Question

How can I parse a pubDate from a RSS feed to a Date object in java.

The format in the RSS feed:
Sat, 24 Apr 2010 14:01:00 GMT

What I have at the moment:

DateFormat dateFormat = DateFormat.getInstance();
Date pubDate = dateFormat.parse(item.getPubDate().getText());

But this code throws an ParseException with the message Unparseable date

Answer 1

You can define the date format you are trying to parse, using the class SimpleDateFormat:

DateFormat formatter = new SimpleDateFormat("EEE, dd MMM yyyy HH:mm:ss zzz");
Date date = formatter.parse("Sat, 24 Apr 2010 14:01:00 GMT");

Additionally, for non-English Locale‘s, be sure to use the following when parsing dates in English:

new SimpleDateFormat("EEE, dd MMM yyyy HH:mm:ss zzz", Locale.ENGLISH);