Twitter date unparseable?

Question

I want to convert the date string in a Twitter response to a Date object, but I always get a ParseException and I cannot see the error!?!

Input string: Thu Dec 23 18:26:07 +0000 2010

SimpleDateFormat Pattern:

EEE MMM dd HH:mm:ss ZZZZZ yyyy

Method:

public static Date getTwitterDate(String date) {

SimpleDateFormat sf = new SimpleDateFormat(TWITTER);
sf.setLenient(true);
Date twitterDate = null;
try {
    twitterDate = sf.parse(date);
} catch (Exception e) {}
     return twitterDate;
}

I also tried this: http://friendpaste.com/2IaKdlT3Zat4ANwdAhxAmZ but that gives the same result.

I use Java 1.6 on Mac OS X.

Cheers,

Andi

Answer 1

This works for me ;)

public static Date getTwitterDate(String date) throws ParseException
{
    final String TWITTER = "EEE, dd MMM yyyy HH:mm:ss Z";
    SimpleDateFormat sf = new SimpleDateFormat(TWITTER, Locale.ENGLISH);
    sf.setLenient(true);
    return sf.parse(date);
}

Answer 2

Function for convert Twitter Date :

String old_date="Thu Jul 05 22:15:04 GMT+05:30 2012";

private String Convert_Twitter_Date(String old_date) {

        SimpleDateFormat sdf = new SimpleDateFormat("dd-MMM-yyyy hh:mm:ss");
        SimpleDateFormat old = new SimpleDateFormat("EEE MMM dd HH:mm:ss ZZZZZ yyyy",Locale.ENGLISH);
        old.setLenient(true);

            Date date = null;
            try {

                date = old.parse(old_date);

            } catch (ParseException e) {
                // TODO Auto-generated catch block
                e.printStackTrace();
            }

        return sdf.format(date);    
}

The output format like : 05-Jul-2012 11:54:30

Answer 3

Maybe you are in a locale where ‘Tue‘ is not a recognized day of week, for example German. Try to use the ‘SimpleDateFormat‘ constructor that accepts a ‘Locale‘ as a parameter, and pass it ‘Locale.ROOT‘.

Answer 4

You should not have ZZZZZ but only Z for the timezone.

See samples in http://download.oracle.com/javase/1.4.2/docs/api/java/text/SimpleDateFormat.html for more information.

EEE, d MMM yyyy HH:mm:ss Z > Wed, 4 Jul 2001 12:08:56 -0700

Answer 5

Your format string works for me, see:

public static Date getTwitterDate(String date) throws ParseException {

  final String TWITTER="EEE MMM dd HH:mm:ss ZZZZZ yyyy";
  SimpleDateFormat sf = new SimpleDateFormat(TWITTER);
  sf.setLenient(true);
  return sf.parse(date);
  }

public static void main (String[] args) throws java.lang.Exception
    {
      System.out.println(getTwitterDate("Thu Dec 3 18:26:07 +0000 2010"));          
    }

Output:

Fri Dec 03 18:26:07 GMT 2010

UPDATE

Roland Illig is right: SimpleDateFormat is Locale dependent, so just use an explicit english Locale: SimpleDateFormat sf = new SimpleDateFormat(TWITTER,Locale.ENGLISH);

Answer 6

SimpleDateFormat is not thread safe. "EEE MMM dd HH:mm:ss ZZZZZ yyyy" was working in our application, but failing in a small percentage of cases. We finally realized that the issue was coming from multiple threads using the same instance of SimpleDateFormat.

Here is one workaround: http://www.codefutures.com/weblog/andygrove/2007/10/simpledateformat-and-thread-safety.html