Question

I declared Calendar and SimpleDateFormat like this:

calendar = Calendar.getInstance(TimeZone.getTimeZone("Malaysia"));
final SimpleDateFormat sdf = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy.MMMMM.dd hh:mm aaa");

or:

calendar = Calendar.getInstance(TimeZone.getTimeZone("GMT+08:00"));

Then I call this:

sdf.format(calendar.getTime());

but result is not in correct time zone (+8 hours). What could be the problem?

Answer 1

Unless you are going to perform Date/Time related calculations, there is no point in instantiating Calendar with given TimeZone. After calling Calendar’s getTime() method, you will receive Date object, which is timezone-less either way (GMT based, actually).

What you need to do, is to set TimeZone for formatter instead. And also do not bother with passing your own format, there is a built-in already:

    // get current time
    // you could just as well use Date now = new Date();
    Calendar now = Calendar.getInstance();

    // Locale for formatter
    Locale malaysianLocale = new Locale("ms", "MY");
    // Default date and time format for Malaysia
    DateFormat defaultMalaysianFormatter = DateFormat.getDateTimeInstance(
            DateFormat.DEFAULT, DateFormat.DEFAULT, malaysianLocale);
    // This step is crucial
    TimeZone malaysianTimeZone = TimeZone.getTimeZone("Asia/Kuala_Lumpur");
    defaultMalaysianFormatter.setTimeZone(malaysianTimeZone);

    System.out.println(defaultMalaysianFormatter.format(now.getTime()));

This prints something like 10 Mei 2011 2:30:05 AM, which I believe is your desired result.