Java SimpleDateFormat for time zone with a colon separator?

Solution 1:

JodaTime's DateTimeFormat to rescue:

String dateString = "2010-03-01T00:00:00-08:00";
String pattern = "yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ssZ";
DateTimeFormatter dtf = DateTimeFormat.forPattern(pattern);
DateTime dateTime = dtf.parseDateTime(dateString);
System.out.println(dateTime); // 2010-03-01T04:00:00.000-04:00

(time and timezone difference in toString() is just because I'm at GMT-4 and didn't set locale explicitly)

If you want to end up with java.util.Date just use DateTime#toDate():

Date date = dateTime.toDate();

Wait for JDK7 (JSR-310) JSR-310, the referrence implementation is called ThreeTen (hopefully it will make it into Java 8) if you want a better formatter in the standard Java SE API. The current SimpleDateFormat indeed doesn't eat the colon in the timezone notation.

Update: as per the update, you apparently don't need the timezone. This should work with SimpleDateFormat. Just omit it (the Z) in the pattern.

String dateString = "2010-03-01T00:00:00-08:00";
String pattern = "yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss";
SimpleDateFormat sdf = new SimpleDateFormat(pattern);
Date date = sdf.parse(dateString);
System.out.println(date); // Mon Mar 01 00:00:00 BOT 2010

(which is correct as per my timezone)

Solution 2:

if you used the java 7, you could have used the following Date Time Pattern. Seems like this pattern is not supported in the Earlier version of java.

String dateTimeString  = "2010-03-01T00:00:00-08:00";
DateFormat df = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ssXXX");
Date date = df.parse(dateTimeString);

For More information refer to the SimpleDateFormat documentation.

Solution 3:

Here's a snippet I used - with plain SimpleDateFormat. Hope somebody else may benefit from it:

public static void main(String[] args) {
    SimpleDateFormat dateFormat = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ssZ") {
        public StringBuffer format(Date date, StringBuffer toAppendTo, java.text.FieldPosition pos) {
            StringBuffer toFix = super.format(date, toAppendTo, pos);
            return toFix.insert(toFix.length()-2, ':');
        };
    };
    // Usage:
    System.out.println(dateFormat.format(new Date()));
}

Output:

- Usual Output.........: 2013-06-14T10:54:07-0200
- This snippet's Output: 2013-06-14T10:54:07-02:00

Or... better, use a simpler, different, pattern:

SimpleDateFormat dateFormat2 = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ssXXX");
// Usage:
System.out.println(dateFormat2.format(new Date()));

Output:

- This pattern's output: 2013-06-14T10:54:07-02:00

See the docs for that.

Solution 4:

Try this, its work for me:

Date date = javax.xml.bind.DatatypeConverter.parseDateTime("2013-06-01T12:45:01+04:00").getTime();

In Java 8:

OffsetDateTime dt = OffsetDateTime.parse("2010-03-01T00:00:00-08:00");