ParseException while parsing date from String to date Object

I'm getting a ParseException while parsing a date from String to Date object. The date string also contains a timezone. I'm using this code:

final SimpleDateFormat sdf = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss z");
System.out.print(sdf.parse("2018-01-16T00:07:00.000+05:30"));

Below is the error I'm getting:

Exception in thread "main" java.text.ParseException: Unparseable date: "2018-01-16T00:07:00.000+05:30"
    at java.text.DateFormat.parse(DateFormat.java:366)

The format you use in SimpleDateFormat must match the input String.

Your input is 2018-01-16T00:07:00.000+05:30, which is ISO8601 compliant:

• year-month-day (2018-01-16)
• followed by the letter T
• followed by hour:minutes:seconds.milliseconds (00:07:00.000)
• followed by the UTC offset (+05:30)

Note: the offset +05:30 is not a timezone. Read this to know the difference.

Anyway, the pattern you're using ("yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss z") doesn't match the input string:

• it's missing the T between date and time
• it's missing the milliseconds
• there's a space before the offset
• the correct letter to parse offsets is X (although I think that z might work, depending on the JVM version you're using; in my tests, it didn't)

So your code should be:

// use "XXX" to parse the whole offset (only one "X" will parse just `+05`, missing the `:30` part)
SimpleDateFormat sdf = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss.SSSXXX");
Date d = sdf.parse("2018-01-16T00:07:00.000+05:30");

But it's much better to use the new Java 8 classes, if they're available to you:

// parse ISO8601 compliant string directly
OffsetDateTime odt = OffsetDateTime.parse("2018-01-16T00:07:00.000+05:30");

If you still need to use a java.util.Date object, it's easy to convert:

// convert to java.util.Date
Date date = Date.from(odt.toInstant());