Java SimpleDateFormat for time zone with a colon separator?

Question

I have a date in the following format: 2010-03-01T00:00:00-08:00

I have thrown the following SimpleDateFormats at it to parse it:

private static final SimpleDateFormat[] FORMATS = {         new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ssZ"), //ISO8601 long RFC822 zone         new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ssz"), //ISO8601 long long form zone         new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss"), //ignore timezone         new SimpleDateFormat("yyyyMMddHHmmssZ"), //ISO8601 short         new SimpleDateFormat("yyyyMMddHHmm"),         new SimpleDateFormat("yyyyMMdd"), //birthdate from NIST IHE C32 sample         new SimpleDateFormat("yyyyMM"),         new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy") //just the year     }; 

I have a convenience method that uses those formats like so:

public static Date figureOutTheDamnDate(String wtf) {     if (wtf == null) {         return null;     }     Date retval = null;     for (SimpleDateFormat sdf : FORMATS) {         try {             sdf.setLenient(false)             retval = sdf.parse(wtf);             System.out.println("Date:" + wtf + " hit on pattern:" + sdf.toPattern());             break;         } catch (ParseException ex) {             retval = null;             continue;         }     }      return retval; } 

It seems to hit on the pattern yyyyMMddHHmm but returns the date as Thu Dec 03 00:01:00 PST 2009.

What is the correct pattern to parse this date?

UPDATE: I don't NEED the time zone parsing. I don't anticipate having time sensitive issues moving between zones, but how would I get the "-08:00" zone format to parse????

Unit test:

@Test public void test_date_parser() {     System.out.println("\ntest_date_parser");     //month is zero based, are you effing kidding me     Calendar d = new GregorianCalendar(2000, 3, 6, 13, 00, 00);     assertEquals(d.getTime(), MyClass.figureOutTheDamnDate("200004061300"));     assertEquals(new GregorianCalendar(1950, 0, 1).getTime(), MyClass.figureOutTheDamnDate("1950"));     assertEquals(new GregorianCalendar(1997, 0, 1).getTime(),  MyClass.figureOutTheDamnDate("199701"));     assertEquals(new GregorianCalendar(2010, 1, 25, 15, 19, 44).getTime(),   MyClass.figureOutTheDamnDate("20100225151944-0800"));      //my machine happens to be in GMT-0800     assertEquals(new GregorianCalendar(2010, 1, 15, 13, 15, 00).getTime(),MyClass.figureOutTheDamnDate("2010-02-15T13:15:00-05:00"));     assertEquals(new GregorianCalendar(2010, 1, 15, 18, 15, 00).getTime(), MyClass.figureOutTheDamnDate("2010-02-15T18:15:00-05:00"));      assertEquals(new GregorianCalendar(2010, 2, 1).getTime(), MyClass.figureOutTheDamnDate("2010-03-01T00:00:00-08:00"));     assertEquals(new GregorianCalendar(2010, 2, 1, 17, 0, 0).getTime(), MyClass.figureOutTheDamnDate("2010-03-01T17:00:00-05:00")); } 

Output from unit test:

test_date_parser Date:200004061300 hit on pattern:yyyyMMddHHmm Date:1950 hit on pattern:yyyy Date:199701 hit on pattern:yyyyMM Date:20100225151944-0800 hit on pattern:yyyyMMddHHmmssZ Date:2010-02-15T13:15:00-05:00 hit on pattern:yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss Date:2010-02-15T18:15:00-05:00 hit on pattern:yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss Date:2010-03-01T00:00:00-08:00 hit on pattern:yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss Date:2010-03-01T17:00:00-05:00 hit on pattern:yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss 

Answer 1

JodaTime's DateTimeFormat to rescue:

String dateString = "2010-03-01T00:00:00-08:00"; String pattern = "yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ssZ"; DateTimeFormatter dtf = DateTimeFormat.forPattern(pattern); DateTime dateTime = dtf.parseDateTime(dateString); System.out.println(dateTime); // 2010-03-01T04:00:00.000-04:00 

(time and timezone difference in toString() is just because I'm at GMT-4 and didn't set locale explicitly)

If you want to end up with java.util.Date just use DateTime#toDate():

Date date = dateTime.toDate(); 

Wait for JDK7 (JSR-310) JSR-310, the referrence implementation is called ThreeTen (hopefully it will make it into Java 8) if you want a better formatter in the standard Java SE API. The current SimpleDateFormat indeed doesn't eat the colon in the timezone notation.

Update: as per the update, you apparently don't need the timezone. This should work with SimpleDateFormat. Just omit it (the Z) in the pattern.

String dateString = "2010-03-01T00:00:00-08:00"; String pattern = "yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss"; SimpleDateFormat sdf = new SimpleDateFormat(pattern); Date date = sdf.parse(dateString); System.out.println(date); // Mon Mar 01 00:00:00 BOT 2010 

(which is correct as per my timezone)