Why does this code generate the error: "unparseable date"

Question

I'm trying to use the SimpleDateFormat class to parse a DateTime out of this string:

Mon Jan 10 2011 01:15:00 GMT+0000 (GMT Standard Time)

I tried the following format string:

String example = "Mon Jan 10 2011 01:15:00 GMT+0000 (GMT Standard Time)";
SimpleDateFormat formatter = new SimpleDateFormat("E M d y H:m:s z");
try
{
    Date exampleDate = formatter.parse(example);
    LOGGER.warn(exampleDate.toString());
}
catch(Exception e)
{
    LOGGER.warn(e.getMessage(), e);
}

But it generates the error:

Unparseable date: "Mon Jan 10 2011 01:15:00 GMT+0000 (GMT Standard Time)"

So I tried removing the parenthesized end part of the example string:

String example = "Sun Jan 09 2011 22:00:00 GMT+0000";

But it generates the same error.

WARNING: Unparseable date: "Sun Jan 09 2011 22:00:00 GMT+0000"
java.text.ParseException: Unparseable date: "Sun Jan 09 2011 22:00:00 GMT+0000"

Any hints on how to get around this?

Evan Mulawski · Accepted Answer · 2011-01-12 01:06:29Z

2

According to http://download.oracle.com/javase/1.4.2/docs/api/java/text/SimpleDateFormat.html the format needs to be:

"E M d y H:m:s zZ"

This includes the general timezone and the RFC 822 time zone.

Or you could change your input date to:

Mon Jan 10 2011 01:15:00 GMT+00:00

which would accomodate just z.

(Note the colon in the last part.)

answered Jan 12, 2011 at 1:06

Evan Mulawski

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Anne · Accepted Answer · 2012-09-18 19:39:59Z

2

You should use (or Z only for last part):

E MMM dd yyyy HH:mm:ss zZ

edited Sep 18, 2012 at 19:39

Anne

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answered Sep 18, 2012 at 19:13

Frederick Nyawaya

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Cameron Skinner · Accepted Answer · 2011-01-12 01:23:49Z

1

You also need to use "MMM" if you want to parse textual months. From the javadocs:

"Month: If the number of pattern letters is 3 or more, the month is interpreted as text; otherwise, it is interpreted as a number."

answered Jan 12, 2011 at 1:23

Cameron Skinner

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templatetypedef · Accepted Answer · 2011-01-12 01:10:42Z

0

I think that the problem is that the z modifier can't parse GMT+0000. According to the Javadoc describing what z parses, the format is something like GMT+HH:MM, rather than GMT+HHMM. If you want to parse what you have, you probably want to change your format string from

E M d y H:m:s z

to

E M d y H:m:s 'G'M'Tz

answered Jan 12, 2011 at 1:10

templatetypedef

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