I created the following function in order to convert a String to Date but I need to catch any error while doing that and so return null.
public static Date toDateStarted(String dateStarted) {
Date dtStarted = null;
SimpleDateFormat dtFormat = new SimpleDateFormat("MM/dd/yyyy h:mm:ss a");
try {
dtStarted = dtFormat.parse(dateStarted);
} catch (ParseException e) {
dtStarted = null;
}
return dtStarted;
}
Date dtError = toDateStarted("error/7/1 4:44:44 PM");
This returned null as expected.
Date dtWrong = toDateStarted( "2016/7/1 4:44:44 PM" );
this returned a wrong date "Tue Dec 07 16:44:44 EST 168"
In this last and important case, the input date "2016/7/1 4:44:44 PM" is in a wrong format. I am passing 2016/7/1 instead of 7/1/2016 and so I was thinking that the ParseException will occurred but never happened.
After the TRY... dtStarted = "Tue Dec 07 16:44:44 EST 168" and so I got that once returned.
The time is correct (16:44 = 4:44pm) however the Date (year, month, day) is totally wrong.
I need to avoid any convertion if the input date (dateStarted) is not as STRICT as in the SimpleDateFormat Pattern.
What should I do? Optimizations are welcome.
