Converting UTC dates to other timezones

Question

I'm converting a UTC time to another timezone, using this method:

SimpleDateFormat format = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss");
Date parsed = format.parse("2011-03-01 15:10:37");
TimeZone tz = TimeZone.getTimeZone("America/Chicago");
format.setTimeZone(tz);

String result = format.format(parsed);

So the input is 2011-03-01 15:10:37 but the output of this (value of result) is 2011-03-01 05:40:37. While it seems off, and according to this link, it should be 2011-03-01 09:10:37.

What am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

You need to take Daylight Savings into consideration. I do this by working out the offset (from UTC) in millieseconds. Something like this should work.

int currentOffsetFromUTC = tz.getRawOffset() + (tz.inDaylightTime(parsed) ? tz.getDSTSavings() : 0);
String result = format.format(parsed.getTime() + currentOffsetFromUTC);

The inDayLightTime(...) method returns a boolean and must be passed a Date object in order for it to decide if that 'date' represents one during a DST period or not.

Answer 2

Converting a date String of the format "2011-06-23T15:11:32" to out time zone.

 private String getDate(String dateString) {
    SimpleDateFormat formatter = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss");
    formatter.setTimeZone(TimeZone.getTimeZone("UTC"));
    Date value = null;
    try {
        value = formatter.parse(dateString);
    } catch (ParseException e) {
        e.printStackTrace();
    }
    SimpleDateFormat dateFormatter = new SimpleDateFormat("dd/MM/yyyy hh:mmaa");
    dateFormatter.setTimeZone(TimeZone.getDefault());
    String dt = dateFormatter.format(value);

    return dt;
}

Answer 3

It turns out the code was almost correct, what I didn't take into account was that when parsing the String to get a Date object initially, it uses default system TimeZone, so the source date was not in UTC as I expected.

The trick was to set the timezone when parsing the date to UTC and then set it to destination TimeZone. Something like this:

SimpleDateFormat sourceFormat = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss");
sourceFormat.setTimeZone(TimeZone.getTimeZone("UTC"));
Date parsed = sourceFormat.parse("2011-03-01 15:10:37"); // => Date is in UTC now

TimeZone tz = TimeZone.getTimeZone("America/Chicago");
SimpleDateFormat destFormat = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss");
destFormat.setTimeZone(tz);

String result = destFormat.format(parsed);

Answer 4

You can Parse your date format and time zone according to your requirements. Try this snippet of code i hope it helpful for you.

private String getFormattedDate(String OurDate) {
    try {
        SimpleDateFormat formatter = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss"); // According to your Server TimeStamp
        formatter.setTimeZone(TimeZone.getTimeZone("UTC")); //your Server Time Zone
        Date value = formatter.parse(OurDate); // Parse your date

        SimpleDateFormat dateFormatter = new SimpleDateFormat("MM-dd-yyyy"); //this format changeable according to your choice
        dateFormatter.setTimeZone(TimeZone.getDefault());
        OurDate = dateFormatter.format(value);

    } catch (Exception e) {
        OurDate = "00-00-0000 00:00";

    }
    return OurDate;
}

Answer 5

Following code works fine for me to change a date from one tz to another. It considers the DayLightSaving also.

public static Calendar changeTimezoneOfDate(Date date, TimeZone fromTZ, TimeZone toTZ) {
    Calendar calendar = Calendar.getInstance();
    calendar.setTime(date);
    long millis = calendar.getTimeInMillis();
    long fromOffset = fromTZ.getOffset(millis);
    long toOffset = toTZ.getOffset(millis);
    long convertedTime = millis - (fromOffset - toOffset);
    Calendar c = Calendar.getInstance();
    c.setTimeInMillis(convertedTime);
    return c;
}