Parsing date from JSON response

Question

Is there any helper method to parse date time value being returned in JSONResponse to get java.util.Date. For example, 2012-06-26T15:51:59.078-05:00. I have done simple java method using SimpleDateFormat, but that does not handle all possible formats. Anyone has ideas on libraries that can be used for this purpose?
Chandresh

Answer 1

Oh I see you receive different formats from different services, who's backend you can not modify.
I found this, it should help you get the job done:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4024544/how-to-parse-dates-in-multiple-formats-using-simpledateformat
Note however, that his problem is only relatively simplistic, yours on the other hand seems to be one of a kind where you have to be set up a pretty nifty algorithm taking care of all the different possible formats. That being said, there is no method which can parse ANY format you throw at it. you must write one yourself which knows which possible formats to expect.
If its only those two formats you can expect:
2012-06-26T15:51:59.078-05:00
2012-06-26T15:51:59-05:00
it should be an easy try-catch construct within a helper method. just be sure to use the right letters when setting up your SimpleDateFormat parse object, it's case sensitive and one quickly gets lost in all those letters.
Edit:
Again this should do the trick:
SimpleDateFormat sdf = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss.SSSz");
Just make sure you remove the last ":" from the JSONString (simple string manipulation) and then have two cases
//removing last ":" from JSONString
//====
//Parsing string to date or gregCalendar
GregorianCalendar time= new GregorianCalendar();
try{
SimpleDateFormat sdf = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss.SSSz");
time.setTime(sdf.parse(JSONString));
catch{
SimpleDateFormat sdf2 = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ssz");
time.setTime(sdf2.parse(JSONString));
Edited by: Pascal B on 05.07.2012 04:50
Edited by: Pascal B on 05.07.2012 04:55