Date object SimpleDateFormat not parsing timestamp string correctly in Java (Android) environment

Question

I'm using the SimpleDateFormat object with the Date object as shown below. The problem lis that the Date object shows the wrong date, which is a few minutes off from the original string. The Date object appears to store the time in total milliseconds in the debugger.

Any ideas on the problem?

import java.text.SimpleDateFormat;

import java.util.Date;

Date played_at_local; 

dateFormat = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd'T'hh:mm:ss.SSSSSSZ");

played_at_local = dateFormat.parse("2011-04-11T22:27:18.491726-05:00"); 

//played_at_local shows "Mon Apr 11 22:35:29 America/Chicago 2011" in debugger

Answer 1

Try removing the fractional seconds from the format string. I just ran into the same issue, but with a slightly different format. My input format wasn't in ISO format (no "T", and no "Z"), but the symptom was the same -- time was off by some random number of minutes and seconds, but everything else was fine. This is what my log results looked like:

When using the fractional second format:

SimpleDateFormat dateFormater = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss.SSSSSS");

# Parsed date: 2011-05-27 17:11:15.271816 => Fri May 27 17:15:46 EDT 2011
# Parsed date: 2011-05-27 17:09:37.750343 => Fri May 27 17:22:07 EDT 2011
# Parsed date: 2011-05-27 17:05:55.182921 => Fri May 27 17:08:57 EDT 2011
# Parsed date: 2011-05-27 16:55:05.69092 => Fri May 27 16:56:14 EDT 2011
# Parsed date: 2011-05-27 16:38:35.50348 => Fri May 27 16:39:25 EDT 2011

I fixed it by removing the fractional seconds from the format.

SimpleDateFormat dateFormater = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss");

# Parsed date: 2011-05-27 17:11:15.271816 => Fri May 27 17:11:15 EDT 2011
# Parsed date: 2011-05-27 17:09:37.750343 => Fri May 27 17:09:37 EDT 2011
# Parsed date: 2011-05-27 17:05:55.182921 => Fri May 27 17:05:55 EDT 2011
# Parsed date: 2011-05-27 16:55:05.69092 => Fri May 27 16:55:05 EDT 2011
# Parsed date: 2011-05-27 16:38:35.50348 => Fri May 27 16:38:35 EDT 2011

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What I think is happening is that my "fractional seconds" part of the input string is too long (the same is true in the OP example). It appears to be expecting only three decimal places. If you do the math (take the first example):

• fractional seconds = 0.271816 seconds
• What DateFormat sees is 271816 / 1000 of a second
• 271816 / 1000 == 271 seconds
• 271 / 60 = 4 minutes
• 271 % 60 = 31 seconds
• 17:11:15 to 17:15:46 is exactly 4 minutes, 31 seconds off