert 21:00 to 9:00 pm anyway, this should work for you:

    String input = "2014-06-28T21:00:00-05:00"; // not a legal time zone format
    DateFormat fromFormat = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss"); // don't even try to parse time zone

user1560133 · Accepted Answer · 2014-06-25 04:28:09Z

0

You can try following -

String input = '2014-06-28T21:00:00.000-0500';

    DateFormat fromFormat = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss.SSSZ");

answered Jun 25, 2014 at 4:28

user1560133

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1 Comment

sameetandpotatoes Over a year ago

As explained by @azurefrog, this would not work. Thank you anyways!

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