How to parse dates in multiple formats using SimpleDateFormat

Question

I am trying to parse some dates that are coming out of a document. It would appear users have entered these dates in a similar but not exact format.

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Answer 1

This solution checks all the possible formats before throwing an exception. This solution is more convenient if you are trying to test for multiple date formats.

Date extractTimestampInput(String strDate){
    final List dateFormats = Arrays.asList("yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss.SSS", "yyyy-MM-dd");    

    for(String format: dateFormats){
        SimpleDateFormat sdf = new SimpleDateFormat(format);
        try{
            return sdf.parse(strDate);
        } catch (ParseException e) {
             //intentionally empty
        }
    }
        throw new IllegalArgumentException("Invalid input for date. Given '"+strDate+"', expecting format yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss.SSS or yyyy-MM-dd.");

}