Question

I’m receiving some date format, an ISO-something, and was wondering what the appropriate way to parse it into a timestamp.

My ultimate goal will be a standard switch on it to create “X minutes / hours / days ago.”, so if there is a tool that does that already, that’d be optimal.

I’ve tried joda-time, but it choked on it.

Here is an example of a time string:

2012-05-03 @ 15.55.05.433Z

Additionally, if it is indeed it is the case that it’s not an ISO-something format, I’ve no problem manipulating, say, the @ out of it, etc.

EDIT: Attempt 1:

SimpleDateFormat dateFormat = new SimpleDateFormat( "yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss.SSSZ" );

try
{
  Date myDate = dateFormat.parse( o.getCreationDate().replace( "@", "" ) );

  long minutes = myDate.getTime() / 1000 / 60;

  holder.timeText.setText( minutes + " minutes ago" );
}
catch( ParseException e )
{
  e.printStackTrace();
}

Result:

05-17 16:58:05.003: W/System.err(2915): java.text.ParseException: Unparseable date: "2012-05-09 19:49:47.987Z" (at offset 24)


EDIT 2: Stripping the Z, and correct millisecond to minute conversion fixed it:

SimpleDateFormat dateFormat = new SimpleDateFormat( "yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss.SSS" );

try
{
  Date myDate = dateFormat.parse( o.getCreationDate().replace( "@ ", "" ).replace( "Z", "" ) );

  Date now = new Date();

  long minutes = ( now.getTime() - myDate.getTime() ) / 1000 / 60;

  holder.timeText.setText( minutes + " minutes ago" );
}
catch( ParseException e )
{
  e.printStackTrace();
}

Answer 1

First remove the @ character, then create an instance of SimpleDateFormat that will parse your string and return a Date object which will enable you to get the timestamp you desire.

String myStringDate = "2012-05-03 @ 15.55.05.433Z";
       myStringDate = myStringDate.replace("@ ","");   //Also removes extra whitespace  

SimpleDateFormat dateFormat = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss.SSSZ");
Date myDate = dateFormat.parse("your date string");
     myDate.getTime(); //Your timestamp in milliseconds

Note you’ll need to surround with a try and catch since it can throw an exception.