Java – converts a string to a date using a time zone

I have a string pattern yyyy MM DD HH: mm a

I want to convert it to the following format yyyy-MM-dd HH：mm：ss Z

What should I do?

Solution

You can use simpledateformat with yyyy MM DD HH: mm: SS and explicitly set timezone:

public static Date getSomeDate(final String str,final TimeZone tz)
    throws ParseException {
  final SimpleDateFormat sdf = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd hh:mm a");
  sdf.setTimeZone(tz);
  return sdf.parse(str);
}

/**
 * @param args
 * @throws IOException
 * @throws InterruptedException
 * @throws ParseException
 */
public static void main(final String[] args) throws ParseException {
  final SimpleDateFormat sdf = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss Z");
  System.out.println(sdf.format(getSomeDate(
      "2010-11-17 01:12 pm",TimeZone.getTimeZone("Europe/Berlin"))));
  System.out.println(sdf.format(getSomeDate(
      "2010-11-17 01:12 pm",TimeZone.getTimeZone("America/Chicago"))));
}

Print out

Update 2010-12-01: if you want to explicitly print a special timezone, please set it in simpledateformat:

sdf.setTimeZone(TimeZone .getTimeZone("IST")); 
System.out.println(sdf.format(getSomeDate(
    "2010-11-17 01:12 pm",TimeZone.getTimeZone("IST"))));

Which print? 2010-11-17 13:12:00 0530