How can I get the current date and time in UTC or GMT in Java?

java date localization timezone gmt
Behrang picture Behrang · Nov 21, 2008 · Viewed 915.6k times · Source

When I create a new Date object, it is initialized to the current time but in the local timezone. How can I get the current date and time in GMT?

Answer

Jon Skeet picture Jon Skeet · Nov 21, 2008

java.util.Date has no specific time zone, although its value is most commonly thought of in relation to UTC. What makes you think it's in local time?

To be precise: the value within a java.util.Date is the number of milliseconds since the Unix epoch, which occurred at midnight January 1st 1970, UTC. The same epoch could also be described in other time zones, but the traditional description is in terms of UTC. As it's a number of milliseconds since a fixed epoch, the value within java.util.Date is the same around the world at any particular instant, regardless of local time zone.

I suspect the problem is that you're displaying it via an instance of Calendar which uses the local timezone, or possibly using Date.toString() which also uses the local timezone, or a SimpleDateFormat instance, which, by default, also uses local timezone.

If this isn't the problem, please post some sample code.

I would, however, recommend that you use Joda-Time anyway, which offers a much clearer API.

Related questions

Android: how to get the current day of the week (Monday, etc...) in the user's language?

I want to know what the current day of the week is (Monday, Tuesday...) in the user's local language. For example, "Lundi" "Mardi" etc... if the user is French. I have read this post, it but it only returns an …

Read More
A good date converter for Jalali Calendar in Java?

I'm developing a Java App and I have a timeStamp (in long). I can easily use this code to change it to a Gregorian date: Calendar calendar = Calendar.getInstance(); calendar.setTimeInMillis(timeStamp); But I need to have the date in …

Read More
Java string to date conversion

What is the best way to convert a String in the format 'January 2, 2010' to a Date in Java? Ultimately, I want to break out the month, the day, and the year as integers so that I can use Date …

Read More