Java set timezone does not default to gmt+0 - java

I have the following codes. The string form of the java date time is gmt+0. Thus I need to later convert it according to different local timezone but when I try to set the default timezone it keep going back another 8 hours cause my machine is on gmt+8.The output is showing me 2017-12-09 09:00:00 but I want to remain as 2017-12-09 17:00:00 because this is gmt+0.
String existingTime = "2017-12-09 17:00:00";
String newTime = "2017-12-09 14:00:00";
Date existingDateTime = null;
Date newDateTime = null;
Date localexistingDateTime = null;
Date localnewDateTime = null;
DateFormat dateTimeFormat = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss");
SimpleDateFormat sdf = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss");
TimeZone tz = TimeZone.getDefault();
sdf.setTimeZone(TimeZone.getTimeZone("GMT"));
// sdf.setTimeZone(TimeZone.getTimeZone("GMT+8:30"));
try {
existingDateTime = dateTimeFormat.parse(existingTime);
newDateTime = dateTimeFormat.parse(newTime);
System.out.println("GMT existingDateTime" + sdf.format(existingDateTime));
System.out.println("GMT newDateTime" + sdf.format(newDateTime));
} catch (ParseException ex) {
System.out.println("MyError:Parse Error has been caught for date parse close");
ex.printStackTrace(System.out);
}

This snippet may get you started using java.time, the modern Java date and time API. It is also known as JSR-310 after the Java Specification Request that first described it.
DateTimeFormatter formatter = DateTimeFormatter.ofPattern("uuuu-MM-dd HH:mm:ss");
String existingTime = "2017-12-09 17:00:00";
OffsetDateTime existingDateTime = LocalDateTime.parse(existingTime, formatter)
.atOffset(ZoneOffset.UTC);
System.out.println("UTC existingDateTime: " + existingDateTime.format(formatter));
System.out.println("Pyongyang existingDateTime: "
+ existingDateTime.atZoneSameInstant(ZoneId.of("Asia/Pyongyang"))
.format(formatter));
System.out.println("Singapore existingDateTime: "
+ existingDateTime.atZoneSameInstant(ZoneId.of("Asia/Singapore"))
.format(formatter));
The output from running the snippet is:
UTC existingDateTime: 2017-12-09 17:00:00
Pyongyang existingDateTime: 2017-12-10 01:30:00
Singapore existingDateTime: 2017-12-10 01:00:00
This was the output I got on my computer (in Europe/Berlin time zone), but it’s easier to keep the modern classes independent of the JVM’s time zone, so you should get the same output on your computer.
EDIT: You asked in a comment if it isn’t possible to use an offset of GMT+09:00 instead of a time zone. I’m unsure why you will want to do that since real people live in time zones rather than in offsets, but it’s easy when you know how:
System.out.println("GMT+09:00 existingDateTime: "
+ existingDateTime.withOffsetSameInstant(ZoneOffset.ofHours(9))
.format(formatter));
Output:
GMT+09:00 existingDateTime: 2017-12-10 02:00:00
A LocalDateTime is a date and time without time zone or offset information. Since your string doesn’t contain offset or zone, I use this for parsing. And since you told me your date-time was in GMT+0, I convert it to an OffsetDateTime with offset UTC first thing. From there it’s straightforward to convert it into different local time zones. So I demonstrate that for a couple of time zones, each time formatting the date-time using the same formatter I used for parsing, since I gather you tend to like the yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss format.
I always give time zone in the region/city format. This is unambiguous (contrary to three letter abbreviations; for example, PYT may mean Paraguay Time or Pyongyang Time). And it will automatically take care of summer time (DST) in case the time zone uses such. Even historic changes in zone offset are built-in.
To learn to use java.time, see the Oracle Tutorial on Date Time and search for relevant questions on Stack Overflow, always looking for the java.time answers (there’s a wealth of old answers using the outdated classes, skip those). Even more places on the net hold valuable resources. Your search engine and your ability to distinguish good from poor are your friends.

Related

How to localize timestamps in an Android app using Java?

