Gson can handle only one datetime format (those specified in builder) plus the iso8601 if parsing with custom format is not possible. So, a solution could be to write your custom deserializer. To solve your problem I defined:
package stackoverflow.questions.q18473011;
import java.util.Date;
public class Foo {
Date date;
Date created_at;
public Foo(Date date, Date created_at){
this.date = date;
this.created_at = created_at;
}
@Override
public String toString() {
return "Foo [date=" + date + ", created_at=" + created_at + "]";
}
}
with this deserializer:
package stackoverflow.questions.q18473011;
import java.lang.reflect.Type;
import java.text.*;
import java.util.Date;
import com.google.gson.*;
public class FooDeserializer implements JsonDeserializer<Foo> {
public Foo deserialize(JsonElement json, Type typeOfT, JsonDeserializationContext context) throws JsonParseException {
String a = json.getAsJsonObject().get("date").getAsString();
String b = json.getAsJsonObject().get("created_at").getAsString();
SimpleDateFormat sdfDate = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd");
SimpleDateFormat sdfDateWithTime = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss'Z'");
Date date, created;
try {
date = sdfDate.parse(a);
created = sdfDateWithTime.parse(b);
} catch (ParseException e) {
throw new RuntimeException(e);
}
return new Foo(date, created);
}
}
Final step is to create a Gson instance with right adapter:
package stackoverflow.questions.q18473011;
import com.google.gson.*;
public class Question {
/**
* @param args
*/
public static void main(String[] args) {
String s = "{ \"date\": \"2013-07-16\", \"created_at\": \"2013-07-16T22:52:36Z\"}";
GsonBuilder builder = new GsonBuilder();
builder.registerTypeAdapter(Foo.class, new FooDeserializer());
Gson gson = builder.create();
Foo myObject = gson.fromJson(s, Foo.class);
System.out.println("Result: "+myObject);
}
}
My result:
Result: Foo [date=Tue Jul 16 00:00:00 CEST 2013, created_at=Tue Jul 16 22:52:36 CEST 2013]
Create DateTime class extending Date and then write a custom deserializer:
public class DateTime extends java.util.Date {
public DateTime(long readLong) {
super(readLong);
}
public DateTime(Date date) {
super(date.getTime());
}
}
Now for the deserializer part where we register both Date and DateTime converters:
public static Gson gsonWithDate(){
final GsonBuilder builder = new GsonBuilder();
builder.registerTypeAdapter(Date.class, new JsonDeserializer<Date>() {
final DateFormat df = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd");
@Override
public Date deserialize(JsonElement json, Type typeOfT, JsonDeserializationContext context) throws JsonParseException {
try {
return df.parse(json.getAsString());
} catch (final java.text.ParseException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
return null;
}
}
});
builder.registerTypeAdapter(DateTime.class, new JsonDeserializer<DateTime>() {
final DateFormat df = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss");
@Override
public DateTime deserialize(JsonElement json, Type typeOfT, JsonDeserializationContext context) throws JsonParseException {
try {
return new DateTime(df.parse(json.getAsString()));
} catch (final java.text.ParseException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
return null;
}
}
});
return builder.create();
}
And when you create your RestAdapter, do the following:
new RestAdapter.Builder().setConverter(gsonWithDate());
This doesn't answer directly the question asked, but is in my opinion the "state of the art" if the coder has the full freedom of choice on how to solve the problem.
First of all, it's not best solution to use java.util.Date. Reason is that those classes had no ideal behaviour in some corner cases so where superseeded by the Java Instant class etc. check the answer of Basil Bourque in this S.O. question: Creating Date objects in Kotlin for API level less than or equal to 16
So I used the Instant class of ThreeTenABP, and
using Kotlin, on Android: