Here you can find the source of parse(String strDate)
public static Date parse(String strDate) throws ParseException
//package com.java2s; /*// w ww . j av a2s. co m * Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one * or more contributor license agreements. See the NOTICE file * distributed with this work for additional information * regarding copyright ownership. The ASF licenses this file * to you under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the * "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance * with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at * * http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0 * * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, * software distributed under the License is distributed on an * "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY * KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the * specific language governing permissions and limitations * under the License. */ import java.text.ParseException; import java.text.SimpleDateFormat; import java.util.Date; import java.util.Locale; import java.util.SimpleTimeZone; public class Main { private final static String TIME_ZONE = "GMT"; private final static String FORMAT_ISO8601 = "yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss'Z'"; private final static String FORMAT_RFC2616 = "EEE, dd MMM yyyy HH:mm:ss zzz"; public static Date parse(String strDate) throws ParseException { if (null == strDate || "".equals(strDate)) { return null; } try { return parseISO8601(strDate); } catch (ParseException exp) { return parseRFC2616(strDate); } } public static Date parseISO8601(String strDate) throws ParseException { if (null == strDate || "".equals(strDate)) { return null; } SimpleDateFormat df = new SimpleDateFormat(FORMAT_ISO8601); df.setTimeZone(new SimpleTimeZone(0, TIME_ZONE)); return df.parse(strDate); } public static Date parseRFC2616(String strDate) throws ParseException { if (null == strDate || "".equals(strDate) || strDate.length() != FORMAT_RFC2616.length()) { return null; } SimpleDateFormat df = new SimpleDateFormat(FORMAT_RFC2616, Locale.ENGLISH); df.setTimeZone(new SimpleTimeZone(0, TIME_ZONE)); return df.parse(strDate); } }