Date format Mapping to JSON Jackson

Question

I have a Date format coming from API like this:

"start_time": "2015-10-1 3:00 PM GMT+1:00"

Which is YYYY-DD-MM HH:MM am/pm GMT timestamp. I am mapping this value to a Date variable in POJO. Obviously, its showing conversion error.

I would like to know 2 things:

1. What is the formatting I need to use to carry out conversion with Jackson? Is Date a good field type for this?
2. In general, is there a way to process the variables before they get mapped to Object members by Jackson? Something like, changing the format, calculations, etc.

Answer 1

I want to point out that setting a SimpleDateFormat like described in the other answer only works for a java.util.Date which I assume is meant in the question. But for java.sql.Date the formatter does not work. In my case it was not very obvious why the formatter did not work because in the model which should be serialized the field was in fact a java.utl.Date but the actual object ended up beeing a java.sql.Date. This is possible because

public class java.sql extends java.util.Date

So this is actually valid

java.util.Date date = new java.sql.Date(1542381115815L);

So if you are wondering why your Date field is not correctly formatted make sure that the object is really a java.util.Date.

Here is also mentioned why handling java.sql.Date will not be added.

This would then be breaking change, and I don't think that is warranted. If we were starting from scratch I would agree with the change, but as things are not so much.