Java ParseException while attempting String to Date parsing

Question

I'm having a hard time Parsing/Formatting a Date string received back from a web service. I've attempted multiple approaches, but with no luck.

Sample Date String:

2011-10-05T03:00:00Z

Exception:

W/System.err(10072): java.text.ParseException: Unparseable date: "2011-10-05T05:00:00Z" (at offset 10)
W/System.err(10072):    at java.text.DateFormat.parse(DateFormat.java:626)

Sample Code:

SimpleDateFormat formatter = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:SSSS");
Date date = formatter.parse(info.AiringTime);

I've found that if I remove the "T" between the date and the time and replace it with a space, it will format just fine. Anybody have any suggestions?

--UPDATE--

After looking deeper into the API documentation, I found this:

All response DateTime values are in UTC format. You need to apply the UTC offset to calculate the local time for display.

DateTime is a date-and-time value specified in one of the following formats:

UTC format: YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ssZ. For example: 2011-03-15T02:00:00Z.

Local time with an offset: YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ss + or - hh:mm (positive or negative offset). For example, for US Pacific time: 2011-03-14T06:00:00 -08:00.

Any suggestions on the UTC format approach?

Answer 1

You could try:

DateFormat dateFormat = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ssZ");
String dateString = dateString.replace("Z", "GMT+00:00");
Date date = dateFormat.parse(dateString);

The above code should correctly handle the case where a timezone is specified in the date. As Z represents the UTC/GMT timezone it is replaced by GMT so the SimpleDateFormat can interpret it correctly (i would love to know a cleaner way of handling this bit if anyone knows one).