Question

I have a String as

strikedate="2011-11-19T00:00:00.000-05:00"

I need to put this into a java.util.Date
Could anybody please tell me how to convert this String to Date

Answer 1

Sure – use SimpleDateFormat.

DateFormat sdf = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss.SSSZ", Locale.US);
Date parsed = sdf.parse(text);

EDIT: Eek – it’s not quite that simple, due to your time zone format. The above will work without the colon. You may need to use Joda Time to parse the version with the colon. Checking that now…

EDIT: Yes, with Joda Time you can use:

DateTimeFormatter formatter = ISODateTimeFormat.dateTime();
DateTime parsed = formatter.parseDateTime(text);
// If you really need it
Date date = parsed.toDate();

Joda Time is also a much nicer date/time API to start with – I’d strongly encourage you to use it if you can.