Java: Convert String to TimeStamp

Follow these steps for a correct result:

try {
    SimpleDateFormat dateFormat = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd hh:mm:ss.SSS");
    Date parsedDate = dateFormat.parse(yourString);
    Timestamp timestamp = new java.sql.Timestamp(parsedDate.getTime());
} catch(Exception e) { //this generic but you can control another types of exception
    // look the origin of excption 
}

Please note that .parse(String) might throw a ParseException.

import java.sql.Timestamp;
import java.text.DateFormat;
import java.text.ParseException;
import java.text.SimpleDateFormat;
import java.util.Date;

public class Util {
  public static Timestamp convertStringToTimestamp(String strDate) {
    try {
      DateFormat formatter = new SimpleDateFormat("dd/MM/yyyy");
       // you can change format of date
      Date date = formatter.parse(strDate);
      Timestamp timeStampDate = new Timestamp(date.getTime());

      return timeStampDate;
    } catch (ParseException e) {
      System.out.println("Exception :" + e);
      return null;
    }
  }
}

I should like to contribute the modern answer. When this question was asked in 2013, using the Timestamp class was right, for example for storing a date-time into your database. Today the class is long outdated. The modern Java date and time API came out with Java 8 in the spring of 2014, three and a half years ago. I recommend you use this instead.

Depending on your situation an exact requirements, there are two natural replacements for Timestamp:

• Instant is a point on the time-line. For most purposes I would consider it safest to use this. An Instant is independent of time zone and will usually work well even in situations where your client device and your database server run different time zones.
• LocalDateTime is a date and time of day without time zone, like 2011-10-02 18:48:05.123 (to quote the question).

A modern JDBC driver (JDBC 4.2 or higher) and other modern tools for database access will be happy to store either an Instant or a LocalDateTime into your database column of datatype timestamp. Both classes and the other date-time classes I am using in this answer belong to the modern API known as java.time or JSR-310.

It’s easiest to convert your string to LocalDateTime, so let’s take that first:

    DateTimeFormatter formatter
            = DateTimeFormatter.ofPattern("uuuu-MM-dd HH:mm:ss.SSS");
    String text = "2011-10-02 18:48:05.123";
    LocalDateTime dateTime = LocalDateTime.parse(text, formatter);
    System.out.println(dateTime);

This prints

2011-10-02T18:48:05.123

If your string was in yyyy-MM-dd format, instead do:

    String text = "2009-10-20";
    LocalDateTime dateTime = LocalDate.parse(text).atStartOfDay();
    System.out.println(dateTime);

This prints

2009-10-20T00:00

Or still better, take the output from LocalDate.parse() and store it into a database column of datatype date.

In both cases the procedure for converting from a LocalDateTime to an Instant is:

    Instant ts = dateTime.atZone(ZoneId.systemDefault()).toInstant();
    System.out.println(ts);

I have specified a conversion using the JVM’s default time zone because this is what the outdated class would have used. This is fragile, though, since the time zone setting may be changed under our feet by other parts of your program or by other programs running in the same JVM. If you can, specify a time zone in the region/city format instead, for example:

    Instant ts = dateTime.atZone(ZoneId.of("Europe/Athens")).toInstant();

The easy way to convert String to java.sql.Timestamp:

Timestamp t = new Timestamp(DateUtil.provideDateFormat().parse("2019-01-14T12:00:00.000Z").getTime());

DateUtil.java:

import java.text.SimpleDateFormat;
import java.util.TimeZone;

public interface DateUtil {

  String ISO_DATE_FORMAT_ZERO_OFFSET = "yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss.SSS'Z'";
  String UTC_TIMEZONE_NAME = "UTC";

  static SimpleDateFormat provideDateFormat() {
    SimpleDateFormat simpleDateFormat = new SimpleDateFormat(ISO_DATE_FORMAT_ZERO_OFFSET);
    simpleDateFormat.setTimeZone(TimeZone.getTimeZone(UTC_TIMEZONE_NAME));
    return simpleDateFormat;
  }
}