How to get the current UTC time in seconds

Question

I have an application, which needs to compare the time in seconds.

I want to know how to get the current UTC time in seconds.

Can some one post an example of it how can we do this in Java?

Answer 1

You can use this to get timezone passing in timezone you want time back in

Calendar cal = Calendar.getInstance(TimeZone.getTimeZone("UTC")); 

Then you can call whatever you want on the calendar object

System.out.println(cal.get(Calendar.YEAR));
System.out.println(cal.get(Calendar.HOUR));
System.out.println(cal.get(Calendar.HOUR_OF_DAY));
System.out.println(cal.get(Calendar.MINUTE));

Below example to compare two calendars in seconds

Calendar cal1 = Calendar.getInstance(TimeZone.getTimeZone("UTC"));
Calendar cal2 = Calendar.getInstance(TimeZone.getTimeZone("UTC"));

// Set the dates for calendars
cal1.set(2011, 1, 1);
cal2.set(2011, 2, 2);

// Get the represented date in milliseconds as a long
long milis1 = cal1.getTimeInMillis();
long milis2 = cal2.getTimeInMillis();

// Calculate difference in milliseconds
long diff = milis2 - milis1;

// Calculate difference in seconds
long diffSecs = diff / 1000;

System.out.println("In seconds: " + diffSecs + " seconds");