json - How to Format ISO-8601 in Java

Question

I am trying to change from standard ISO 8601 format 2014-09-11T21:28:29.429209Z into a nice MMM d yyyy hh:mm z format, however my current code is failing.

public void setCreatedAt( String dateTime ) {

    LocalDate newDateTime = LocalDate.parse(dateTime);

    try {
        DateTimeFormatter format = DateTimeFormatter.ofPattern("MMM d yyyy hh:mm a z");
        createdAt = newDateTime.format(format); 
    }
    catch (Exception e) {
    }

}

I am receiving the time and date from an api.

Answer 1

A java.time.LocalDate is "a date without a time-zone in the ISO-8601 calendar system, such as 2007-12-03" so there is not enough information there. Use java.time.ZonedDateTime instead.

Also, swallowing exceptions like that makes it much harder to troubleshoot. When you don't intend to handle an exception either don't catch it at all, catch and re-throw it wrapped in a RuntimeException or at the very least log it (e.printStackTrace() or similar) .