Question

I’m trying to convert following text to Date but not able to get it to parse correctly.

String strDate = "Tue Mar 13 12:00:00 EST 2012";
try{
    SimpleDateFormat sd = new SimpleDateFormat("dd/MM/yyyy");
    //also tried SimpleDateFormat sd = new SimpleDateFormat("dd/MM/yyyy HH:mm");
    //as well as sd.setTimeZone(TimeZone.getDefault());
    Date date = sd.parse(strDate);
}catch(Exception e)
{
    e.printStack();
    //fails with java.text.ParseException: Unparseable date: "Tue Mar 13 12:00:00 EST 2012"
}

what am i doing wrong?

Answer 1

Try using a date format that matches the input.

DateFormat sd = new SimpleDateFormat("EEE MMM dd HH:mm:ss zzz yyyy");

edit: fixed the date format string.

Note: HH is hour in day not am/pm hour.