java.text.ParseException: Unparseable date: "09:07:31 AM PDT"

Question

I have a field in the response that is coming as time which I want to parse before adding some minutes into it. I have written the below code which results in error.

SimpleDateFormat df = new SimpleDateFormat("HH:MM:ss a SSS");
        Date date = df.parse(currentTime);
        Calendar cal = Calendar.getInstance();
        cal.setTime(date);
        cal.add(Calendar.MINUTE, 10);

here, currentTime is coming in as "09:07:31 AM PDT"

Answer 1

You need to use the right combination of letters in format, here:

SimpleDateFormat df = new SimpleDateFormat("HH:mm:ss aa zzz");

You might also want to look at API docs [1].

Note: Parsing would work if you use the above format, but you will need the date part as well for accurate calculations. Here is an example with the current date of the current timezone of your machine used as the date part.

        String recievedTime = "09:07:31 AM PDT";
        String currentDate = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd").format(new Date());
        SimpleDateFormat df = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss aa zzz");
        Date date = df.parse(currentDate +" " + recievedTime);

[1] https://docs.oracle.com/javase/8/docs/api/java/text/SimpleDateFormat.html