UTC Time on Google App engine ?

Question

What's the best way to work out the time when my servlet in google app engine is hit ?

if I call System.currentTimeMillis() and store that info will it be reliable ?

I don't need milliseconds precision.

I just want to store an entity with the date on when it arrives.

Thanks

Answer 1

if I call System.currentTimeMillis() and store that info will it be reliable ?

Yes.

Answer 2

No, it won't be reliable.

In Dan Sanderson's book, "Programming Google App Engine" he says:

It's worth noting that App Engine makes no guarantees that the system clocks of all of its web servers are synchronized. <...> The server clock is not consistent enough as a source of time data for a real-world application, but it's good enough for this example.

http://books.google.com/books?id=6cL_kCZ4NJ4C&amp;lpg=PA25&amp;dq=clocks%20synchronized%20google%20app%20engine&amp;pg=PA25#v=onepage&amp;q=clocks%20synchronized%20google%20app%20engine&amp;f=false