What is this date format? 2011-08-12T20:17:46.384Z

Question

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(

Answer 1

This technique translates java.util.Date to UTC format (or any other) and back again.

Define a class like so:

import java.util.Date;

import org.joda.time.DateTime;
import org.joda.time.format.DateTimeFormat;
import org.joda.time.format.DateTimeFormatter;

public class UtcUtility {

public static DateTimeFormatter UTC = DateTimeFormat.forPattern("yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss.SSS'Z'").withZoneUTC();


public static Date parse(DateTimeFormatter dateTimeFormatter, String date) {
    return dateTimeFormatter.parseDateTime(date).toDate();
}

public static String format(DateTimeFormatter dateTimeFormatter, Date date) {
    return format(dateTimeFormatter, date.getTime());
}

private static String format(DateTimeFormatter dateTimeFormatter, long timeInMillis) {
    DateTime dateTime = new DateTime(timeInMillis);
    String formattedString = dateTimeFormatter.print(dateTime);
    return formattedString;
}

}

Then use it like this:

Date date = format(UTC, "2020-04-19T00:30:07.000Z")

or

String date = parse(UTC, new Date())

You can also define other date formats if you require (not just UTC)