How to convert HH:mm:ss.SSS to milliseconds?

Solution 1:

You can use SimpleDateFormat to do it. You just have to know 2 things.

1. All dates are internally represented in UTC
2. .getTime() returns the number of milliseconds since 1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC.

package se.wederbrand.milliseconds;

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

public class Main {        
    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
        SimpleDateFormat sdf = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss.SSS");
        sdf.setTimeZone(TimeZone.getTimeZone("UTC"));

        String inputString = "00:01:30.500";

        Date date = sdf.parse("1970-01-01 " + inputString);
        System.out.println("in milliseconds: " + date.getTime());        
    }
}

Solution 2:

If you want to parse the format yourself you could do it easily with a regex such as

private static Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile("(\\d{2}):(\\d{2}):(\\d{2}).(\\d{3})");

public static long dateParseRegExp(String period) {
    Matcher matcher = pattern.matcher(period);
    if (matcher.matches()) {
        return Long.parseLong(matcher.group(1)) * 3600000L 
            + Long.parseLong(matcher.group(2)) * 60000 
            + Long.parseLong(matcher.group(3)) * 1000 
            + Long.parseLong(matcher.group(4)); 
    } else {
        throw new IllegalArgumentException("Invalid format " + period);
    }
}

However, this parsing is quite lenient and would accept 99:99:99.999 and just let the values overflow. This could be a drawback or a feature.

Solution 3:

Using JODA:

PeriodFormatter periodFormat = new PeriodFormatterBuilder()
  .minimumParsedDigits(2)
  .appendHour() // 2 digits minimum
  .appendSeparator(":")
  .minimumParsedDigits(2)
  .appendMinute() // 2 digits minimum
  .appendSeparator(":")
  .minimumParsedDigits(2)
  .appendSecond()
  .appendSeparator(".")
  .appendMillis3Digit()
  .toFormatter();
Period result = Period.parse(string, periodFormat);
return result.toStandardDuration().getMillis();