How to parse a timezone into a long to store into sqlite?

Question

so I am using nodejs to send back a json object, on return I get the following value for date "2016-05-02T04:00:00.000Z" What I need to do is store this in the sqlite db as a long on my Android app - (timezone does not matter, the only things I care about are the year,month, and day).

Now I will be getting a list of 50 objects with this date format - so it has to be efficient somewhat.

I have read that timezones are not parse-able but then people stated that in the new Java it is, so please let me know how I can go about parsing it correctly.

Is SimpleDateFormat suppose to work?

Java 8 has the `java.time.*` classes, which will help you work with timezones and such, but Android does not have these classes according to [this](http://developer.android.com/preview/j8-jack.html) despite having some of the language features. — Darth Android, May 05 '16 at 18:26

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered May 05 '16 at 18:30

you may use Calendar class like this:

Calendar c = Calendar.getInstance();
c.set(Calendar.YEAR, year);
c.set(Calendar.MONTH, month);
c.set(Calendar.DAY_OF_MONTH, day);

but before that you have to manually parse your String. Split by letter "T", then get array[0] and split by "-", then Integer.parseInt(..) to get day, month and year ints. For timestamp you may use c,getTimeInMillis();

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered May 05 '16 at 18:29

0

Just simply use time in milliseconds.

In Android for getting the current time you can use System.currentTimeMillis and from that you can easily make out year, month and day.

answered May 05 '16 at 18:29

Ashish

183
9

refer this for converting millis to date format http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7953725/how-to-convert-milliseconds-to-date-format-in-android – Ashish May 05 '16 at 18:30
Well the server has the date stored, so I need to grab that date and turn it into a long - I am not creating a new date. – Lion789 May 05 '16 at 18:56

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered May 05 '16 at 18:31

Yes, SimpleDateFormat works.

What you need to do is parse your String timestamp into a Date object from which you could retrieve the millisecond differential since Jan. 1, 1970, midnight GMT.

 SimpleDateFormat sdf = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss.SSSZ");
 sdf.setTimeZone(TimeZone.getTimeZone("UTC"));
 Date d = sdf.parse(timestamp);

and then you call the getTime() method to get the diffential between your timestamp and Jan. 1, 1970, midnight GMT.

d.getTime();

doc : http://developer.android.com/reference/java/text/SimpleDateFormat.html and http://developer.android.com/reference/java/util/Date.html#getTime()

How to parse a timezone into a long to store into sqlite?

3 Answers3