Java 8 Date equivalent to Joda's DateTimeFormatterBuilder with multiple parser formats?

Question

I currently have a Joda date parser that uses the DateTimeFormatterBuilder with half a dozen different date formats that I may receive.

I\'m migrating to Java 8\'s D

Answer 1

There is no direct facility to do this, but you can use optional sections. Optional sections are enclosed inside squared brackets []. This allows for the whole section of the String to parse to be missing.

DateTimeFormatter formatter = DateTimeFormatter.ofPattern(""
    + "[yyyy/MM/dd HH:mm:ss.SSSSSS]"
    + "[yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss[.SSS]]"
    + "[ddMMMyyyy:HH:mm:ss.SSS[ Z]]"
);

This formatter defines 3 grand optional sections for the three main patterns you have. Each of them is inside its own optional section.

Working demo code:

public static void main(String[] args) {
    DateTimeFormatter formatter = DateTimeFormatter.ofPattern(""
        + "[yyyy/MM/dd HH:mm:ss.SSSSSS]"
        + "[yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss[.SSS]]"
        + "[ddMMMyyyy:HH:mm:ss.SSS[ Z]]"
    , Locale.ENGLISH);
    System.out.println(LocalDateTime.parse("2016/03/23 22:00:00.256145", formatter));
    System.out.println(LocalDateTime.parse("2016-03-23 22:00:00", formatter));
    System.out.println(LocalDateTime.parse("2016-03-23 22:00:00.123", formatter));
    System.out.println(LocalDateTime.parse("23Mar2016:22:00:00.123", formatter));
    System.out.println(LocalDateTime.parse("23Mar2016:22:00:00.123 -0800", formatter));
}

Answer 2

Iterating over @Tunaki's solution, using streams, when the code need to accept different patterns in a configurable way :

DateTimeFormatter dateTimeFormatter = dateFormats.stream()
        .map(DateTimeFormatter::ofPattern)
        .reduce(new DateTimeFormatterBuilder(), 
                DateTimeFormatterBuilder::appendOptional, 
                (f1, f2) -> f1.append(f2.toFormatter()))
        .toFormatter();

In this case I don't care about the combiner part of the reducer, but I need it in the signature so I made the combiner correct.

This code would virtually equivalent to if the above patterns (yyyy/MM/dd HH:mm:ss.SSSSSS, yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss[.SSS], ddMMMyyyy:HH:mm:ss.SSS[ Z]) would be fed to the stream :

DateTimeFormatter formatter = new DateTimeFormatterBuilder()
    .appendOptional(DateTimeFormatter.ofPattern("yyyy/MM/dd HH:mm:ss.SSSSSS")
    .appendOptional(DateTimeFormatter.ofPattern("yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss[.SSS]"
    .appendOptional(DateTimeFormatter.ofPattern("ddMMMyyyy:HH:mm:ss.SSS[ Z]")
    .toFormatter();

Answer 3

As an alternative answer to Tunaki, you can also use DateTimeFormatterBuilder:

DateTimeFormatter dateFormatter = new DateTimeFormatterBuilder()
  .appendPattern("[yyyy]")
  .appendPattern("[M/d/yyyy]")
  .parseDefaulting(ChronoField.MONTH_OF_YEAR, 1)
  .parseDefaulting(ChronoField.DAY_OF_MONTH, 1)
  .toFormatter()

Answer 4

Based on answer from @Brice I wrote the following method, which worked best for me

private LocalDate parseDate(String date) {
    DateTimeFormatter yearFormat = new DateTimeFormatterBuilder()
            .appendPattern("yyyy")
            .parseDefaulting(ChronoField.MONTH_OF_YEAR, 1)
            .parseDefaulting(ChronoField.DAY_OF_MONTH, 1)
            .toFormatter();
    DateTimeFormatter yearAndMonthFormat = new DateTimeFormatterBuilder()
            .appendPattern("yyyy-MM")
            .parseDefaulting(ChronoField.DAY_OF_MONTH,1)
            .toFormatter();

    DateTimeFormatter formatter = new DateTimeFormatterBuilder()
            .appendOptional(DateTimeFormatter.ISO_DATE)
            .appendOptional(yearAndMonthFormat)
            .appendOptional(yearFormat)
            .toFormatter();

    LocalDate result = LocalDate.parse(date, formatter);

    return result;
}

Pay attention to the order of optional formatters added to the last one. Reverse order would only work for dates of the type "yyyy". The proposed order allows me to parse all of the following:

• 2014
• 2014-10
• 2014-03-15

Just adding for the case someone would have similar use case.

Answer 5

Here is what I eventually came up with. It handles three different major formats, each with multiple minor formatting differences (such as allowing either - or / delimiters) as well as handling variable number of microseconds (from 0 to 6):

private static final DateTimeFormatter dateTimeFormatter = new DateTimeFormatterBuilder()
        .parseCaseInsensitive()
        .appendPattern( "[ddMMMyyyy:HH:mm:ss" )
        .optionalStart()
        .appendFraction( ChronoField.MICRO_OF_SECOND , 1 , 6 , true )
        .optionalEnd()
        .appendPattern( "[ ][Z][X]]" )
        .appendPattern( "[yyyy[-][/]MM[-][/]dd['T'][ ]HH:mm[:][.]ss" )
        .optionalStart()
        .appendFraction( ChronoField.MICRO_OF_SECOND , 1 , 6 , true )
        .optionalEnd()
        .appendPattern( "[Z][X]]" )
        .appendPattern( "[EEE, dd MMM yyyy HH:mm:ss zzz]" )
        .toFormatter();