Question

I need to create a java.util.Date object with an Australian timezone. this object is required for tag libraries used in downstream components (so I’m stuck with Date).

Here’s what I have attempted:

TimeZone timeZone = TimeZone.getTimeZone("Australia/Sydney");
GregorianCalendar defaultDate = new GregorianCalendar(timeZone);
Date date = defaultDate.getTime();

However, “date” always returns the current local time (in my case, ET). What am I doing wrong here? Is it even possible to set a Date object with a different timezone?

Update:

Thanks for the responses! This works if I want to output the formatted date as a string, but not if I want to return a date object. Ex:

Date d = new Date();
DateFormat df = new SimpleDateFormat();
df.setTimeZone(TimeZone.getTimeZone("Australia/Sydney"));

String formattedDate = df.format(d);   // returns Sydney date/time
Date myDate = df.parse(formattedDate); // returns local time(ET)

I think I’m going to end up reworking our date taglib.

Answer 1

Is it even possible to set a Date object with a different timezone?

No, it’s not possible. As its javadoc describes, all the java.util.Date contains is just the epoch time which is always the amount of seconds relative to 1 january 1970 UTC/GMT. The Date doesn’t contain other information. To format it using a timezone, use SimpleDateFormat#setTimeZone()