I'm working on an app where users can timestamp themselves IN or OUT from their workplace. At the moment I'm trying to get the localization of the timestamps done. For example when I make a timestamp in UTC +02:00 at 08:00 02.01.2020, it works correctly and shows the time as 08:00 and right date as well. But when I change to UTC +01:00 in my phone settings, and do the same timestamp, the time becomes 07:00 and date becomes 01.01.2020.
The code I have so far for "parsing" the time looks like this:
String formattedTime = "";
String datetime2 = "1970-01-01T" + returntime;
Log.v("DATE", datetime2);
OffsetDateTime odt2 = OffsetDateTime.parse(datetime2);
Date date2 = Date.from(odt2.toInstant());
SimpleDateFormat sdf2 = new SimpleDateFormat("HH:mm",Locale.getDefault());
formattedTime = sdf2.format(date2);
Log.v("FORMTIME", formattedTime);
I'm using a similar code snippet for "parsing" the date as well.
The output for the two logs (when in UTC +01:00):
V/DATE: 1970-01-01T15:00:00+02:00
V/FORMTIME: 14:00 //SHOULD BE 15:00
V/DATE: 1970-01-01T08:00:00+02:00
V/FORMTIME: 07:00 //SHOULD BE 08:00
V/DATE: 1970-01-01T08:00:00+02:00
V/FORMTIME: 07:00 //SHOULD BE 08:00
It seems like the change in UTC from +02:00 to +01:00 reduce the time and date also with 1...
So is it wrong to use the OffsetDateTime class and "toInstant" (Instant class) for what I'm trying to achieve? What would be the right solution?
OffsetTime
I don’t understand what that offset of +02:00 in your string signifies. In particular it confuses me what you want to do when the offset changes. In any case java.time, the modern Java date and time API, parses and formats your time pretty easily. Let’s first define the formatter that describes your desired output format:
private static final DateTimeFormatter timeFormatter
= DateTimeFormatter.ofPattern("HH:mm");
With this in place you may do:
String returntime = "15:00:00+02:00";
OffsetTime time = OffsetTime.parse(returntime);
String formattedTime = time.format(timeFormatter);
System.out.println(formattedTime);
Output:
15:00
The offset is parsed, but is not used for anything. The output time will always be the same as the time in the string.
I take it that the date 1970-01-01 that you used in your code is arbitrary and without significance. The OffsetTime that I am using hasn’t got a date, so saves us from choosing a date for processing the time.
Word use: There isn’t any localization going on here. Localization is when for an American audience you print 3:00 PM instead of 15:00, for example.
EDIT:
If your string contains a date too, OffsetDateTime is the right class to use, and again we need no explicit formatter for parsing (only for formatting). Your code in the comment is fine (except that you had accidentally reversed the order of day, month and year in the string).
String returnDate1 = "2020-12-05T00:00+02:00";
DateTimeFormatter dateFormatter = DateTimeFormatter.ofPattern("dd-MM-yyyy");
OffsetDateTime dateTime = OffsetDateTime.parse(returnDate1);
String formattedDate = dateTime.format(dateFormatter);
System.out.println(formattedDate);
05-12-2020
What went wrong in your code?
It seems you were over-complicating things. In particular you were mixing old and modern date-time classes. The old ones, Date and SimpleDateFormat, are poorly and confusingly designed, which no doubt contributed to your unexpected results. And when mixing, you are going to need conversions that are not really needed for your job, again just making your code more complicated than needed.
Your sdf2 was using your default time zone for printing the time. You had got offset +02:00 in the string, so when you set the phone to UTC+01:00, a conversion takes place. When the time is 08:00 at offset +02:00, it is only 07:00 at offset +01:00. So this was the result you got. This in turn means that if the user’s time zone was at offset +01:00 on 1970-01-01, then you were getting the correct times for that time zone.

