Java SimpleDateFormat Consistently Returns January for Month

When attempting to convert a date from Active Directory into a Java date, the result consistently shows the month as January, despite the correct month being specified in the input string. This issue stems from a misunderstanding of the date format used by SimpleDateFormat.

The problematic method responsible for the conversion is as follows:

private Date getParsedDate(String givenString) {
    SimpleDateFormat sdf = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy/MM/DD");
    Date parsedDate = sdf.parse(givenString);
    return parsedDate;
}

In this method, the SimpleDateFormat is initialized with the pattern "yyyy/MM/DD", which represents the year, month, and day, respectively. However, the input string from Active Directory follows a different format: "yyyyMMddHHmmss.SSS". The problematic portion is the month representation, which should be lowercase "mm" instead of uppercase "MM".

To resolve this issue, the pattern string in the SimpleDateFormat constructor should be changed to "yyyy/mm/dd":

SimpleDateFormat sdf = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy/mm/dd");

With this change, the Java SimpleDateFormat will correctly convert the givenString into a Java Date object with the correct month value.