Question

Is it possible to format a date time in Java using the SimpleDateFormat class to give the timezone part of a date without having the +0000 after it.

Edit

We are changing the Default Timezone within Java as follows:

SimpleTimeZone tz = new SimpleTimeZone(0, "Out Timezone");        
TimeZone.setDefault(tz);

Unfortunately, I am in no position to remove this code. I would hazard a guess at the whole system stopping working. I think the initial author put this in to work around some day light saving issues.

With this in mind, I want to format the date as:

2011-12-27 09:00 GMT

or

2011-12-27 09:00 BST

I can only get the SimpleDateFormat to output as:

2011-12-27 09:00:00 GMT+00:00

which uses the format string yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss z

I cannot see anywhere where the simple timezone has any reference to winter time (GMT) id or summer time id (BST).

Answer 1

Not an elegant solution at all but it works for us. I had to create a custom implementation for DateFormat/SimpleDateFormat. This looks like something as follows:

static {
    // this would be initialized like something as follows when the application starts
    // which causes the headaches of SimpleDateFormat not to work...
    SimpleTimeZone tz = new SimpleTimeZone(0, "Out Timezone");             
    TimeZone.setDefault(tz);  
}

// therefore this class will workaround the issue, 

public class OurOwnCustomDateFormat
    extends SimpleDateFormat {

    /** The pattern to use as the format string. */
    protected String pattern;

    public OurOwnCustomDateFormat(String pattern) {
         super(pattern);
         // store the pattern
         this.pattern = pattern;
    }

    @Override
    public StringBuffer format(Date date, StringBuffer toAppendTo, FieldPosition pos) {

         // custom implementation to format the date and time based on our TimeZone            
         toAppendTo.insert(pos.getBeginIndex(), "the date with our custom format calculated here");
         return toAppendTo; 
    }