string to Date conversion issue

[desanip]

Hello Talendians, 

I am trying to convert a string  type to date type for a column. The source date is 2018-12-04 for example. The target date type is "EEE MMM dd hh:mm:ss:zzz yyyy".

 I tried using the following function in my tmap.

row4.account_product_termination_date!=null && row4.account_product_termination_date!=" " ? TalendDate.parseDate("EEE MMM dd hh:mm:ss:zzz yyyy",row4.account_product_termination_date)

I see erroretail Message: Syntax error, insert ": Expression" to complete Expression

Can someone explain me what i am doing wrong?

[billimmer · Accepted solution]

Two things,

First, to compare strings in java use: 

!row4.account_product_termination_date.equals(" ") 

instead of !=

Also you need a true and false side to your statement, separated by a colon.  So what to you want to happen if the row4.account_product_termination_date is null?  Return null?

row4.account_product_termination_date!=null && !row4.account_product_termination_date.equals(" ")  ? TalendDate.parseDate("EEE MMM dd hh:mm:ss:zzz yyyy",row4.account_product_termination_date) : null

[desanip]

@billy Thanks for the explanation and the expression works too. Cheers

Thank you Sir.