Question

I need to pass the JavaScript tz_offset variable on the client size to a Java tzOffset on the server side. tz_offset is calculated here:

time: function(){
  var d1 = new Date(), d2 = new Date();
  d1.setMonth(0); d1.setDate(1); d2.setMonth(6); d2.setDate(1);
  return({tz_offset: -(new Date().getTimezoneOffset()) / 60, observes_dst: (d1.getTimezoneOffset() !== d2.getTimezoneOffset()) });
}

What is the best Java primitive data type to represent the offset? A String, double or int?

My best guess is a double but I’m worried about outliers that may not be representable as a double. For now I’m leaving it as a String since that seems safer – but not ideal.

Answer 1

In Java, most dates are stored as Long values. As they represent the time since the Unix epoch, in milliseconds, you don’t need floating point precision (a la Double), but you need more bits than an Integer will give you.

So, I would choose Long, unless you are worried about non-numeric values coming from your javascript code, and instead want to use a String and perform the conversion to a numeric on the serverside.