Question

Ok, so I’ve pretty much tried everything. I bet it’s something really simple but I can’t seem to get a hold of it.

The server sends me the time, which is epoch. However when I put this into a date object it seems to automatically pick up the time zone and it adds +3 to the server time. So if the gmt time is 00.00, it says its 03.00.

I also need to add a timezone of my own. Let’s say the epoch time is 00.00 again, it should read 10.00 after I add the timezone.

any help would be much appreciated. Thank you

Answer 1

“It seems to add” – I suspect you’re using Date.toString() which does indeed use the local time zone. The Date object itself is effectively in UTC though. Use DateFormat to perform the conversion to a string instead, and you can specify which time zone to use. You may also need to use Calendar – it depends what you’re trying to do.

(Alternatively, use Joda Time in the first place, which is a better API. It may be a little bulky for your Android project though. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were a “Joda Time lite” project around somewhere for precisely this sort of thing…)

EDIT: Quick sample, although it’s not entirely clear what you need…

long millis = getMillisFromServer();
Date date = new Date(millis);
DateFormat format = new SimpleDateFormat("dd/MM/yyyy HH:mm:ss");
format.setTimeZone(customTimeZone);
String formatted = format.format(date);