I have the following date: 2011-08-12T20:17:46.384Z
. What format is this? I'm trying to parse it with Java 1.4 via DateFormat.getDateInstance().parse(dateStr)
and I'm getting
java.text.ParseException: Unparseable date: "2011-08-12T20:17:46.384Z"
I think I should be using SimpleDateFormat for parsing, but I have to know the format string first. All I have for that so far is yyyy-MM-dd
, because I don't know what the T
means in this string--something time zone-related? This date string is coming from the lcmis:downloadedOn
tag shown on Files CMIS download history media type.
The T is just a literal to separate the date from the time, and the Z means "zero hour offset" also known as "Zulu time" (UTC). If your strings always have a "Z" you can use:
SimpleDateFormat format = new SimpleDateFormat(
"yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss.SSS'Z'", Locale.US);
format.setTimeZone(TimeZone.getTimeZone("UTC"));
Or using Joda Time, you can use ISODateTimeFormat.dateTime()
.