Different time conversion by using java.util.Date in Java

I am using the below code for epoch to time conversion by using java.util.Date class in Java.
Long scheduledTime = 1602258300000L;
Date date = new Date(scheduledTime);
System.out.println("Date obj :" + date);
Below are the outputs while running the same code on two different timezone server :
On EDT server-
Date obj :Fri Oct 09 11:45:00 EDT 2020
On IST server -
Date obj :Fri Oct 09 21:15:00 IST 2020
Why does this happen? I am only passing milliseconds. This data is supposed to be treated as 21:15 on all servers. Why does Date class change the data?
Please share a sample piece of code for getting the same time data regardless of the timezone of the server.
A Date object represents a specific instant in time, represented by a given number of milliseconds since the Unix epoch.
The toString() method converts that instant in time into a local time based on the default time zone. It's not that the Date value itself "has" a time zone - it's just toString() that uses the default one.
This data is supposed to be treated as 21:15 on all servers.
That suggests you want to use the Indian time zone in all servers, at least when converting the instant in time for display. Without knowing anything more about your application, that's all we can say... other than "don't use java.util.Date or java.util.Calendar; use the java.time classes instead". They're much better designed, and you're less likely to run into problems like this.
java.time
I recommend you use java.time, the modern Java date and time API, for your date and time work.
long scheduledTime = 1_602_258_300_000L;
Instant pointInTime = Instant.ofEpochMilli(scheduledTime);
System.out.println(pointInTime);
Output from this snippet will be the same on all servers in all time zones:
2020-10-09T15:45:00Z
Since you want 21:15, specify the time zone for India:
ZoneId serverTimeZone = ZoneId.of("Asia/Kolkata");
ZonedDateTime dateTime = pointInTime.atZone(serverTimeZone);
System.out.println(dateTime);
2020-10-09T21:15+05:30[Asia/Kolkata]
What went wrong?
The epoch is one point in time independent of time zone. so a count of milliseconds also denotes one point in time. In your case that point in time is Friday 9. October 2020 15:45:00 UTC. And at that point in time it was 21:15 in India and 11:45 on the East coast of North America. It’s a confusing trait of the outdated Date class that on one hand it represents just a point in time, on the other hand its toString method grabs the time zone setting of the JVM and uses it for rendering the string to be returned, thus giving you the false impression that you get different Date objects in different time zones when in fact they are equal.
Links
Oracle tutorial: Date Time explaining how to use java.time.
Epoch & Unix Timestamp Conversion Tools where you can check what’s the equivalent of your milliseconds in UTC/GMT and in your own time zone.
As pointed by others you should now use the java.time package for working with time. If you look at the documentation of the toString() method of java.util.Date, it says that it coverts the Date object to a String of form:
EEE MMM d m dd hh:mm:ss zzz yyyy
It is like the following code is running in the background:
public String toString(){
Date date=this;
SimpleDateFormat simpleDateFormat=new SimpleDateFormat(
"EEE MMM d m dd hh:mm:ss zzz yyyy");
simpleDateFormat.setTimeZone(TimeZone.getDefault()); //This line is important.
return simpleDateFormat.format(date);
}
Now, if you wanna format your Date object for a certain timezone you can do the same including setting the timezone:
Long scheduledTime = 1602258300000L;
Date date = new Date(scheduledTime);
SimpleDateFormat simpleDateFormat=new SimpleDateFormat(
"EEE MMM d m dd hh:mm:ss zzz yyyy");
simpleDateFormat.setTimeZone(TimeZone.getTimeZone("IST"));
String dateStr = simpleDateFormat.format(date);
System.out.println("Date obj :" + dateStr);

How to print the current time and date in ISO date format in java?

I am supposed to send the current date and time in ISO format as given below:
'2018-02-09T13:30:00.000-05:00'
I have written the following code:
Date date = new Date();
SimpleDateFormat formatter = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm");
SimpleDateFormat formatter1 = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss.000'Z'");
System.out.println(formatter.format(date));
System.out.println(formatter1.format(date));
It prints in the following way:
2018-04-30T12:02
2018-04-30T12:02:58.000Z
But it is not printing as the format mentioned above. How can I get the -5:00 as shown in the format and what does it indicate?
In java 8 you can use the new java.time api:
OffsetDateTime now = OffsetDateTime.now();
DateTimeFormatter formatter = DateTimeFormatter.ISO_DATE_TIME;
System.out.println(formatter.format(now)); // e.g. 2018-04-30T08:43:41.4746758+02:00
The above uses the standard ISO data time formatter. You can also truncate to milliseconds with:
OffsetDateTime now = OffsetDateTime.now().truncatedTo(ChronoUnit.MILLIS);
Which yields something like (only 3 digits after the dot):
2018-04-30T08:54:54.238+02:00
Easy solution:
System.out.println(OffsetDateTime.now(ZoneId.of("America/Panama")).toString());
Just now I got this output:
2018-04-30T02:12:46.442185-05:00
To control that seconds are always printed with exactly three decimals:
DateTimeFormatter formatter
= DateTimeFormatter.ofPattern("uuuu-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss.SSSXXX");
OffsetDateTime now = OffsetDateTime.now(ZoneId.of("America/Panama"));
System.out.println(now.format(formatter));
2018-04-30T02:12:46.442-05:00
The first, the easy version will print enough groups of three decimals to render the full precision. It will also leave out the seconds completely if they happen to be 0.0. Both are probably OK because all of this is allowed within the ISO 8601 format that you asked for. So whoever receives the string should be happy anyway.
Please fill in your desired time zone where I used America/Panama. It’s best to give explicit time zone for predictable output.
I am using and recommending java.time, the modern Java date and time API. The SimpleDateFormat that you used is not only long outdated, it is also notoriously troublesome. java.time is so much nicer to work with.
What does -05:00 indicate?
-05:00 is an offset from UTC (or GMT, it is nearly the same thing). So your example string is probably from eastern time zone in North America or some other place in Central or Southern America (Cuba, Bolivia, to mention a few that use this offset for some of the year). More precisely -05:00 means that we’re using a clock that is 5 hours (and 0 minutes) behind UTC. So 2:12:46-05:00 denotes the same point in time as 7:12:46 UTC. If we only knew the time was 2:12:46 and didn’t know a time zone or offset, it would be very ambiguous. An offset is perfect for turning the time into an unambiguous point in time.
Links
Oracle tutorial: Date Time explaining how to use java.time.
Wikipedia article: ISO 8601
Wikipedia article: UTC offset

