How to get the current date and time of your timez

Question

I have my app hosted in a London Server. I am in Madrid, Spain. So the timezone is -2 hours.

How can I obtain the current date / time with my time zone.

Date curr_date = new Date(System.currentTimeMillis());

e.g.

Date curr_date = new Date(System.currentTimeMillis("MAD_TIMEZONE"));

With Joda-Time

DateTimeZone zone = DateTimeZone.forID("Europe/Madrid");
DateTime dt = new DateTime(zone);
int day = dt.getDayOfMonth();
int year = dt.getYear();
int month = dt.getMonthOfYear();
int hours = dt.getHourOfDay();
int minutes = dt.getMinuteOfHour();

Answer 1

using Calendar is simple:

Calendar calendar = Calendar.getInstance(TimeZone.getTimeZone("Europe/Madrid"));
Date currentDate = calendar.getTime();

Answer 2

DateFormat df = DateFormat.getDateTimeInstance(DateFormat.FULL, DateFormat.FULL);
df.setTimeZone(TimeZone.getTimeZone("PST"));
final String dateTimeString = df.format(new Date());

Answer 3

I couldn't get it to work using Calendar. You have to use DateFormat

//Wednesday, July 20, 2011 3:54:44 PM PDT
DateFormat df = DateFormat.getDateTimeInstance(DateFormat.FULL, DateFormat.FULL);
df.setTimeZone(TimeZone.getTimeZone("PST"));
final String dateTimeString = df.format(new Date());

//Wednesday, July 20, 2011
df = DateFormat.getDateInstance(DateFormat.FULL);
df.setTimeZone(TimeZone.getTimeZone("PST"));
final String dateString = df.format(new Date());

//3:54:44 PM PDT
df = DateFormat.getTimeInstance(DateFormat.FULL);
df.setTimeZone(Timezone.getTimeZone("PST"));
final String timeString = df.format(new Date());

Answer 4

As Jon Skeet already said, java.util.Date does not have a time zone. A Date object represents a number of milliseconds since January 1, 1970, 12:00 AM, UTC. It does not contain time zone information.

When you format a Date object into a string, for example by using SimpleDateFormat, then you can set the time zone on the DateFormat object to let it know in which time zone you want to display the date and time:

Date date = new Date();
DateFormat df = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss");

// Use Madrid's time zone to format the date in
df.setTimeZone(TimeZone.getTimeZone("Europe/Madrid"));

System.out.println("Date and time in Madrid: " + df.format(date));

If you want the local time zone of the computer that your program is running on, use:

df.setTimeZone(TimeZone.getDefault());

Answer 5

With the java.time classes built into Java 8 and later:

public static void main(String[] args) {
        LocalDateTime localNow = LocalDateTime.now(TimeZone.getTimeZone("Europe/Madrid").toZoneId());
        System.out.println(localNow);
        // Prints current time of given zone without zone information : 2016-04-28T15:41:17.611
        ZonedDateTime zoneNow = ZonedDateTime.now(TimeZone.getTimeZone("Europe/Madrid").toZoneId());
        System.out.println(zoneNow);
        // Prints current time of given zone with zone information : 2016-04-28T15:41:17.627+02:00[Europe/Madrid]
    }

Answer 6

Here is an example:

Calendar c = Calendar.getInstance(TimeZone.getDefault());
Date date = c.getTime();