TimeZone problem in Java

Question

Hi

I am trying to instantiate GregorianCalendar with TimeZone GMT, but whenever I call the getTime() method, it gives me time in local TimeZone. Here is my code:

Calendar cal = new GregorianCalendar(TimeZone.getTimeZone("GMT"));
System.out.println(cal.getTime());

The output I am getting is this:

Sat Nov 28 19:55:49 PKT 2009

Please help!

Answer 1

The problem is not with GregorianCalendar but with Date, which is being used to format the date/time for toString for println.

If you want control of date formatting, you'll need to instantiate your own DateFormat - I always use SimpleDateFormat because I'm rather picky about how I want my dates to look.

If you're not interested in the details of how the date is formatted, you can also use one of the getInstance... factory methods of DateFormat.

You can explicitly setTimeZone on a DateFormat (including SimpleDateFormat, of course).

Answer 2

I'm not sure if this answers your question, but this is one way to get "now" in GMT.

import java.text.*
import java.util.* 

Calendar cal = new GregorianCalendar();
Date date = cal.getTime();
SimpleDateFormat formatter = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy.MM.dd G 'at' HH:mm:ss z");
formatter.setTimeZone(TimeZone.getTimeZone("GMT"));
System.out.println(formatter.format(date));

See the Javadoc on SimpleDateFormat for different patterns. Also, you may want to consider Joda Time as it is far superior for dates and times.