DateTimeParse Exception

I am constantly getting an exception error in my code when parsing a date.
The Date looks like this:

Wed May 21 00:00:00 EDT 2008

This is the code for trying to read it:

DateTimeFormatter formatter = DateTimeFormatter.ofPattern("EEE MMM dd HH:mm:ss zzz yyyy");
Property property = new Property();
property.setSale_date(LocalDateTime.parse(linesplit[8], formatter));

Expected result: A LocalDateTime of 2008-05-21T00:00.

What I got instead:

> Exception in thread "main" java.time.format.DateTimeParseException:
> Text 'Wed May 21 00:00:00 EDT 2008' could not be parsed at index 0

Am I doing this completely wrong?

The devil is in the detail. You are basically doing it correctly, except:

• You need to provide a locale for the formatter.
• By parsing into a LocalDateTime you are losing information and possibly getting an unexpected result.

So I suggest:

	DateTimeFormatter formatter = DateTimeFormatter.ofPattern(
			"EEE MMM dd HH:mm:ss zzz yyyy", Locale.ROOT);
	
	String linesplit8 = "Wed May 21 00:00:00 EDT 2008";
	ZonedDateTime zdt = ZonedDateTime.parse(linesplit8, formatter);
	
	System.out.println(zdt);

Output is:

> 2008-05-21T00:00-04:00[America/New_York]

Your string is in English. It looks like the output from Date.toString() (Date being the old-fashioned class used for times before Java 8). So it’s probably in English because that toString method always produced English output. So if your locale is not an English-speaking one, parsing is deemed to fail, and I believe this is the reason why it did. In this case it’s appropriate to use Locale.ROOT for the locale neutral English-speaking locale. A way to say “don’t apply any locale specific processing here”.

Your string contains a time zone abbreviation, EDT, which is part of identifying a unique point in time, so you will want to pick up this part of the information too. Therefore use a ZonedDateTime.

Links

There are some related/similar questions, for example:

• how to parse output of new Date().toString()
• java DateTimeFormatterBuilder fails on testtime
• How do I Date format for dd MMM yyyy, as in 01 Apr 2020 [duplicate]

• Avoid using the three-letter time zone ID. Given below is an extract from as old as Java 6 documentation:

> Three-letter time zone IDs
>
> For compatibility with JDK 1.1.x, some other three-letter time zone
> IDs (such as "PST", "CTT", "AST") are also supported. However, their
> use is deprecated because the same abbreviation is often used for
> multiple time zones (for example, "CST" could be U.S. "Central
> Standard Time" and "China Standard Time"), and the Java platform can
> then only recognize one of them.

• The second important thing: Never use SimpleDateFormat or DateTimeFormatter without a Locale.

• I also prefer u to y with DateTimeFormatter.

DateTimeFormatter formatter = DateTimeFormatter.ofPattern("EEE MMM dd HH:mm:ss zzz uuuu", Locale.ENGLISH);
    
ZonedDateTime zdt = ZonedDateTime.parse("Wed May 21 00:00:00 EDT 2008", formatter);
System.out.println(zdt);

Output:

2008-05-21T00:00-04:00[America/New_York]

Let's try this formatter for the same date-time string replacing EDT with the recommended America/New_York:

ZonedDateTime zdt = ZonedDateTime.parse("Wed May 21 00:00:00 America/New_York 2008", formatter);
System.out.println(zdt);

The output remains same.

Learn more about the the modern date-time API from Trail: Date Time.