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javadatetimejava-timedatetime-parsing

DateTimeParse Exception

I am constantly getting an exception error in my code when parsing a date. The Date looks like this:

Wed May 21 00:00:00 EDT 2008

This is the code for trying to read it:

DateTimeFormatter formatter = DateTimeFormatter.ofPattern("EEE MMM dd HH:mm:ss zzz yyyy");
Property property = new Property();
property.setSale_date(LocalDateTime.parse(linesplit[8], formatter));

Expected result: A LocalDateTime of 2008-05-21T00:00.

What I got instead:

Exception in thread "main" java.time.format.DateTimeParseException: Text 'Wed May 21 00:00:00 EDT 2008' could not be parsed at index 0

Am I doing this completely wrong?

Solution

  • The devil is in the detail. You are basically doing it correctly, except:

    • You need to provide a locale for the formatter.
    • By parsing into a LocalDateTime you are losing information and possibly getting an unexpected result.

    So I suggest:

        DateTimeFormatter formatter = DateTimeFormatter.ofPattern(
            "EEE MMM dd HH:mm:ss zzz yyyy", Locale.ROOT);

    String linesplit8 = "Wed May 21 00:00:00 EDT 2008";
    ZonedDateTime zdt = ZonedDateTime.parse(linesplit8, formatter);

    System.out.println(zdt);

    Output is:

    2008-05-21T00:00-04:00[America/New_York]

    Your string is in English. It looks like the output from Date.toString() (Date being the old-fashioned class used for times before Java 8). So it’s probably in English because that toString method always produced English output. So if your locale is not an English-speaking one, parsing is deemed to fail, and I believe this is the reason why it did. In this case it’s appropriate to use Locale.ROOT for the locale neutral English-speaking locale. A way to say “don’t apply any locale specific processing here”.

    Your string contains a time zone abbreviation, EDT, which is part of identifying a unique point in time, so you will want to pick up this part of the information too. Therefore use a ZonedDateTime.

    Links

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