Question

I need some advice on this java method. The intent of this method is to take a string that represents a date – this string was created from a date in the EST time zone – and convert it to a java Date object in the UTC time zone.

private Date buildValidationDate(String dateString) throws ParseException {
    System.out.println("dateString " + dateString);

    SimpleDateFormat dateFormat = new SimpleDateFormat("MM/dd/yyy hh:mm a");
    dateFormat.setTimeZone(TimeZone.getTimeZone("UTC"));  
    dateFormat.setLenient(true);
    Date dt = dateFormat.parse(dateString);

    System.out.println("dt " + dt);

    return dt;
}

the problem I’m seeing is the value of dt seems to be off. For instance, if dateString is ’10/16/2012 12:06 PM’ – I’m expecting the value of dt (in UTC) to be something like ‘Tuesday, October 16, 2012 4:06 PM’. Instead the value of dt is ‘Tue Oct 16 07:06:00 CDT 2012’. This does not seem to be the correct UTC time.

I appreciate any advice, I’m sorry if this seems to be an easy question I have a lot of trouble with Java dates. I’m not sure if I’m coding something incorrectly or if there is something wrong with my methodology. Thanks

Answer 1

Your date is getting converted right. Its just printing value in your default timezone format as java.util.Date is timezone independent. If you want timezone specific handling, please use java.util.Calendar.