Parsing duration string into milliseconds

Question

I need to parse a duration string, of the form 98d 01h 23m 45s into milliseconds.

I was hoping there was an equivalent of SimpleDateFormat

Answer 1

Check out PeriodFormatter and PeriodParser from JodaTime library.

You can also use PeriodFormatterBuilder to build a parser for your strings like this

String periodString = "98d 01h 23m 45s";

PeriodParser parser = new PeriodFormatterBuilder()
   .appendDays().appendSuffix("d ")
   .appendHours().appendSuffix("h ")
   .appendMinutes().appendSuffix("m ")
   .appendSeconds().appendSuffix("s ")
   .toParser();

MutablePeriod period = new MutablePeriod();
parser.parseInto(period, periodString, 0, Locale.getDefault());

long millis = period.toDurationFrom(new DateTime(0)).getMillis();

Now, all this (especially the toDurationFrom(...) part) may look tricky, but I really advice you to look into JodaTime if you're dealing with periods and durations in Java.

Also look at this answer about obtaining milliseconds from JodaTime period for additional clarification.