Special string to LocalDate

Question

From the following String I want to get the LocalDate or LocalDateTime.

Jan 1, 2019 12:00:00 AM

I have already tried the following code but I am getting the following error:

DateTimeFormatter formatter = DateTimeFormatter.ofPattern("MMM d, yyyy hh:mm:ss a"); // also with dd
formatter = formatter.withLocale(Locale.GERMAN);
LocalDateTime localDateTime = LocalDateTime.parse(stringDate, formatter);
LocalDate localDate = LocalDate.parse(stringDate, formatter);

• Exception in thread "main" java.time.format.DateTimeParseException: Text 'Jan 1, 2019 12:00:00 AM' could not be parsed at index 0

The way I would like to have the date, in the end, would be like

• 01.01.2019. LocalDate
• 01.01.2019. 12:00 LocalDateTime (24h)

Is this even possible? Would be instead the use of regular expressions an overkill?

Answer 1

There are a few problems with your code, but I will propose a working solution here:

1. HH is the hour of the day, not the hour 0-12 (which is hh)
2. you should use a DateTimeFormatterBuilder
3. you should use the proper locale, probably GERMANY instead of GERMAN
4. the name of the month is represented as L, not as M
5. the german locale uses vorm. and nachm. instead of AM and PM -> a quick solution is to replace the terms

Putting it all together leaves us with this:

import java.time.LocalDate;
import java.time.LocalDateTime;
import java.time.format.DateTimeFormatter;
import java.time.format.DateTimeFormatterBuilder;
import java.util.Locale;

class Scratch {

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        String stringDate = "Jan 1, 2019 11:00:00 PM";
        stringDate = stringDate.replace("AM", "vorm.");
        stringDate = stringDate.replace("PM", "nachm.");
        DateTimeFormatter formatter = new DateTimeFormatterBuilder()
                .appendPattern("LLL d, yyyy hh:mm:ss a")
                .toFormatter(Locale.GERMANY);
        LocalDateTime localDateTime = LocalDateTime.parse(stringDate, formatter);
        LocalDate localDate = LocalDate.parse(stringDate, formatter);
    }

}

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If anybody has a different approach to handling the AM/vorm.-dilemma, I would be glad to see it!