Difficulty while converting string(date) to milliseconds In java

Question

I have the following code. I am passing start = "2016/01/01 23:59:59" and end = "2017/01/01 23:59:59"

func(String start, String end) {

    SimpleDateFormat sdf1 = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy/MM/dd HH:mm:ss");
    Date date1 = sdf1.parse(start);
    long startTime = date1.getTime();
    \\System.out.println(startTime);

    SimpleDateFormat sdf2 = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy/MM/dd HH:mm:ss");
    Date date2 = sdf2.parse(end);
    long endTime = date2.getTime();
    \\System.out.println(endTime);

}

I am getting the following error

error: unreported exception ParseException; must be caught or declared to be thrown Date date = sdf.parse(time); ^

How do I rectify this ? And also, Why is it showing me this error ?

Answer 1

The DateFormat#parse() methods throws a ParseException. This means that if something goes wrong when parsing a string into a date, this exception may be thrown.

One fix is to just declare your method to throw this exception, e.g.

public long yourMethod() throws ParseException {
    SimpleDateFormat sdf1 = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy/MM/dd HH:mm:ss");
    Date date1 = sdf1.parse(start);
    long startTime = date1.getTime();

    return startTime;
}

Or, also taking the advice from the error message, you could place the code into a try catch block:

public long yourMethod() {
    long startTime = -1L;
    try {
        SimpleDateFormat sdf1 = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy/MM/dd HH:mm:ss");
        Date date1 = sdf1.parse(start);
        startTime = date1.getTime();
    }
    catch (ParseException e) {
        // something went wrong
    }

    return startTime;
}