Question

I have date strings in this form Thu Aug 02 00:00:00 GMT+00:00 2012

I have tried to use this method to parse these String in a Date object

public Date fromStringToDate(String data) {
        Date result;
        SimpleDateFormat sdf = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy MM dd HH:mm:ss");
        try {
            result = sdf.parse(data);
            return result;
        } catch (ParseException e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
            return null;
        }
    }

But doesn’t works and I get this error

java.text.ParseException: Unparseable date: "Thu Aug 02 00:00:00 GMT+00:00 2012"

I suppose that the problem is caused by a wrong SimpleDateFormat, but I don’t know the right syntax to fix it.

Answer 1

You need to adjust the date format to the given string:

EEE MMM dd HH:mm:ss Z yyyy

Make sure use the correct placeholders, case sensitive, etc. Take a look to the Date and Time Patterns.

Sorry, I had a mistake with the ‘z’ pattern, ‘Z’ is:

SimpleDateFormat sdf = new SimpleDateFormat("EEE MMM dd HH:mm:ss Z yyyy", Locale.US);

Take a look to Locale.US, it is important to apply because the months and and days are in english.