This is a very short tutorial on how to parse any string that even slightly resembles a date into java.util.Date (instant in time, with millisecond precision).

The best I found to do this, was to use Natty library written by Joe Stelmach.

As a prerequisite, either:

- Download the com.joestelmach.natty jar file and include it in your project: Click to Download: [natty-0.12.jar](http://search.maven.org/remotecontent?filepath=com/joestelmach/natty/0.12/natty-0.12.jar)

- Or, include the following dependency in your pom.xml file:

  <dependencies>
  	<dependency>
  		<groupId>com.joestelmach</groupId>
  		<artifactId>natty</artifactId>
  		<version>0.12</version>
  	</dependency>
   </dependencies>

- Then you can use following Java code to parse practically any date:

List<Date> dates = new Parser().parse("14 Aug 2003 00:03:19 +1200").get(0).getDates();
System.out.println(dates.get(0));

Above example code would return correct result in EDT format:

- Input string: 14 Aug 2003 00:03:19 +1200

- Result: Wed Aug 13 08:03:19 EDT 2003

This library is so flexible, that you can even try some really crazy date formats, such as:

- day before christmas 2015 at 8pm in EST -  result: Thu Dec 24 20:00:00 EST 2015

- first thursday of may 2005 at 3:13 am pdt  -  result: Thu May 05 06:13:00 EDT 2005

You get the idea :)

Enjoy, hope this helps.