Question

I have a JSON object being returned to my app that contains a date

date": {
"year": 2011,
"month": 5,
"dayOfMonth": 30,
"hourOfDay": 16,
"minute": 13,
"second": 47
},

I need to use this date and store it in a SQL database, most likely as a string, so I parse this date object using the JSON functions in Java

Here I am trying to format the whole section as a string with dashes between the date and colons between the hours minutes seconds. Hoping that I could parse it with SimpleDateFormat, but that fails with parserexceptionerror

dataObj.getJSONObject("dateObject").getString("year") + "-" +
dataObj.getJSONObject("dateObject").getString("month") + "-" +
dataObj.getJSONObject("dateObject").getString("dayOfMonth") + " " +
dataObj.getJSONObject("dateObject").getString("hourOfDay") + ":" +
dataObj.getJSONObject("dateObject").getString("minute") + ":" +
dataObj.getJSONObject("dateObject").getString("second");

What would be the best way to go about this?

I need to take the JSON strings and combine them into a readable date which ideally I can turn into a string. This can be a formatted date – such as something simpledateformat will do, or it can be in milliseconds.

Insight Appreciated

Answer 1

Assuming that the goal is to transform a String representation of date information, formatted for example as “2011-5-30 16:13:47”, into a java.util.Date instance…

String dateString = "2011-5-30 16:13:47";
Date date = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-M-dd HH:mm:ss").parse(dateString);
System.out.println(date);
// output: Mon May 30 16:13:47 MST 2011

String dateString2 = "2011-11-3 16:13:47";
Date date2 = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-M-dd HH:mm:ss").parse(dateString2);
System.out.println(date2);
// output: Thu Nov 03 16:13:47 MST 2011

An alternative would be to turn all of the JSON input values into Java ints, and then use Calendar.getInstance().set(year + 1900, month, date, hrs, min, sec).getTime().