Parse Java TDate format in Java

Question

How to parse a Java TDate ? i want to parse this into a java Date object. The date value is 2011-11-22T00:00:00-06:00

Answer 1

You can use a SimpleDateFormat:

DateFormat format = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss");
// Set time zone, locale etc

Date date = format.parse(text);

Personally I would strongly recommend that you use Joda Time instead of the built-in Java types, but that's a separate discussion...

Answer 2

java.time

The java.util Date-Time API and their formatting API, SimpleDateFormat are outdated and error-prone. It is recommended to stop using them completely and switch to the modern Date-Time API^*, released in March 2014.

Solution using java.time, the modern Date-Time API:

The modern Date-Time API is based on ISO 8601 and does not require using a DateTimeFormatter object explicitly as long as the Date-Time string conforms to the ISO 8601 standards.

Since your Date-Time string, 2011-11-22T00:00:00-06:00 already conforms to ISO 8601 Date-Time format with timezone offset, you can parse it directly to OffsetDateTime.

Demo:

import java.time.OffsetDateTime;

public class Main {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        OffsetDateTime odt = OffsetDateTime.parse("2011-11-22T00:00:00-06:00");
        System.out.println(odt);
    }
}

Output:

2011-11-22T00:00-06:00

ONLINE DEMO

Learn more about the modern Date-Time API from Trail: Date Time.

Some important notes:

1. If you are going to deal with JDBC, check this answer and this answer.
2. If you need to convert this object of OffsetDateTime to an OffsetDateTime object with a different ZoneOffset, you can do so by using OffsetDateTime#withOffsetSameInstant e.g.

OffsetDateTime odtWithOffsetTwoHours = odt.withOffsetSameInstant(ZoneOffset.of("+02:00"));
OffsetDateTime odtInUtc = odt.withOffsetSameInstant(ZoneOffset.UTC);

3. For any reason, if you need to convert this object of OffsetDateTime to an object of java.util.Date, you can do so as follows:

Date date = Date.from(odt.toInstant());

Solution using the legacy Date-Time API:

As I have already mentioned, you should try your best to avoid the error-prone legacy API. Just for the sake of completeness, I have written below the solution using the legacy API.

Since your Date-Time string has a timezone offset of -06:00, a correct format to parse it would be

y-M-d'T'H:m:sXXX

Note that for parsing, a single y can cater to both two-digit as well as four-digit representation of the year. Similarly, a single m can cater to both single-digit and two-digit month. Other fields also behave in a similar fashion.

Demo:

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

public class Main {
    public static void main(String[] args) throws ParseException {
        SimpleDateFormat sdf = new SimpleDateFormat("y-M-d'T'H:m:sXXX", Locale.ENGLISH);
        Date date = sdf.parse("2011-11-22T00:00:00-06:00");
        // Display in the default format i.e. the value of date#toString
        System.out.println(date);

        // #################Display in custom format and timezone#################
        // At timezone offset of -06:00 hours
        sdf.setTimeZone(TimeZone.getTimeZone("GMT-06:00"));
        System.out.println(sdf.format(date));
        
        // In UTC
        sdf.setTimeZone(TimeZone.getTimeZone("Etc/UTC"));
        System.out.println(sdf.format(date));

        // In New York
        sdf.setTimeZone(TimeZone.getTimeZone("America/New_York"));
        System.out.println(sdf.format(date));
    }
}

Output:

Tue Nov 22 06:00:00 GMT 2011
2011-11-22T0:0:0-06:00
2011-11-22T6:0:0Z
2011-11-22T1:0:0-05:00

ONLINE DEMO

Note that a java.util.Date object is not a real Date-Time object like the modern Date-Time types; rather, it represents the number of milliseconds since the standard base time known as "the epoch", namely January 1, 1970, 00:00:00 GMT (or UTC). Since it does not hold any format and timezone information, it applies the format, EEE MMM dd HH:mm:ss z yyyy and the JVM's timezone to return the value of Date#toString derived from this milliseconds value. If you need to print the Date-Time in a different format and timezone, you will need to use a SimpleDateFormat with the desired format and the applicable timezone as demonstrated using the code above.

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^{* For any reason, if you have to stick to Java 6 or Java 7, you can use ThreeTen-Backport which backports most of the java.time functionality to Java 6 & 7. If you are working for an Android project and your Android API level is still not compliant with Java-8, check Java 8+ APIs available through desugaring and How to use ThreeTenABP in Android Project.}