Question

For a certain API I am getting dates in a /Date(1323312018479-0700)/ format. For some reason the regex that I am using does not result in any matches.

Any ideas?

BTW: I am not taking into account the timezone right now.

public static Date parseApiDate(String rawDate) {
    Pattern p = Pattern.compile("([0-9]+)-([0-9]+)", Pattern.CASE_INSENSITIVE);
    Matcher m = p.matcher(rawDate);

    Log.d("DATE CONVERSION: Raw", rawDate);
    if (m.matches()) {
        String utc = m.group(1);
        int milliSeconds = Integer.parseInt(utc);
        Date date = new Date(milliSeconds);

        Log.d("DATE CONVERSION: milliseconds", utc);
        Log.d("DATE CONVERSION: Converted", date.toGMTString());

        return date;
    } else {    
        return new Date(0);
    }
}

Answer 1

You need m.find() instead of m.matches(). Then you’d need Long.parseLong()

Generally, you should parse dates with DateFormat (SimpleDateFormat), but in this case it can’t cope. The pattern SZ fails, perhaps because it is not sure where the timezone starts (although it should be able to do that)