Problems with extracting a date in Java with a regular expression

Question

For a certain API I am getting dates in a /Date(1323312018479-0700)/ format. For some reason the regex that I am using does not result in any matches.

Any ideas?

BTW: I am not taking into account the timezone right now.

public static Date parseApiDate(String rawDate) {
    Pattern p = Pattern.compile("([0-9]+)-([0-9]+)", Pattern.CASE_INSENSITIVE);
    Matcher m = p.matcher(rawDate);

    Log.d("DATE CONVERSION: Raw", rawDate);
    if (m.matches()) {
        String utc = m.group(1);
        int milliSeconds = Integer.parseInt(utc);
        Date date = new Date(milliSeconds);

        Log.d("DATE CONVERSION: milliseconds", utc);
        Log.d("DATE CONVERSION: Converted", date.toGMTString());

        return date;
    } else {    
        return new Date(0);
    }
}

If it's of the same format always, you can use string parsing, which would be better. — srkavin
– srkavin, Commented Dec 7, 2011 at 22:48

Bozho · Accepted Answer · 2011-12-07 22:50:01Z

3

You need m.find() instead of m.matches(). Then you'd need Long.parseLong()

Generally, you should parse dates with DateFormat (SimpleDateFormat), but in this case it can't cope. The pattern SZ fails, perhaps because it is not sure where the timezone starts (although it should be able to do that)

answered Dec 7, 2011 at 22:50

Bozho

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1 Comment

chris Over a year ago

I got hung up on the regex and missed the the fact that I was trying to convert a long to an int, which was the sole cause.

Tobias · Accepted Answer · 2011-12-07 22:51:23Z

0

Try it with

Pattern p = Pattern.compile(".*?([0-9]+)-([0-9]+).*?", Pattern.CASE_INSENSITIVE);

answered Dec 7, 2011 at 22:51

Tobias

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2 Comments

srkavin Over a year ago

@chris - You need to combine this answer with what Bozho mentioned about using Long.

chris Over a year ago

The regex actually works fine without the addition lazy expression addition. The exception that was being thrown wasn't printing the stacktrace which is why I kept thinking that it was the problem.

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