How to convert currentTimeMillis to a date in Java

Question

I have milliseconds in certain log file generated in server, I also know the locale from where the log file was generated, my problem is to convert milliseconds to date in specified format. The processing of that log is happening on server located in different time zone. While converting to "SimpleDateFormat" program is taking date of the machine as such formatted date do not represent correct time of the server. Is there any way to handle this elegantly ?

long yourmilliseconds = 1322018752992l;
        //1322018752992-Nov 22, 2011 9:25:52 PM 

SimpleDateFormat sdf = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss,SSS",Locale.US);

GregorianCalendar calendar = new GregorianCalendar(TimeZone.getTimeZone("US/Central"));
calendar.setTimeInMillis(yourmilliseconds);

System.out.println("GregorianCalendar -"+sdf.format(calendar.getTime()));

DateTime jodaTime = new DateTime(yourmilliseconds, 
                    DateTimeZone.forTimeZone(TimeZone.getTimeZone("US/Central")));
DateTimeFormatter parser1 = DateTimeFormat.forPattern("yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss,SSS");

System.out.println("jodaTime "+parser1.print(jodaTime));

Output:

Gregorian Calendar -2011-11-23 08:55:52,992
jodaTime 2011-11-22 21:25:52,992

Answer 1

I do it like this:

static String formatDate(long dateInMillis) {
    Date date = new Date(dateInMillis);
    return DateFormat.getDateInstance().format(date);
}

You can also use getDateInstance(int style) with following parameters:

DateFormat.SHORT

DateFormat.MEDIUM

DateFormat.LONG

DateFormat.FULL

DateFormat.DEFAULT

Answer 2

Calendar calendar = Calendar.getInstance();
calendar.setTimeInMillis(timeStamp);

int mYear = calendar.get(Calendar.YEAR);
int mMonth = calendar.get(Calendar.MONTH);
int mDay = calendar.get(Calendar.DAY_OF_MONTH);

Answer 3

Below is my solution to get date from miliseconds to date format. You have to use Joda Library to get this code run.

import java.util.GregorianCalendar;
import java.util.TimeZone;

import org.joda.time.DateTime;
import org.joda.time.DateTimeZone;
import org.joda.time.format.DateTimeFormat;
import org.joda.time.format.DateTimeFormatter;

public class time {

    public static void main(String args[]){

        String str = "1431601084000";
        long geTime= Long.parseLong(str);
        GregorianCalendar calendar = new GregorianCalendar(TimeZone.getTimeZone("US/Central"));
        calendar.setTimeInMillis(geTime);
        DateTime jodaTime = new DateTime(geTime, 
               DateTimeZone.forTimeZone(TimeZone.getTimeZone("US/Central")));
        DateTimeFormatter parser1 = DateTimeFormat.forPattern("yyyy-MM-dd");
        System.out.println("Get Time : "+parser1.print(jodaTime));

   }
}

Answer 4

If the millis value is number of millis since Jan 1, 1970 GMT, as is standard for the JVM, then that is independent of time zone. If you want to format it with a specific time zone, you can simply convert it to a GregorianCalendar object and set the timezone. After that there are numerous ways to format it.

Answer 5

My Solution

public class CalendarUtils {

    public static String dateFormat = "dd-MM-yyyy hh:mm";
    private static SimpleDateFormat simpleDateFormat = new SimpleDateFormat(dateFormat);

    public static String ConvertMilliSecondsToFormattedDate(String milliSeconds){
        Calendar calendar = Calendar.getInstance();
        calendar.setTimeInMillis(Long.parseLong(milliSeconds));
        return simpleDateFormat.format(calendar.getTime());
    }
}

Answer 6

The SimpleDateFormat class has a method called SetTimeZone(TimeZone) that is inherited from the DateFormat class. http://docs.oracle.com/javase/6/docs/api/java/text/DateFormat.html