Generic support for ISO 8601 format in Java 6

Question

Java 7 has introduced support in the SimpleDateFormat class for ISO 8601 format, via the character X (instead of lower or upper case Z

Answer 1

Seems that you can use this:

import java.util.Calendar;
import javax.xml.bind.DatatypeConverter;

public class TestISO8601 {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        parse("2012-10-01T19:30:00+02:00"); // UTC+2
        parse("2012-10-01T19:30:00Z");      // UTC
        parse("2012-10-01T19:30:00");       // Local
    }
    public static Date parse(final String str) {
        Calendar c = DatatypeConverter.parseDateTime(str);
        System.out.println(str + "\t" + (c.getTime().getTime()/1000));
        return c.getTime();
    }
}

Answer 2

You can use java.time, the modern Java date and time API, in Java 6. This would seem to me as the nice and also future-proof solution. It has good support for ISO 8601.

import org.threeten.bp.OffsetDateTime;
import org.threeten.bp.format.DateTimeFormatter;

public class DemoIso8601Offsets {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        System.out.println(OffsetDateTime.parse("2012-10-01T19:30:00+0200", 
                DateTimeFormatter.ofPattern("uuuu-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ssXX")));
        System.out.println(OffsetDateTime.parse("2012-10-01T19:30:00+02", 
                DateTimeFormatter.ofPattern("uuuu-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ssX")));
        System.out.println(OffsetDateTime.parse("2012-10-01T19:30:00+02:00"));
        System.out.println(OffsetDateTime.parse("2012-10-01T19:30:00Z"));
    }
}

Output from this program is:

2012-10-01T19:30+02:00
2012-10-01T19:30+02:00
2012-10-01T19:30+02:00
2012-10-01T19:30Z

It requires that you add the ThreeTen Backport library to your project setup.

• In Java 8 and later and on newer Android devices (from API level 26) the modern API comes built-in.
• In Java 6 and 7 get the ThreeTen Backport, the backport of the new classes (ThreeTen for JSR 310; see the links at the bottom).
• On (older) Android use the Android edition of ThreeTen Backport. It’s called ThreeTenABP. And make sure you import the date and time classes from org.threeten.bp with subpackages.

As you can see from the code, +02 and +0200 require a formatter where you specify the format of the offset, while +02:00 (and Z too) conforms with the default format and doesn’t need to be specified.

Can we parse all the offset formats using the same formatter?

When reading mixed data, you don’t want to handle each offset format specially. It’s better to use optional parts in the format pattern string:

    DateTimeFormatter allInOne 
            = DateTimeFormatter.ofPattern("uuuu-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss[XXX][XX][X]");
    System.out.println(OffsetDateTime.parse("2012-10-01T19:30:00+0200", allInOne));
    System.out.println(OffsetDateTime.parse("2012-10-01T19:30:00+02", allInOne));
    System.out.println(OffsetDateTime.parse("2012-10-01T19:30:00+02:00", allInOne));
    System.out.println(OffsetDateTime.parse("2012-10-01T19:30:00Z", allInOne));

Output is the same as above. The square brackets in [XXX][XX][X] mean that either format +02:00, +0200 or +02 may be present.

Links

• Oracle tutorial: Date Time explaining how to use java.time.
• Java Specification Request (JSR) 310, where java.time was first described.
• ThreeTen Backport project, the backport of java.time to Java 6 and 7 (ThreeTen for JSR-310).
• ThreeTenABP, Android edition of ThreeTen Backport
• Question: How to use ThreeTenABP in Android Project, with a very thorough explanation.