Appreciate there are lots of similar posts on this but I couldn't find a specific one to help.
I'm trying to convert this string to a Date in Java
2017-05-16 06:24:36-0700
But it fails each time with this code
Date Login = new SimpleDateFormat("dd/MM/yy HH:mm:ss").parse("2017-05-16 06:24:36-0700");
Now I'm presuming its due to the timezone info at the end - I just can't figure out how to set the format. I tried this but no luck
SimpleDateFormat("dd/MM/yy HH:mm:ssZ")
Any ideas?
The date format passed to your SimpleDateFormat is "dd/MM/yy", while the date you are trying to parse is of the format "yyyy-MM-dd". Try this instead:
Date login = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ssZ").parse("2017-05-16 06:24:36-0700");
As a side note, depending on which version of Java you are using, I would recommend using the new java.time package (JDK 1.8+) or the back port of that package (JDK 1.6+) instead of the outdated (no pun intended) Date and/or Calendar classes.
Instant login = Instant.from(DateTimeFormatter.ofPattern("yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ssZ").parse("2017-05-16 06:24:36-0700"));
T to comply with ISO 8601. Then parse directly: OffsetDateTime.parse( "2017-05-16 06:24:36-0700".replace( " " , "T" ) )
-07:00. I think you’ve told us once that it works in Java 9, though.I have already upvoted Bryan’s answer exactly because it includes and recommends the java.time solution. I need to add a few thoughts, though.
Your code, reviloSlater, throws away the time zone information (more precsely, zone offset information), I’m not sure I would dare do that from the outset. With java.time classes it’s more natural to include it, and it’s easy to discard at a later point when we are sure we don’t need it.
To parse with offset:
OffsetDateTime loginOdt = OffsetDateTime.parse("2017-05-16 06:24:36-0700",
DateTimeFormatter.ofPattern("yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ssZ"));
To drop the time zone offset information
LocalDateTime loginLdt = loginOdt.toLocalDateTime();
A LocalDateTime is a date and a time without any time zone or offset information. In this case of course we get
2017-05-16T06:24:36
Bryan’s java.time code too uses the time zone offset information from the string. Edit: after Bryan’s edit that code now works and gives us:
2017-05-16T13:24:36Z
This is the same point in time (Instant.toString() prints the time in UTC). Another way is, with the OffsetDateTime from before we can just do
Instant login = loginOdt.toInstant();
java.time is loaded with possibilities.
SimpleDateFormat.parse()would ignore any extra characters at the end of the string, like your time zone. So I doubt that its presence is your issue.