Mark Needham: Neo4j: apoc.date.parse java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Ille ...

I often find myself wanting to convert date strings into Unix timestamps using Neo4j’s APOC library and unfortunately some sources don’t use the format that apoc.date.parse expects.

e.g.

return apoc.date.parse("2012-11-12T08:46:15Z",'s')
AS ts
Failed to invoke function `apoc.date.parse`:
Caused by: java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: java.text.ParseException: Unparseable date: "2012-11-12T08:46:15Z"

We need to define the format explicitly so the SimpleDataFormat documentation comes in handy. I tried the following:

return apoc.date.parse("2012-11-12T08:46:15Z",'s',"yyyy-MM-ddTHH:mm:ssZ")
AS ts
Failed to invoke function `apoc.date.parse`:
Caused by: java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Illegal pattern character 'T'

Hmmm, we need to quote the ‘T’ character we can’t just include it in the pattern. Let’s try again:

return apoc.date.parse("2012-11-12T08:46:15Z",'s',"yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ssZ")
AS ts
Failed to invoke function `apoc.date.parse`:
Caused by: java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: java.text.ParseException: Unparseable date: "2012-11-12T08:46:15Z"

The problem now is that we haven’t quoted the ‘Z’ but the error doesn’t indicate that not sure why!

We can either quote the ‘Z’:

return apoc.date.parse("2012-11-12T08:46:15Z",'s',"yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss'Z'")
AS ts
%R%P%P%P%P%P%P%P%P%P%P%U
│"ts" │
%^%P%P%P%P%P%P%P%P%P%P%a
│1352709975│
└──────────┘

Or we can match the timezone using ‘XXX’:

return apoc.date.parse("2012-11-12T08:46:15Z",'s',"yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ssXXX")
AS ts
%R%P%P%P%P%P%P%P%P%P%P%U
│"ts" │
%^%P%P%P%P%P%P%P%P%P%P%a
│1352709975│
└──────────┘