How do you parse this date format in java?

Question

Simple question: what format should I use with this date?

2011-10-09T05:06:03.000000Z

This one does not work:

"yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ssZZ"

From the manual: "The timestamp is calculated from epoch_ticks (zulu), format=%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S.%fZ"

What is that last set of zeroes? Milliseconds? Timezone offset? — Roddy of the Frozen Peas, Oct 01 '12 at 22:19
@sjr java.text.ParseException: Unparseable date: "2011-11-23T21:59:00.000000Z" — user3111525, Oct 01 '12 at 22:22
@RoddyoftheFrozenPeas have no idea, it is not something I created. It is a public dataset I am processing. — user3111525, Oct 01 '12 at 22:23
"yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss.SSSSSS'Z'", the Z is for Zulu (UTC) probably. — sjr, Oct 01 '12 at 22:23
Yes, it is zulu, this is what i found: "The timestamp is calculated from epoch_ticks (zulu), format=%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S.%fZ", — user3111525, Oct 01 '12 at 22:24
That is *standard* ISO-8601 in full-form (it can have up to 6 digits of fractional second precision). Nothing special. — , Oct 01 '12 at 22:29
Seems like there is another SO thread: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2201925/converting-iso8601-compliant-string-to-java-util-date — user3111525, Oct 01 '12 at 22:30

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Oct 01 '12 at 22:47

I think the short answer is "you can't". For some reason Java does not support "Z" as a time zone identifier. You can do a workaround like this though:

SimpleDateFormat df = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss");
df.setTimeZone(TimeZone.getTimeZone("UTC"));
Date d = df.parse("2011-10-09T05:06:03.000000Z");

This assumes that the date will be in UTC and ignores the Z.

How do you parse this date format in java?

1 Answers1