Parsing time string with SimpleDateFormat

Question

I have a problem parsing just the time string from my database

private static final String TIME_FORMAT = "HH:mm:ss";
public static final SimpleDateFormat timeFormat = new SimpleDateFormat(TIME_FORMAT, Locale.getDefault());

And following the output:

String time = "17:17:57";
Date myParsedDate = timeFormat.parse(time); //forget the exception thing
//output of myParsedDate.toString = "Thu Jan 01 16:47:57 GMT+08:00 1970"

It seems as though theres a problem with the locale or something.. just a simple string.. Why is this so? i just want the date to be the having the time i need for my time picker.. gee..

Edit Because i am using a static time format i decided to use my little helper method

public static Date getTimeFromTimeString(String timeString)
{
    String[] splitStrings = timeString.split(":");

    Date timeDate = new Date();
    timeDate.setHours(Integer.parseInt(splitStrings[0]));
    timeDate.setMinutes(Integer.parseInt(splitStrings[1]));
    timeDate.setSeconds(Integer.parseInt(splitStrings[2]));

    return timeDate;
}

Thanks for the help Jon Skeet.. I believe it is the TimeZone offset that is causing this.. .. ill just stick to my little method..

Have you noticed how Date.setHours, Date.setMinutes and Date.setSeconds are all deprecated? There's a reason for that... — Jon Skeet
– Jon Skeet, Commented Sep 30, 2011 at 13:09
Yea.. I read about it. Im just using it to display so i guess it doesn't matter to me — Rejinderi
– Rejinderi, Commented Sep 30, 2011 at 13:11
But why wouldn't you use the more appropriate code, which will also actually be simpler in the end? (And why are you creating an int array for no particular reason?) When you use the appropriate types and abstractions, you'll get code which is much cleaner to maintain. — Jon Skeet
– Jon Skeet, Commented Sep 30, 2011 at 13:13
I saw that.. I did the first part and then i added the date part below without cleaning up.. my bad. appropriate code meaning setting the date format to utc? i have a structure of a few objects that i represent using date for orm and gson parsing.. — Rejinderi
– Rejinderi, Commented Sep 30, 2011 at 13:19
Appropriate meaning "the Date class isn't the right one to be using here - you should use Calendar or ideally Joda Time". — Jon Skeet
– Jon Skeet, Commented Sep 30, 2011 at 13:24

Jon Skeet · Accepted Answer · 2011-09-30 12:38:13Z

3

The problem is you're printing out the result of Date.toString() - which always shows the results in the system time zone. That's probably not what you want.

The Date itself has no concept of a time zone - it's just an instant in time.

I would suggest you use Joda Time if at all possible. That has a LocalTime which actually represents what you're parsing here.

EDIT: Just to reiterate what's in the comment... I suspect that the time zone in your DateFormat is not the same as the time zone used by Date.toString. For simplicity, it's probably worth setting the DateFormat's time zone to UTC, and then if you want to convert to a Calendar you should set that time zone to UTC as well before calling setTime(date).

edited Sep 30, 2011 at 12:38

answered Sep 30, 2011 at 9:43

Jon Skeet

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4 Comments

Rejinderi Over a year ago

Im printing out the result to show how the output would be.. the hour and min and sec just doesnt match.. its 1 and a half hours offset. I saw your other post somewhere while searching for a solution.. about using Joda Time but I don't want to include third party libraries for an issue like this.. i was hoping for an solution. Thanks though..

Jon Skeet Over a year ago

@Rejinderi: They won't match if the time zone used by the SimpleDateFormat you're using to parse isn't the same as the one that the Date.toString method is used to print the string out again... One option is to set the DateFormat's time zone to UTC, and always format with UTC as well. That should avoid any DST transition issues - but fundamentally it's the difference between the two time zones in use that is causing the issue here.

Rejinderi Over a year ago

Could you show an example as on how to set the dateformat timezone to utc? thanks

Jon Skeet Over a year ago

@Rejinderi: Um, format.setTimeZone(TimeZone.getTimeZone("UTC")) should do it... (Personally I'd extract a static final field for UTC somewhere.) Oh, and note that SimpleDateFormat is not threadsafe, so keeping that in a static final field is not a good idea.

Paresh Mayani · Accepted Answer · 2011-09-30 09:43:34Z

2

Just do this:

 Calendar c = Calendar.getInstance();
 c.setTime(myParsedDate);

 int hours = c.get(Calendar.HOUR);
 int mins = c.get(Calendar.MINUTE);
 int seconds = c.get(Calendar.SECOND);

answered Sep 30, 2011 at 9:43

Paresh Mayani

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1 Comment

Rejinderi Over a year ago

This is exactly what im doing after i got the date to supply to the timepicker. however im getting 16:47:57 instead of the value i wanted which is 17:17:57

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