How to convert String to Date with TimeZone?

I'm trying to convert my String in Date + Timezone.
I get my String from a DateTime Variable (here: xyz).
My code:
String abc = xyz.toString("yyyy-MM-ddZZ");
java.text.SimpleDateFormat sdf = new java.text.SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-ddXXX");
java.util.Date date = sdf.parse(abc);
System.out.println("Date: " + sdf.format(date));
Error:
Invalid format: "2017-01-03+01:00" is malformed at "+01:00"
If I try SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd"); it works but without the Timezone ("+01:00")
The input has a date - year, month, day - and an offset - the difference from UTC - but to build a java.util.Date, you also need the time: hour, minutes, seconds, fraction of seconds.
SimpleDateFormat is terrible because it does some "magic", setting the missing fields to default values. Another problem is that the X pattern doesn't work for all Java versions, and the documentation sucks.
You can use the new Java 8 classes, as explained. With them, you can parse the input, choose the default values to be used for the time fields and convert to java.util.Date, if that's what you need:
DateTimeFormatter fmt = new DateTimeFormatterBuilder().append(DateTimeFormatter.ISO_OFFSET_DATE)
// set hour to midnight
.parseDefaulting(ChronoField.HOUR_OF_DAY, 0).toFormatter();
OffsetDateTime odt = OffsetDateTime.parse("2017-01-03+01:00", fmt); // 2017-01-03T00:00+01:00
The OffsetDateTime will have the time set to midnight, but you can change it to whatever values you need, while with SimpleDateFormat it's not possible, because it uses internal default values and you can't control it.
And the date and offset were correctly set to the values in the input string. You can then convert to java.util.Date if you want:
Date date = Date.from(odt.toInstant());
You can also get the individual "pieces" of the date if you want:
// get just the date
LocalDate localDate = odt.toLocalDate(); // 2017-01-03
// get just the offset
ZoneOffset offset = odt.getOffset(); // +01:00
PS: the offset +01:00 is not the same thing as a timezone. See the difference here
String abc = "2017-01-03+01:00";
TemporalAccessor parsed = DateTimeFormatter.ISO_OFFSET_DATE.parse(abc);
LocalDate date = LocalDate.from(parsed);
ZoneOffset offset = ZoneOffset.from(parsed);
System.out.println("Date: " + date + "; offset: " + offset + '.');
This prints:
Date: 2017-01-03; offset: +01:00.
I am using java.time, the modern Java date and time API, and recommend you do the same. The Date class is long outdated (sorry, no pun intended) and SimpleDateFormat in particular notoriously troublesome. Don’t use them. The modern API is so much nicer to work with. Only if you need a java.util.Date and/or a java.util.TimeZone for a legacy API that you cannot change, convert like this:
Date oldfashionedDate = Date.from(date.atStartOfDay(offset).toInstant());
TimeZone oldfashionedTimeZone = TimeZone.getTimeZone(offset);
System.out.println("Old-fashioned date: " + oldfashionedDate
+ "; old-fashioned time-zone: " + oldfashionedTimeZone.getDisplayName() + '.');
On my computer this prints:
Old-fashioned date: Tue Jan 03 00:00:00 CET 2017; old-fashioned time-zone: GMT+01:00.
I happen to be in a time zone that agrees with your offset from UTC, so it’s fairly obvious that the conversion has given the correct result. In other time zones the output will be more confusing because Date.toString() uses the JVM’s time zone setting for generating the string, but the Date will still be correct.
A date with a time zone? Neither a LocalDate nor a Date can hold a time zone in them, so you need to have the offset information separately. Interestingly your string seems to follow a “ISO-8601-like” format for an offset date that is even represented by a built-in formatter that has ISO in its name. If Java had contained an OffsetDate or a ZonedDate class, I would have expected such a class to parse your string into just one object and even without an explicit formatter. Unfortunately no such class exists, not even in the ThreeTen-Extra project, as far as I can tell at a glance.
Links
Oracle tutorial: Date Time, explaining how to use java.time.
ThreeTen Extra, more classes developed along with java.time.
EDIT: See my updated code run live on ideone.
"2017-01-03+01:00"
I thought it a similar ISO 8601 format date string, but actually not ISO 8601. Thanks #Meno Hochschild and #Basil Bourque's indication.
It is so luck that this method works for such format's string: javax.xml.bind.DatatypeConverter.parseDateTime, it will return a Calendar:
System.out.println(DatatypeConverter.parseDate("2017-01-03+01:00").getTime());
Output:
Tue Jan 03 07:00:00 CST 2017
From the method javadoc:
public static Calendar parseDate(String lexicalXSDDate)
Converts the string argument into a Calendar value.
Parameters: lexicalXSDDate - A string containing lexical
representation of xsd:Date.
Returns: A Calendar value represented by
the string argument.
Throws: IllegalArgumentException - if string
parameter does not conform to lexical value space defined in XML
Schema Part 2: Datatypes for xsd:Date.

