Android Timezone.getDefault() gives Asia/Calcutta

Question

I am using the Android TimeZone functionality and my app is communicating with a server that expects Asia/Kolkata from devices in India. However, when getting the TimeZone.getDefault().getDisplayName(), I get Asia/Calcutta and not Kolkata. Knowing that when printing the values in TimeZone.getAvailableIDs(), it shows both, Calcutta and Kolkata. Any ideas?

Answer 1

Both should be valid. The zone used to be called Asia/Calcutta and was renamed to Asia/Kolkata, but there is still an alias in the tzdb that points the old name to the new one. See here.

If the server doesn't allow the new name, then they need to update their tz files from here, or in whatever implementation they might be using.

If you can't do that, you can always catch this case and replace the string yourself. They are equivalent zones.