Retrofit GSON serialize Date from json string into java.util.date

Question

I am using the Retrofit library for my REST calls. Most of what I have done has been smooth as butter but for some reason I am having issues converting JSON timestamp strings into java.util.Date objects. The JSON that is coming in looks like this.

{
    "date": "2013-07-16",
    "created_at": "2013-07-16T22:52:36Z",
} 

How can I tell Retrofit or Gson to convert these strings into java.util.Date objects?

Answer 1

Gson gson = new GsonBuilder()
    .setDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss")
    .create();

RestAdapter restAdapter = new RestAdapter.Builder()
    .setEndpoint(API_BASE_URL)
    .setConverter(new GsonConverter.create(gson))
    .build();

Or the Kotlin equivalent:

val gson = GsonBuilder().setDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss").create()
RestAdapter restAdapter = Retrofit.Builder()
    .baseUrl(API_BASE_URL)
    .addConverterFactory(GsonConverterFactory.create(gson))
    .build()
    .create(T::class.java)

You can set your customized Gson parser to retrofit. More here: Retrofit Website

Look at Ondreju's response to see how to implement this in retrofit 2.