String to Date Convertion with JDK 1.4.2 and JDK 5.0

[Karl Weber]

Hi there,

I have the following problem with converting a String to a Date.

While my code segment worked just fine with jdk 1.4.2 I have problems migrating this code to jdk 5.0.

Here is the code which worked just fine with jdk 1.4.2:
private static Date convertStringToDate(String text)
throws ParseException {

SimpleDateFormat simpleDateFormat = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss.SSSZ");
simpleDateFormat.setLenient(false);

Date date = simpleDateFormat.parse(text);

return date;
} // StringToDate

Passing this function a text = "2006-11-20T15:16:24.000+0000" resulted in no exceptions (my timezone is "Europe/Berlin").

Running this function under JDK 5.0 throws the following exception:
java.text.ParseException: Unparseable date: "2006-11-20T15:16:24.000+0000"

I believe that the cause of the problem are the last 5 digits of the text - string in combination with the current timezone. That seems to have changed since jdk 1.4.2.

My problem now is that I just get a string like the one above and want to convert it to a date without setting a prober timezone (just like running this code under jdk 1.4.2). How can I accopmplish this under jdk 1.5?

Thanks in advance for any answers...

[ August 09, 2008: Message edited by: Karl Weber ]

[ August 09, 2008: Message edited by: Karl Weber ]
[ August 09, 2008: Message edited by: Karl Weber ]

[Joe Ess]

Welcome to the JavaRanch.
I've heard others complain of a change in the way date formats were handled in 1.4 and 1.5, but I didn't pursue it further.

[Karl Weber]

Originally posted by Joe Ess:
Welcome to the JavaRanch.
I've heard others complain of a change in the way date formats were handled in 1.4 and 1.5, but I didn't pursue it further.

Thanks for the link...

[Karl Weber]

Actually this problem occured in combination with IBM Websphere (as mentioned in the linked post). Currently I'm using RAD (Rapid Application Developer) 6 which works with JDK 1.4.2 and RAD 7 which works with JDK 5.0.

But because the SimpleDateFormat - class is from the package java.text I believe that the problem is not IBM related but is JDK - specific...