Question

I’m trying to get the UTC offset in seconds in android. Since the emulator keeps returning 0, I can’t tell if I’m doing this correctly or not.

    Calendar c=Calendar.getInstance();
        TimeZone tz=c.getTimeZone();
        int offsetFromUtc=tz.getOffset(0)/1000;

When I put 0 in the tz.getOffset it means I just want the number of seconds from gmt.
Let me know if what Im doing is correct. Thanks

Answer 1

Time Zone offsets can change during the year, perhaps the most common reason is Daylight Savings Time. Instead of passing 0 to TimeZone.getOffset() uses the current time to get the current offset, create a new Date and get its Time value:

TimeZone tz = TimeZone.getDefault();
Date now = new Date();
int offsetFromUtc = tz.getOffset(now.getTime()) / 1000;

The emulator defaults to UTC, try checking the available timezones to test. Also you can pass a timezone switch to set the timezone, check the documentation for -timezone.