Question

The date strings comes from XML feed to my app in format like this Mon, 10 Dec 2012 13:18:23 GMT and I would like to format is as “13:18:23”. I have this method

private String formatTime(String time) {
    DateFormat df = new SimpleDateFormat("EEE, dd MMM yyyy kk:mm:ss zzz", Locale.getDefault());

    String temp = null;

    try {

        temp = df.format(time);

    } catch (IllegalArgumentException e) {
         e.printStackTrace();
    } catch (Exception e) {
        e.printStackTrace();
    }

    return temp;
}

but I keep getting error IllegalArgumentException.

Anyone can see that is going on with this code?

Answer 1

    String tmp = "Mon, 10 Dec 2012 13:18:23 GMT";
    String DATE_FORMAT = "EEE, dd MMM yyyy kk:mm:ss zzz";
    String DATE_FORMAT_NOW = "kk:mm:ss";

    SimpleDateFormat sdfSource = new SimpleDateFormat(DATE_FORMAT);
    Date date = sdfSource.parse(tmp);


    SimpleDateFormat sdfDestination = new SimpleDateFormat(DATE_FORMAT_NOW);

    tmp = sdfDestination.format(date);


    System.out.println("Converted date is : " + tmp);

Output:

Converted date is : 15:18:23

You have difference +2 hours because of GMT. Remove zzz from DATE_FORMAT and you get:

13:18:23