Java – joda DateTime parser error

javajodatimetime

I use jodatime to parse date time strings as follows:

    public static void main(String[]args){
        String s ="16-Jul-2009 05:20:18 PDT";
        String patterns = "dd-MMM-yyyy HH:mm:ss z";

            DateTimeFormatter fm = DateTimeFormat.forPattern(patterns);
            DateTime d=fm.parseDateTime(s);
            System.out.println(d);

    }

I get

Exception in thread "main" java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Invalid format: "16-Jul-2009 05:20:18 PDT" is malformed at "PDT"
    at org.joda.time.format.DateTimeFormatter.parseDateTime(DateTimeFormatter.java:683)

what's wrong? how to parse the timezone properly?

Best Answer

From the DateTimeFormat javadoc:

The pattern syntax is mostly compatible with java.text.SimpleDateFormat - time zone names cannot be parsed and a few more symbols are supported. All ASCII letters are reserved as pattern letters, which are defined as follows:

Your best bet is to fall back to SimpleDateFormat and then construct DateTime based on Date#getTime().

String s = "16-Jul-2009 05:20:18 PDT";
String pattern = "dd-MMM-yyyy HH:mm:ss z";
Date date = new SimpleDateFormat(pattern, Locale.ENGLISH).parse(s);
DateTime d = new DateTime(date.getTime());
System.out.println(d);

Related Solutions

Java – Number of days between two dates in Joda-Time

Annoyingly, the withTimeAtStartOfDay answer is wrong, but only occasionally. You want:

Days.daysBetween(start.toLocalDate(), end.toLocalDate()).getDays()

It turns out that "midnight/start of day" sometimes means 1am (daylight savings happen this way in some places), which Days.daysBetween doesn't handle properly.

// 5am on the 20th to 1pm on the 21st, October 2013, Brazil
DateTimeZone BRAZIL = DateTimeZone.forID("America/Sao_Paulo");
DateTime start = new DateTime(2013, 10, 20, 5, 0, 0, BRAZIL);
DateTime end = new DateTime(2013, 10, 21, 13, 0, 0, BRAZIL);
System.out.println(daysBetween(start.withTimeAtStartOfDay(),
                               end.withTimeAtStartOfDay()).getDays());
// prints 0
System.out.println(daysBetween(start.toLocalDate(),
                               end.toLocalDate()).getDays());
// prints 1

Going via a LocalDate sidesteps the whole issue.

Java – Converting a date string to a DateTime object using Joda Time library

Use DateTimeFormat:

DateTimeFormatter formatter = DateTimeFormat.forPattern("dd/MM/yyyy HH:mm:ss");
DateTime dt = formatter.parseDateTime(string);

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Java – Number of days between two dates in Joda-Time

Java – Converting a date string to a DateTime object using Joda Time library

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