What's the correct date format for this case?

Question

I've been trying to parse String into Date, But, The conversion isn't working.

For example, I've these Strings, retrieved from a webservice.

Dec 9, 2016 4:36:00 PM
Jan 12, 2017 11:36:15 AM

I've tried to use these formats, But, The conversion failed.

MMM d, yyyy HH:mm:ss aaa
MMM d, yyyy hh:mm:ss a

Where am I wrong?

I'm getting this exception
java.text.ParseException: Unparseable date: "Dec 9, 2016 4:36:00 PM"

Answer 1

This is just a variation of the @C.P.O answer and uses a slightly different pattern.

import java.time.LocalDateTime;
import java.time.format.DateTimeFormatter;

import org.junit.Test;

public class blam
{
    private static final String VALUE1 = "Dec 9, 2016 4:36:00 PM";
    private static final String VALUE2 = "Jan 12, 2017 11:36:15 AM";

    @Test
    public void test()
    {
        DateTimeFormatter dateTimeFormatter;
        LocalDateTime value;

        dateTimeFormatter = DateTimeFormatter.ofPattern("MMM d, u h:m:s a");

        value = LocalDateTime.parse(VALUE1, dateTimeFormatter);
        System.out.println("value1. " + VALUE1 + " becomes: " + value);


        value = LocalDateTime.parse(VALUE2, dateTimeFormatter);
        System.out.println("value2. " + VALUE2 + " becomes: " + value);
    }
}

Some notes:

• y is "year of era"
• u is "year"
• MMM is required. Neither "M" nor "MM" will work in your case.
• I prefer "s" to "ss" because "s" will parse both 2 and 12, but "ss" will fail to parse "2"

I don't know the real impact of using 'y' instead of 'u'.