JSON date to Java date? [duplicate]

That DateTime format is actually ISO 8601 DateTime. JSON does not specify any particular format for dates/times. If you Google a bit, you will find plenty of implementations to parse it in Java.

Here's one

If you are open to using something other than Java's built-in Date/Time/Calendar classes, I would also suggest Joda Time. They offer (among many things) a ISODateTimeFormat to parse these kinds of strings.

Note that SimpleDateFormat format pattern Z is for RFC 822 time zone and pattern X is for ISO 8601 (this standard supports single letter time zone names like Z for Zulu).

So new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss.SSSX") produces a format that can parse both "2013-03-11T01:38:18.309Z" and "2013-03-11T01:38:18.309+0000" and will give you the same result.

Unfortunately, as far as I can tell, you can't get this format to generate the Z for Zulu version, which is annoying.

I actually have more trouble on the JavaScript side to deal with both formats.

If you need to support more than one format you will have to pattern match your input and parse accordingly.

final DateFormat fmt;
if (dateString.endsWith("Z")) {
    fmt = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss'Z'");
} else {
    fmt = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ssZ");
}

I'd guess you're dealing with a bug in the API you're using which has quoted the Z timezone date pattern somewhere...