Date as a request parameter in Spring REST

Question

My controller looks like this:

@RequestMapping(value = "/process_date", method = RequestMethod.GET)
    public ResponseEntity processDate
       (@RequestParam(value = "time", required = false) 
        @DateTimeFormat(pattern="yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ssXXX") Date date){
// process the date
}

The POSTMAN query:

http://localhost:8080/process_date?date=2014-05-09T00:48:16-04:00

It's giving me IllegalArgumentException. The full exception is:

{
  "timestamp": 1495736131978,
  "status": 400,
  "error": "Bad Request",
  "exception": "org.springframework.web.method.annotation.MethodArgumentTypeMismatchException",
  "message": "Failed to convert value of type 'java.lang.String' to required type 'java.util.Date'; nested exception is org.springframework.core.convert.ConversionFailedException: Failed to convert from type [java.lang.String] to type [@org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RequestParam @org.springframework.format.annotation.DateTimeFormat java.util.Date] for value '2013-05-10T07:48:16-04:00'; nested exception is java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Illegal pattern component: XXX",
  "path": "/airspaces"
}

Now, strangely when I run:

DateFormat df = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ssXXX");
try {
    System.out.println(df.parse("2013-05-10T07:48:16-04:00"));
} catch (ParseException e) {
    System.out.println("PARSE EXCEPTION!!!");
}

It works without any exception. Same date-format, same date.

One workaround would be to receive the date as a string and then do the conversions through the parser method.

But I'm concerned more about what's going on behind the scene here.

Date as a request parameter in Spring REST

3 Answers