Java date is not preserving milliseconds in conversion with simple date format

Question

I'm trying to convert the following string "2012-04-13 04:08:42.794" to a date type:

    SimpleDateFormat dateFormat = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd hh:mm:ss.SSS");

    Date convertedDate;
    try {
        convertedDate = dateFormat.parse(dateString);
        System.out.println(" in utils: "+convertedDate.toString());
    } catch (ParseException e) {
        e.printStackTrace();
        return null;
    }


  //----------------- i think this is the problem
java.sql.Date sqlDate = new java.sql.Date(convertedDate.getTime());
        System.out.println("sql: "+sqlDate.toString());
        return sqlDate;

But this is printing the following:

in utils: Fri Apr 13 04:08:42 PDT 2012

How can I get this date to preserve the milliseconds?

Answer 1

The convertedDate object does in fact contain the millisecond information. The issue here is that the toString() method format does not print milliseconds.

Do

 System.out.println(" in utils: " + dateFormat.format(convertedDate));

You can also check if the ms are set with

 System.out.println("millis: " + convertedDate.getTime());

Answer 2

He's my go at it (trying to keep the same code style as yours) :

import java.util.*;
import java.text.*;
public class main {
 public static void main(String[] args)throws Exception {
 long yourmilliseconds = 1119193190;
SimpleDateFormat sdf = new SimpleDateFormat("MMM dd,yyyy HH:mm:ss.SSS");

Date resultdate = new Date(yourmilliseconds);
System.out.println(sdf.format(resultdate));  } 
}  

Output :

Jan 13,1970 17:53:13.190

Regards, Erwald