datetime - How can I convert this date in Java?

Question

I want to convert:

2010-03-15T16:34:46Z

into something like "5 hours ago"

How can I do this in Java?

Answer 1

JodaTime supports parsing from a user-defined format. See DateTimeFormatterBuilder and DateTimeBuilder.parseDateTime().

Once you have a DateTime, you can create a Duration or Period from that and the current time, and use another formatter to pretty-print. [See the PeriodFormatter example referenced by BalusC in comments above.]