[Simple-support] Handling of ISO 8601 timestamps

[Kenny M. <Ken...@tr...>]

First up, sorry if this is a FAQ on this list, but the SF mailing list 
seems to have no search facility.

Anyway, I'm looking to use SimpleXml (on Android) to process XML that 
makes extensive use of ISO 8601 timestamps (as used by the xs:datetime XML 
schema type), e.g.  2011-01-27T17:47:14Z

I would like to bind these to java.util.Date fields in my model. Now, the 
SimpleXml tutorial briefly mentions this concept, and the existence of 
"transformers", but gives no indication if these transformers are 
pluggable or configurable.

I could, of course, just use Strings, and translate them as required, but 
the schema in question is very complex, with many datetime fields, so this 
would be inelegant at best.

Is there a suggested solution to this problem?

P.S. Any chance of this group being migrated somewhere more useful, such 
as Google Groups?  The lack of a search facility is maddening, given how 
much useful information is in this list archive.