Question

How can I parse this date format Mon May 14 2010 00:00:00 GMT+0100 (Afr. centrale Ouest) to this date format 05-14-2010 I mean mm-dd-yyyy

it’s telling me this error :

java.text.ParseException: Unparseable date: "Mon May 14 2010 00:00:00 GMT+0100 (Afr. centrale Ouest)"

EDIT

SimpleDateFormat formatter = new SimpleDateFormat("M-d-yyyy");
newFirstDate = formatter.parse(""+vo.getFirstDate());  //here the error

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

This code first adapts the string a bit and then goes on to parse it. It respects the timezone, just removes “GMT” because that’s how SimpleDateFormat likes it.

final String date = "Mon May 14 2010 00:00:00 GMT+0100 (Afr. centrale Ouest)"
  .replaceFirst("GMT", "");
System.out.println(
    new SimpleDateFormat("MM-dd-yyyy").format(
        new SimpleDateFormat("EEE MMM dd yyyy HH:mm:ss Z").parse(date)));

Prints:

05-14-2010

Bear in mind that the output is also timezone-sensitive. The instant defined by your input string is being interpreted in my timezone as belonging to the date that the program printed. If you just need to transform “May 14 2010” into “05-14-2010”, that’s another story and SimpleDateFormat is not well suited for that. The JodaTime library would handle that case much more cleanly.