java - How to convert String to Date without knowing the format?

Question

I have a problem. I am trying to convert some strings to date, and I don't know the format the date is arriving.

It might come as yyyy.mm.dd hh:mm:ss or MM.dd.yy hh:mm:ss and so on.

How can I convert these strings to Date? I tried this:

DateFormat formatter = new SimpleDateFormat("dd-MM-yyyy hh:mm:ss");
Date d = (Date)formatter.parse(someDate);

But when I printed out someDate it printed out like this: 2010-08-05 12:42:48.638 CEST which means yyyy.mm.dd hh:mm:ss, however when I ran the above code, the date object now became Sat Jan 31 00:42:48 CET 11 which is strange to say the least.

Any ideas how I can correctly format strings to date?

Answer 1

You cant!

If you have the date 2010-08-05 then it can be either 5th August 2010, or 8th May 2010 - you need to know the date format (or at least prioritise one format over the over) to tell them apart.