Here you can find the source of parse(String dateAsString)
public static Date parse(String dateAsString)
//package com.java2s; /******************************************************************************* * Copyright (c) 2014 IBM Corporation and others. * All rights reserved. This program and the accompanying materials * are made available under the terms of the Eclipse Public License v1.0 * which accompanies this distribution, and is available at * http://www.eclipse.org/legal/epl-v10.html * * Contributors:/*from ww w .ja va2 s .c om*/ * IBM Corporation - initial API and implementation *******************************************************************************/ import java.text.ParseException; import java.text.SimpleDateFormat; import java.util.Date; import java.util.Locale; public class Main { private static SimpleDateFormat DATE_FORMATTER = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm", Locale.ENGLISH); public static Date parse(String dateAsString) { try { return DATE_FORMATTER.parse(dateAsString); } catch (ParseException exc) { return null; } } }