java.text.ParseException: Unparseable date:

Question

Could anybody please tell me why i am getting java.text.ParseException: Unparseable date in the following code:

import java.text.DateFormat;
import java.text.ParseException;
import java.text.SimpleDateFormat;
import java.util.Date;
import java.util.Locale;


public class Testdate {
    public static void main(String args[])
    {
        String text = "2011-11-19T00:00:00.000-05:00";
        DateFormat sdf = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss.SSSZ");
        try {
            Date parsed = sdf.parse(text.trim());
            System.out.println(parsed);
        } catch (ParseException e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
    }

}

Answer 1

Its because of the colon in your timezone. Remove it and it will work:

String text = "2011-11-19T00:00:00.000-0500";
DateFormat sdf = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss.SSSZ");

Answer 2

Because the Z part of SimpleDateFormat's pattern support doesn't handle offsets with colons in.

I suggest you use Joda Time instead, using ISODateFormat.dateTime() to get an appropriate formatter.

(See this similar-but-not-quite-the-same-question from earlier today for more information.)