How do I get Date only from epoch time having time as 23:59:59

I have date 2015-12-25 23:59:59 in the form of epoch milliseconds 1451087999000, And I want the date part only i.e. 2015/12/25, how do I do that efficiently might be with the JODA time library which is nowdays standard for dealing with Date time in java.
I have this code which works in most the case but when time is like 23:59:59 it gives me the next date (as in my case it gives 2015-12-26 with input of 2015-12-25 23:59:59)-
String dateInMilliSeconds = "1451087999000";
String dateInYYYYMMDDFormat = DateHelper.convertDateFormat(new Date(Long.valueOf(dateInMilliSeconds)),DateHelper.yyyy_MM_dd);
DateHelper.convertDateFormat() -
public static final String yyyy_MM_dd = "yyyy-MM-dd";
public static String convertDateFormat( Date date, String outputFormat )
{
String returnDate = "";
if( null != date )
{
SimpleDateFormat formatter = new SimpleDateFormat(outputFormat);
returnDate = formatter.format(date);
}
return returnDate;
}
You can use localDate from java 8
LocalDate date = Instant.ofEpochMilli(dateInMilliSeconds).atZone(ZoneId.of(timeZone)).toLocalDate();
I should like to make two points:
Time zone is crucial.
Skip the outdated classes Date and SimpleDateFormat.
My suggestion is:
String dateInMilliSeconds = "1451087999000";
LocalDate date = Instant.ofEpochMilli(Long.parseLong(dateInMilliSeconds))
.atOffset(ZoneOffset.UTC)
.toLocalDate();
System.out.println(date);
This prints
2015-12-25
Please note that you get your desired output format for free: LocalDate.toString() produces it. If you want to be able to produce different output formats, use a DateTimeFormatter.
Time zone
Your millisecond value isn’t just equal to 2015-12-25 23:59:59. It is equal to this date and time in UTC, so you need to make sure that your conversion uses this time zone offset. When I run your code from the question on my computer, I incorrectly get 2015-12-26 because my computer is in the Europe/Copenhagen time zone.
JSR-310 AKA java.time
Joda-Time was the widely acknowledged better alternative to the original date and time API from Java 1 that many considered poor and troublesome. The Joda-Time project is now finished because the modern Java date and time API known as JSR-310 or java.time came out three and a half years ago, so they recommend we use this instead. So my code does.
The timestamp 1451087999000 is 2015-12-25 23:59:59 in UTC. In your code, you're not specifying the timezone when you format it with a SimpleDateFormat, so it's formatted in your local timezone.
With Joda Time:
String dateInMilliSeconds = "1451087999000";
LocalDate date = new LocalDate(Long.parseLong(dateInMilliSeconds), DateTimeZone.UTC);
DateTimeFormatter formatter = DateTimeFormat.forPattern("yyyy-MM-dd");
String result = formatter.print(date);

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