SimpleDateFormat fails to parse and returns null

Question

I am getting a null returned by SimpleDateFormat. But I feel I have done everything correctly.

Below is my code snippet

format = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-dd-MM'T'H:mm:ss'Z'", Locale.US);
format.setLenient(true);
ParsePosition pos = new ParsePosition(0);

String timeStr = "2013-10-05T01:21:07Z";
System.out.println(format.format(new Date()));
System.out.println(timeStr);

Date d = format.parse(timeStr,pos);
d.getTime();

Gives the output

2014-30-05T13:43:05Z
2013-10-05T01:21:07Z
Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NullPointerException

I have tried a couple of options mentioned in other posts in this forum. But I am still getting the error. Am I overlooking something trivial?

Didnt get Nullpointer for above code...where exactly your pointing to? — Aryan, May 30 '14 at 08:24
Adding a `System.out.println(d);` (and a `SimpleDateFormat` in front at the first line) I got a `Fri May 10 01:21:07 CEST 2013`. — npinti, May 30 '14 at 08:25
It may be a problem of your `Locale`, coz i'm not getting any `NPE`. — earthmover, May 30 '14 at 08:32
@npinti Its working now without any change. Not sure why it was throwing null pointer. — promaxdev, May 30 '14 at 08:39
The issue was that the null pointer was thrown from a different line, but it was mapped to this line by the IDE. — promaxdev, May 30 '14 at 09:00

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered May 30 '14 at 11:25

Although you might think now all is okay with your code according to the comments above, I would say, nothing is okay.

Have a look again at your pattern. Probably you want an ISO-8601-compatible pattern. This is slightly different however: "yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ssXXX" (for Java 7) You seem to have changed the position of month and day!
Z is not just a literal in ISO-strings. It stands for timezone UTC (Zulu time), but you parse the string with your system timezone (because you have not explicitly set a timezone on your format object) which can be quite different. The right solution is to use the pattern symbol X introduced in Java 7. If you still use an older Java version then you can escape the Z (as you have done it) but MUST set the timezone of your format object to "GMT". Otherwise you get wrong results without exception.

SimpleDateFormat fails to parse and returns null

1 Answers1